2-D graphics techniques haven't really changed all that much since the days of the Apple II and Commodore 64. |
Waaaaat?
I have to step in here.... 2D graphics have changed tremendously.
2D graphics techniques back in the day focus on blitting, dirty rects, and color keying. If you are reading anything that uses any of those terms, you should throw it in the garbage. None of that applies today. Everything now is polygon rendering and programmable shaders. It's an entirely different world.
Modern 2D graphics aren't even really 2D graphics. They are 3D graphics set to an orthagonal view to give the appearance of 2D.
2D graphic libs abstract drawing to be simpler so you don't have to deal with the complexities that the 3D environment adds, but a lot of the concepts come from 3D.
Books on DOS in particular are horrid because DOS had a lot of restrictions on graphics and setting up graphic modes and stuff that simply do not apply on modern computers. In fact many techniques used to speed up DOS graphics will actually
significantly slow down your program if you attempt them on modern hardware.
An old book might give you insight on non-graphical areas of game organization... but even those I would question as better techniques probably have come along since then. But you
definitely should not take any cues on graphics from anything that old.
Really... a 20 year old computer book is a dinosaur and is practically worthless -- look how much computers have changed in that time. Let alone the C++ language.