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Basicly i'm learning to program on my own iv'e learnt C and Allegro, and am currently learning the win32 api, but i'm a little stuck on where to go next . ultimately i want to program games (thats why i posted this in the game programming thread) and im trying to cover all the basics before i move into any advanced stuff.
So yea i'm manly asking advise and guidance on where to go from here.
-Cheers Matty_Alan
In case you want to program games, you should probably learn C++, since that's what the majority of games are written in.
Then you might pick your gaming API of choice and learn it (OpenGL, DirectX, SDL).
When you have sufficient knowledge in both areas, you might look into some stuff about making games and start practicing!
I was always under the impression that those API's (OpenGL, DirectX, SDL) were a little to advanced for begginers :s
It can be advanced as you want it to be. If you start small and try not to get ahead of yourself and attempt anything "fancy", you should be fine. Starting with 2D (which the APIs are quite capable of) seems to be the typical advice to beginners. There are also tutorials online that can show you how to use different features.
Well, all games are typically made in one of those APIs.Quote:
Originally Posted by Matty_Alan
So you would have to learn them eventually. Just start small and it should be fine.
Those APIs may seem advanced, but that's because game programming is an advanced topic.
Just because a million schoolkids all think they can write the next megabux making game on their own in a few nights after school doesn't make it so, those things require teams of dozens or even hundreds of experienced professionals months or years to create and budgets of many millions of dollars.
Start small, master one section of one API at a time.
No need to get all confused by tackling 3D graphics, physics engines, sound, networking, AI, etc. etc. all in one go.
Learn each separately, then learn to combine them into more and more complex demos.
When you think you have a basic understanding of all the concepts, write your design documents, and work from those to create a technical design and finally start writing that game.
Cool, thanks guys. i'll probably start with OpenGL because I have some very basic knowlage of that already.
How much of a disadvantage is knowing C compared with C++ for gaming?
In books that i read I constantly hear C programmers making fun of C++ programmers and reverse, it's hard to get an unbiased(sp?) opinion.
Sure it wasn't the GD board here you were reading? :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Matty_Alan
I would argue C++ would be a better tool for writing more complete engines later. But for learning an API just to get a feel for making small-scale games and things, use whatever you're the most comfortable with. C won't put you at a disadvantage.
I know some C++ too. But I love the way C++ problems can be solved in C. I wouldn't advise you to learn that whole bunch of features C++ offers yiu now. Start small, as stated before. SDL, OpenGL etc. are really written for both.
It's really got nothing to do with the APIs at all. Anyone can read a manual, it's the concepts, design and math side of it that is the challenging part.
As all the APIs are fundamentally similar it really doesn't matter which one you use so long as you understand what's going on.
Solving a C++ problem in a C-way is usually a bad thing™.Quote:
Originally Posted by Brafil
And all those APIs were written with C in mind (which is stupid imho), and not C++.
C++ works for it simply because it's backwards compatible.
many of those APIs were written with C in mind rather than C++ for a reason, and a good one it was.
There were no (decent) C++ compilers for many platforms those libraries aimed to support at the time they were created (and for some they were designed/created before the C++ standard was finalised).
To support the greatest variety of platforms it was thus not feasible to shoot for a C++ only library at the time, and as C++ can interact with C it was a natural choice to go for a C library as a result.
At the time, yes. Today, no.
And yet so many a great a things are designed for C, still. Utter foolishness.
And Microsoft keeps insisting on using their stupid COM.
backwards compatibility, the bane of this entire blighted industry...
Hmm... yes, and yet so necessary. 'Tis a shame.
So C++ is an upgrade from C, that has been accepted by so many, and still people say C is better? o.O ...
I'm not getting it, one bit :P
> And yet so many a great a things are designed for C, still. Utter foolishness.
I'd say it's foolish to use C++ for an API or library. Well depending strictly on the case of course...
1) Most libraries don't need a OO design
2) You can easily write a wrapper to make it OO
3) Ensures that people with C and C++ can use it
If however you write it in C++, then you've chopped off the people who want/need to use C.
C++ was designed to accept C source code as valid compiler input. It's not strictly an "upgrade", rather it was designed like that to make for an easier transition by the uncouth hordes of C programmers left over from the Hippy era of programming :D
Neither C nor C++ is "better" overall, it's just what you're used to and what programming model you prefer, as well as the specific purpose you have in mind.
Procedural C code can in theory compile to faster executables compared to Object Oriented C++ code because of the higher overhead involved with things like virtual functions, but in practice this difference is often negligable because it's easier to write efficient C++ code as compared to efficient C code.
Thus 2 programmers with comparable levels of expertise will probably produce roughly equally efficient code, one writing C and the other C++.
The C++ code however will be (in general) easier to maintain and expand/reuse than the equivalent C code (again, from a specific level of expertise on the part of the authors and given comparable levels between the authors), making it a better choice to use in a commercial environment.
Yes, I'm not talking about embedded stuff. I'm referring to typical PC stuff.Quote:
Originally Posted by zacs7
Then they have chosen a poor language and the wrong tool for the job, if it is not demanded by the platform they work for.Quote:
If however you write it in C++, then you've chopped off the people who want/need to use C.
Which creates an evil cycle. Programmers use C, thus they need libraries written in C. As demand increases, more libraries are written in C, leaving C++ programmers in the cold, merely because C++ is backwards compatible.
And, of course, since there are more C libraries, there becomes more C programmers. And so the cycle begins again.
Today is a modern world where C really should have no place, especially in PC software.
1) Nothing says it does not. Besides that, C++ has more features than merely classes, although it is of great boon.Quote:
1) Most libraries don't need a OO design
2) You can easily write a wrapper to make it OO
3) Ensures that people with C and C++ can use it
2) ...Which instead could have been written into the library in the first place. Thin wrappers and not necessarily better than its C counterpart.
3) Brings me back to the point about C above...
SDL is not hard at all, even for beginners, if you start learning it, you'll realize how easy it is.Quote:
Originally Posted by Matty_Alan
I recommend to look at this sites, because they have very good tutorials about SDL for beginners.
http://lazyfoo.net
http://www.sdltutorials.com
SDL is not hard at all, even for beginners, if you start learning it, you'll realize how easy it is.Quote:
Originally Posted by Matty_Alan
I recommend to look at this sites, because they have very good tutorials about SDL for beginners.
http://lazyfoo.net
http://www.sdltutorials.com