Schwartz86

It's a bit like teaching an american Rugby.  You can go over all the rules for quite some time, if you throw them in a game after explaiing all the rules, they will forget everything you told them.  You get more by letting them play a little bit, screwing up, and then explaining the details after they have some initial exposure.

That is an awesome analogy.  As an American who has played rugby I can 100% relate to what you are trying to say!

Thanks for all the responses guys.  I feel like I did a horrible job stating my question.  I suppose more than anything what I am trying to figure out is if it is worth the time invest to pursue a business related degree.  I understand in the long run that all I will be getting is piece of paper and I realize that piece of paper doesn't entitle me to anything.  The main reason I would be pursuing the degree is to get exposure to how the business side of things work not just to get a pieces of paper.  I realize that this can be done on my own.  The only reason I am even considering it is because my employer has offered to flip a large portion of the bill and the largest part of my commitment is time.

Thanks again for all the input.  Please keep the responses coming.

Not real sure this is what you're looking for but try translating by -x/2, -y/2 right before drawing anything from the proprietary library. So something like:

glLoadIdentity();
glTranslatef(-x/2, -y/2, 0);
//Now draw stuff from proprietary library

This essentially makes the upper left hand corner (0,0) for the drawing that is to come

Awesome thanks. That worked almost perfectly, just had to leave off the negative signs. At the time I wrote it I realized that it was an embarrassingly simple problem that could be fixed with one line of code. However, never touching OpenGL before today, I wasn't sure what that line was!

Thanks again!

+1 rep

Strategic-level AI in a game like Halo is trivial: get the biggest gun, sit in the hottest kill spots, troll the spawn points.

Yea, although I used that example in my original post, I was thinking more of strategy games where AI becomes more difficult and harder to create 'unique' player experiences.  In most strategy games, after I figure out how to beat the automated opponent once, I can do it every time and the game quickly gets less exciting.  It seems a lot of games, rather than create 'smarter' opponents as the difficulty is increased, simply allow the automated opponent to cheat or give them higher statistical advantages.  For me, this is irritating and once I realize that the game is just 'cheating' to make it more challenging, I quickly lose interest.

I realize there are a lot of problems with machine learning and that in most cases, especially in games-- where the state of the world is entirely known in advance-- its easier/better to just program the agent.  I was just interested in seeing if there had been any successful attempts in using this technique.

C++ and Java both suck. Use C# or python. Especially on a small two man project.

While I disagree with C++/Java "sucking", these aren't the fastest languages to get results in. I would recommend using Panda3D with Python. This will get you some experience with programming and even an introduction to object oriented design. Python is quite forgiving and Panda3D has a good deal of features so you can see quick results. There is not a whole lot of written text regarding Panda3D, however, the community is quite active and there are a number of tutorials that can be found on the website. Panda3D is open source and coded in C++, it just supports Python as a scripting language. I would recommend tinkering with the python samples, maybe creating a few small demo games once you get comfortable. Then, after you have established familiarity with interfacing with the engine, you can start digging into the C++ code and tweaking it to do what you need it too or just gain exposure to how it works.

I wouldn't focus so much on learning a language. Once you are comfortable with one language, it becomes quite easy to pick up others (though I would start with an object oriented one). If you have a degree in computer science, you should have at least a vague understanding about how compilers/translators work and be able to pick up most programming languages relatively easily ( occasionally having to double check some syntax). I would spend more time looking at well written code and studying how it works and why it was designed the way it is, especially if you already have the basics of C++ down. Tinker with it, add to it, break it, fix it, until you get to the point where you can start coding it from scratch. (hence, my suggestion to start looking at Panda3D's source code after some time) Even with using a feature rich game engine with a scripting language, you will discover how crucial it is to use good design patterns and create reusable code. This is something I have been unable to learn from a book and had to gain from experience. I have learned much more using this approach than simply getting a step-by-step book that walks you through creating a cookie-cutter game.

Finally, one step I believe you are overlooking is the graphics/models that are required for any non-text based game. This is something I always tended to overlook, thinking that most of the work is in the code. That is a huge mistake. Even simple games require a lot of effort just to make crappy graphics or placeholder art. I am not sure if your goal is just to learn programming or to eventually produce games, but if you two are planning on creating games, you guys should probably start looking into some tools for artwork as well. I am no artist by any means, but for the simple placeholder stuff I do make, I use Blender for modeling and GIMP for standard 2d stuff. Both of these programs are free and would be worth checking out.