Look, I''ve been trying to program in c/c++ for over 5 years now.. off and on... I read the c/c++ books and everything is cool.. IF I''m doing console programming!! Maybe my ideas are jumping ahead of my ability (probably the case) or I''m impatient(also a factor) but it seems the things I wanna do require DirectX or OpenGL or some kind of pre-existing graphics engine/lib. I dive into the DirectX samples that come with the SDK... and it''s like greek! You got the hungarian notation and weird fuction calls to functions that I can barely sound out... includes out the ass and I just try to tell myself, "Self, it isn''t over your head... you can do it if you just stick to it.." But I can''t!! It seems everyone knows the routines and what to do before you can render a scene or whatever. Step after step after step just to Initialize this and that... it makes me dizzy.. I wanna get to the good stuff but I''m afraid those few sweet pieces of code are few and far between initializations, message handling, and releasing devices... Why do I have to set up everything soooo damn verbosely(is that a word?)? I wanna make a damn game damnit!! Since I was about 12 that''s all I wanted to do, and I''m 23 now. What the hell is that? I''m not a dummy but god damn there''s things you gotta do that most books just tell ya, "You gotta do it this way." But they don''t give details... only that you GOTTA do it. Gosh, enough rambling.. Should I stick with console programming and learn the game basics and graphics basics there and then move on? OR should I jump into windows programming. I''m broke and can''t afford another book, that''s why I''m posting this. ANY help would be TOTALLY awesome... TIA!!!! Bob

.. or you can try SDL ( www.libsdl.org ), no nonsense 100 line init code, very simple and easy to use. best of all, it''s console programming! .. i believe cone3d.gamedev.net has some nice tutorials for SDL and or using OpenGL within it (as SDL is just for 2d).
It may be a good idea if you get/write a minimal skeleton app and then try out different funcs,etc. (found in the docs) and just play with them.. thats what i did, when i stared learning directx.. it may take a little longer, but you learn a lot, much better then reading a book, .. and not to forget the satisfaction when you make something on your own . dive into the examples and books when you got some solid knowledge how it works, it''s also easier then to understand why "You gotta do it this way", and if you realy gotta - as some tend to overly complicate things.
.. well, hope this helps a little

I would suggest checking out the Windows tutorials on winprog.org and then start up game programming with SDL. If you move on to 3D you could start out with glut, which basically takes care of most of the Windows stuff. You could also work with an engine to get you started. Some that look good are Ogre (ogre.sourceforge.net) and Genesis3D (www.genesis3d.com). These are pretty well documented.

Hope that gets you started

Mark

p.s. as a guitar player, Jimmy Page is my hero

gametutorials.com

Thanks everyone, for your input... I will take everything into consideration...

Bob

p.s. Jimmy Page is not just my Hero, he''s my god and savior!!! ouch.. goin too far? Not really, considering EVERY version of Since I''ve been loving you and the Heartbreaker solo!!

If you want to do games programming concentrating all your efforts on the programming language was a mistake. Although you can make a clean switch to DirectX and the C++ you know will be extremly helpful (If you know most aspects of C++).

And as for windows programming, this initialisation is quite difficult but after that it''s pretty simple. You should keep a copy of the initialisation handy because you can use it over and over again. I suggest you create the initialisation yourself and not copy the text. Learning the info is far more benifical.