I would like to express my gratitude to the following people for their never-ending support and assistance in helping to make this book a reality:

Kathy, you are my soul mate, and I am overjoyed to be spending the rest of my life together with you. Your love, admiration, and support made this book a reality, and I could not have done it without you. Thank you for your love and patience.

Thank you to my family (Arthur, Lois, and Lisa) for your love and support and for putting up with my incessant ramblings about game development all these years. I still remember the first game I ever made, and how proud I was to show it to you, only to have the hero’s clothes fall off when he picked up the sword from the ground—in addition to his sword and shield protruding from inappropriate places. Yes, even games have bugs....

Anthony Whitaker, my good friend. I have always enjoyed discussing the programmable pipeline, spatial partitioning, tools development, and countless other topics with you. I value our friendship, and I am thrilled to know such a knowledgeable person.

Wayne Larson, you have become both my mentor and friend. Your teachings have improved me on both a personal and professional level. Thank you for inspiring me to strive for bigger and better things; I am grateful.

Peter Hansen, thank you for giving me the opportunity to host a practicum for your Digital & Interactive Media Design students, and thanks for your continued support and direction.

Thank you to my friends on #graphicsdev, #gamedev, and #mdxinfo on the AfterNET IRC server. You all have supported me and offered advice and insight throughout the life cycle of this book; especially Sean Kent, Oluseyi Sonaiya, Henrik Stuart, Promit Roy, Kyle Kaitan, Pieter Germishuys, Josh Jersild, and David Crooks. Thanks also go out to Osayuki Emokpae for her inspiration and guidance in the planning stages of the book. Special thanks to my friend Zane Bogach for providing a few textures for a couple chapters. A big thanks to Dave Astle (GameDev.net) for introducing me to Emi Smith and Mitzi Koontz.

Thank you to my close friends Sam Montasser, Dave Vani, Eric Fredin, and Ben Thieson. We have shared a lot of good memories, and I look forward to sharing more over the years to come.

Emi Smith, Stacy Hiquet, Sandy Doell, Heather Talbot, John Flynt, and Shawn Morningstar, thank you all for being so wonderful to work with. You helped steer this project from inception, and I appreciate your time and effort. I would also like to thank everyone else at Course Technology PTR who was responsible for bringing this book into existence.

I would also like to thank my employer, CGI Group, Inc., for permitting me to write this book alongside my work. Special thanks go to Glenn Mitchell, John Eldridge, Darryl Kotton, Andrew Stipdonk, Matthew Christopher, Michael Mah, Ghassan Karwchan, Ibraheem Yan, Tim Hill, Art Gartner, and Glenn Steinke for being such great people to work with. It was a pleasure to work with all of you on our last project, and I hope to work with all of you again.

Warm-hearted thanks also go to Don Moar (BioWare), John Walker (High Voltage Software), Aaron Walker (Electronic Arts), Roy Eltham (Sony Online Entertainment), Anthony Whitaker (Boanerges Studios), Ryan Hummer (Raven Software), and Yggy King (Electronic Arts). I felt enlightened after speaking with all of you about tools development and the state of the industry. Thank you for your opinions and support, especially during crunch time. I look forward to seeing all of you again at the next Game Developers Conference.

Thanks to Matt Collins (Atari), Steven Bercu (LIME Law), Frederic Chesnais (Atari), Teresa Cotesta (BioWare), and Tim Johnson (Artificial Studios) for granting me permission to print copyrighted material in the book.

I would like to thank the readers, you who made everything possible! This book was written for all of you, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.