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Hi i am new to programming and i have taken a very liking to it.. andi see there are some jobs out there that i can be so i was wondering...
If i wanna be a game developer, what should i learn first...Like i wanna be the guys who make the characters walk and basically the gameplay. any idea where i should start?
Thanks!
Well first you need a firm grasp of the basics. You need to learn about variables, data types, arrays, pointers and memory, loops, selection statements and file io. And more importantly, OOP. If you want to develop anything like a character walking across the screen you need all the basics and a truck load more too, including direct x.
Its sounds like a lot, but every proffessional had to start right at the bottom and work upwards. Get a good book, practice hard, and when you are ready, make a simple text advenure to begin with. Doesnt look flashy but it used many of the most basic programming principles. Start from that and slowly work up.
allright thanks i will look at books that are recommended and learn. i have Microsoft visual C++ 2008 express edition
so what i get from the book i will try it in this compiler? like a test to see if i'm doing it right?
Also what languages would be smart for me to learn if i wanna be a game dev.
C++ is the language for games. Perhaps C, as well, though I think C++ is more common.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Elysia
Is there any books you would recommend? or sites that are very detailed?
(becuase you seem to know alot about Programming).
Games are not particularly my area, but... for books about programming, check out the recommended books thread. It should be enough to get you started.
C++ is only the 10% or may be even less part of the whole game development process!
just start out. you have a loooooooooooong (:D) way to cover! good luck!
I disagree. If you had said game development process I would have agreed, but since you said game programming process I disagree. While it is true other languages might be used in game programming, C++ is by far the most prevalent in that field, and so I would give it much more than 10%.Quote:
C++ is only the 10% or may be even less part of the whole game programming process!
Anyways, back on topic....
You have already started out well by getting MS VC++ express edition. It is a good environment to develop in.
I pretty much echo what everyone else in here has said: find a good book and start learning!
allright thanks for all the info guys, I will find a book that is recommended at the recommended books area(lol).
The book i am going to get is like Accelerated C++.
What i was wondering though is am i gonig to have to rember it? or can i use that and test it out in my MS VC++? (i will take notes in a notebook anways for important stuff).
You will never learn if you don't try. Experience is your guide.
It really all goes back to that old saying. "Practice makes perfect". Although perfect is a very strong word in programming.
...or OpenGL.Quote:
Originally Posted by swgh
FlyingIsFun1217
Yes! Maybe you'll become a 1337z0r OpenGL programer and make the industry start making more OpenGL games so we can start playing something on linux other than Unreal Tournament! :)Quote:
Originally Posted by FlyingIsFun1217
To the OP: Don't be afraid to try stuff. Books are good references, but also remember there's a whole internet full of resources. This message board also has a ton of info that will help you. The FAQ section on this forum alone could almost be a book itself!
Although it does depend on the author I've found that books are normally far more correct than the internet. Half and I do mean half of the code on the internet for D3D or OpenGL is either incomplete (leaves out important details), doesn't work, or is just plain wrong in all aspects.Quote:
Don't be afraid to try stuff. Books are good references, but also remember there's a whole internet full of resources.
Do NOT use the internet as your sole source for game code. Books are plentiful and for the most part they are very good, very accurate (and if not they have published errata and corrections), and at amazon they come at a very good price.
Internet tutorials are some of the most dangerous code you will ever come across. They go so fast in an attempt to fly through the material that they often leave out the most important detail and/or gotchas that can quite simply make or break your project. In the end no one is going to write a tutorial or book about how to make your game.
It takes a lot of research (books and internet - but again be careful of the sites you trust), patience, hard work, and quite honestly talent.
One site you can almost always be sure has done their homework is www.gamasutra.com. They have excellent articles from the pro's who know and links to resources that are a godsend. Gamedev has been recommended but be careful as many of their articles and tutorials are sorely out of date.
Also unless you are shooting for cross-platform graphics I would go with Direct3D on Windows platforms. Under the hood OpenGL uses Direct3D because Direct3D is the only way to access the graphics hardware in Windows. I just found this information out recently and was taken aback by it. It should be noted that it is just my opinion you should use Direct3D. Inevitably the decision is yours on what API to use. Most, if not all, are quite similar in principle.
*clap* *clap* amazing....
Thank you for that very thorough post. and i can confirm that some sites really teach you bad stuff (it taught me stsyem. pause() or whatever) and luckliy this guy i talked to fixed up my whole project and i never went back to that site....
Also i would like to know how would you make images so you can see it in when you debugg it (like how do games do it. lol)
At the driver level, I'm assuming.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bubba
Take it from someone who has written drivers for Windows graphics cards that this is not true. You may well be able to implement the OpenGL using D3D and thus not need to talk to hardware from the GL code, but it's not at all necessary to make the driver this way.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bubba
I doubt even that Vista does it that way, although they have changed the driver architecture quite a bit for Vista, and I haven't followed this for some time [we had two people working on "Longhorn" drivers when I was writing XP/2K drivers].
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Mats
Even if it does Direct3D only works in windows environment. While that does, at the moment, give something like a 85% market share and that percentage is DOWN from previous years. Windoze is slipping, and if you want to keep ahead of the curve you'll keep your code as platform independent as possible.
By the way, that 85% is not based on any actual data I have in front of me. It's a number I think I heard somewhere in relation to this subject, but I could be wrong. Sorry if I mislead you, but you should know what 67.8% of statistics are made up on the spot.
This was verified by Microsoft. I did not think this was the case either until I found this out from them. Of course it could have been a ploy to get us to use DirectX but who knows. Microsoft has made every attempt to make DirectX the API of choice and are now targeting the console market as well with their recent changes and XBOX to PC compatibility. I seriously think OpenGL has a huge fight on their hands on the Windows platform since Microsoft owns the graphics API and yet also owns the Windows API.Quote:
Take it from someone who has written drivers for Windows graphics cards that this is not true. You may well be able to implement the OpenGL using D3D and thus not need to talk to hardware from the GL code, but it's not at all necessary to make the driver this way.
Hopefully we will continue to have both choices on the Windows platform. Better yet it would be nice if Linux could start running more and more games.
Regardless of which API you choose you will encounter the same graphics principles because the underlying hardware is the same. You will always have matrices, textures, vertices, indices, transformations, etc, etc.
Choice of API has nothing to do with actually learning how to write games. Most of us here are still learning how to write games even if we have a very good grasp of C++ and a good grasp of the graphics API we are using.
I think it may be true for Vista - but it's also possibly a misunderstanding that the latest hardware has support for DX10 for example, and that the graphics is "using DX10 hardware" - but you can naturally let DX10 hardware perform OpenGL drawing - it's pretty much doing the same thing anyways (texturing, pixel shading and what else based on various vertex lists and such).Quote:
Originally Posted by Bubba
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Mats