Thread: Starting out Game Programming!

  1. #16
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    Personally, I'd learn OpenGL if I were you, especially considering you want to do 2D development.

    I'm in the midst of trying to learn DirectX. There's a couple of issues I currently have with it:

    1) Good luck finding an up to date tutorial. Most of the tutorials out there (like the ones on Gamedev) are from DX 8.0. The DX9.0c spec obsoleted a bunch of functions, from what I gathered, and you'll spend a lot of frusrating hours trying to get code to work.

    2) Good luck finding a good DX9 book for that matter... I still haven't found one :P

    3) If you download the SDK, there's some decent examples, but MS tends to go overboard in those and highlight thirty different ideas at once. As such, it's not for the faint of heart... I've also found that the tutorials I'd be really interested in aren't there (just the pre-compiled example).

    Now, if you can put up with all that, DX does have some really cool things going for it, like keyboard/mouse interface already built in, music and sound support, and networking support.... As I understand it, you'd have to implement all of that yourself in OpenGL (though I'm told there's a couple of libraries out there that will help...)

    Hope that helps

    -maxthecat

  2. #17
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    I always thought comercial games were mainly programmed in DX. But know that you say that, I'm looking into openGL :P.
    Code:
    Error W8057 C:\\Life.cpp: Invalid number of arguments in function run(Brain *)

  3. #18
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    In that case, be sure to pick up "OpenGL Programming Guide" (also called "The Red Book"-- with good reason). The ISBN for the one I have is 0-201-60458-2, although, this is the 3rd edition (OpenGL v1.2). So, it might be a bit dated, but I'm sure there's more current versions out there... It's a good read

    Also, if you've got a bit of time on your hand, it's not necessary, per se, but you might want to consider picking up "Programming Windows with MFC" by Jeff Prosise or "Windows Programming" by Charles Petzold... They're gigantic books, but very good for windows programming... The OpenGL tutorials and books should tell you everything you need to set up a window and get to work, but the windows books are great if you want to learn more.

  4. #19
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    well..thanks for all that help..

  5. #20
    Registered User VirtualAce's Avatar
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    2) Good luck finding a good DX9 book for that matter... I still haven't found one :P
    I really don't know what planet you guys live on, but hopefully it is somewhere on terra firma.

    www.amazon.com
    www.gamedev.net has TONS of suggestions for Good DirectX books.

    I haven't entered the twilight zone here have I?
    Being that we are nerds and book worms shouldn't we at least know how to use the internet to get what we want?

    Amazing.

  6. #21
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    Haha. Maybe I've just had bad luck with the ones I've bought then! (I did say good luck funding a *good* book I sure know of a few I could reccommend to AVOID

    Shiv, check out: http://www.gamedev.net/columns/books...sp?qry=DirectX ...Looks like there's some decent DirectX 9 books out there... Just make sure they're at least the "Summer 2003" version of DirectX (9.0b), which is where MS decided to screw with some of the functions.

  7. #22
    Registered User VirtualAce's Avatar
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    As long as you have a general idea of what you need to do in DX the help file will fill in the gaps for you. I've not encountered anything that was hard to change in any of my projects. DirectX is backwards compatible and the only major changes I've seen in the API are in DirectPlay (no longer supported and for good reason), DirectMusic (IE: DirectSound),
    DirectShow, and some interfaces like ID3DXSprite. They go over all the changes in the help file for each new version of the SDK. It takes about 5 minutes to review the changes and alter your code to suit.

  8. #23
    For Narnia! Sentral's Avatar
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    Here is a link to the official opengl site. It has catagories of windows applications that use OpenGL. There are some notable games that use opengl, too. And some pretty pricey modelling software . http://opengl.org/applications/windows/

  9. #24
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    Thanks for even more info guys...

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