the right(no not left, right) approach

Ok, been learning a bit c++ lately.. not very good with programming yet, but my question is. What i really want to do is to make a game, in 3d that be. But what would be the right approach on this? Like, first i know i have to learn c++ much better, but what then?

I don't mean anything really fancy in 3d, because i know one person alone cannot make any big 3d game and stuff, but i just really want to make a 3d enviorment and be able to move in 3d space within the game... could you guys give me some advice on how to approach my goal? I myself have done some 3d and make 3d objects and small animations like a hobby, so if there was a way i could import my files, or create a library so that i could use that in my games.

Once again, i'm only askin for materials to read or advice. I know it's gonna take alot of reading and self disipline, and i also know that i won't be able to make anything fancy all by myself, but I just really want to program a game as a project when i have the skills.

And i would also like to make GUI things, like maybe a web browser or something.. now i know this is kinda jumping right into things, but all advices are well accepted.. just need some guidance :)


-thondal-

For making games you'll want more than what standard C++ offers you. You can read up on the DirectX API, or check out the SDL library and documentation if you want to go that way. There are a lot of graphics libraries out there. The best thing to do would be to read the documentation for some and get a feel for the pros and cons of each one and find out which one you like best.

WARNING - I might be full of it, because I've never done anything with 3-D.

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And i would also like to make GUI things...

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I suspect it's best to learn GUI programming with the WinAPI first.

Assuming you're on a Windows system, you will probably need to use the WinAPI along with your 3D library, and learning the WinAPI will give you a feel for using a big additional library.

Once you learn all of the "overhead" required to make a Window, it's pretty easy to make/manipulate simple 2-D shapes & graphics.

There are lots of resources for learning the WinAPI. A good place to start is the excellent Forger's Tutorial. Then, if that doesn't scare you off... get your hands on Programming Windows, by Charles Petzold.

There are some OpenGL and 3D tutorials here at cprogramming.com. More in the Advanced Tutorials section.

To do what you want to do, you could use plain SDL (Ogre and Irrlicht as well) and not even know anything about the Win32 API.

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Originally Posted by DougDbug

Once you learn all of the "overhead" required to make a Window, it's pretty easy to make/manipulate simple 2-D shapes & graphics.

There are lots of resources for learning the WinAPI. A good place to start is the excellent Forger's Tutorial. Then, if that doesn't scare you off... get your hands on Programming Windows, by Charles Petzold.

There are some OpenGL and 3D tutorials here at cprogramming.com. More in the Advanced Tutorials section.

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Most of those was in c? wouldnt that be a small problem or kinda mix my head up when i'm learning c++? And i was wondering, since i have read a bit, jumping right into 3d might be a really big step, how about just doing 2d? like images...

if i where to do something like this

what would i then have to do?

sorry for all the question.. but this is a forum :P

-thondal-

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Most of those was in c? wouldnt that be a small problem or kinda mix my head up when i'm learning c++?

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The examples may use C, but the WinAPI is just a library of functions (plus constants, typedefs, and structures) that can be used in a C program or an object oriented C++ program. Petzold's book doesn't use any C++, but he doesn't use very much standard C either... I'd guess that at least 95% of the sample code in the book is WinAPI (the remaining 5% is standard C).

The WinAPI does use C-style strings (null-terminated character arrays). Little things like that might throw you, if you've only learned C++ string-objects. But, C-style strings (and <cstring>) are part of C++ too. (If you've worked through the C++ tutorials here, you already know about C-Style strings.)

In any case, you should get comfortable with standard ANSI/ISO C++ (including the standard C library) before jumping to anything specialized or advanced.

I think this is meant to be a good OpenGL tutorial site. I don't know if it really is, but I've seen people recommend it.

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