greenzone

I actually found this to be a quite nice condensed form.

 

 

GLSL Predefined Variables By Version

Its shows all versions and then tells you if it is deprecated and then shows the alternative methods.

If i want to render to a texture in opengl 3+ can i uses the same vertex shader and fragment shader that I use to handle other regular loaded textures or do i need to create a separate vertex shader and fragment shader just for the handling of the frambuffer texture?

 

 

 

 

Ok so i am working on this program using PhysX and one of the samples that comes with the library has a while loop that runs in the rendercall back function. like so

 

 

    int nbActors = gScene->getNbActors();
    NxActor** actors = gScene->getActors();
    while(nbActors--){

 

NxActor* actor = *actors++;

///render all the stuff with physics

 

 

}

 

What i dont understand is that while loop. whats going on there exactly. from what i would guess its like incrementing through the number of actors and running the loop for each one but im not sure. could some one explaine this use of a while loop and or perhaps the use of the decrementer as something being passed like that.

 

Thanks

Both responses where very very helpful. in fact i have experienced this problem with I/O when trying to load geometry. the process of loading geometry hangs up the entire program and the more complex the geometry the longer the wait. So from what i understand threading would allow me to load geometry on the side of my program with out halting the main thread? I am assuming it would still take time but it would not stop one from continuing interaction with the main program being run by the main thread?

Ok, I am going to attempt to meet you half way with your crazy ambition lol. I will say this, its crazy people like yourself that change the world my friend lol. but with that said there is A LOT of wisdom being dispensed here. I completely appreciate your wanting to understand and be involved with all aspects of the game development process from artist to programmer. When examining the industry one will find an overwhelming dichotomy between programmer and artist/creative designer. but with that said there are few legit reasons for this extreme bifurcation. One reason  is there are the different types of minds. talented programmers often excel in Maths and problem solving skills and often lack the creative artistic abilities or understanding. Talented artisans on the other hand often lack skills in logic and problem solving. NOW with those of us who are in the game with out talent need to develop SKILLS. in order to do this it requires hours and hours and hours of focusing on these skills in order to master them. with that said its  very hard for many if not most people to master the skills of being an good artist and a good programmer. Its like working both sides of the brain hard core. Most people don't have DaVinci abilities. also the scope of a project often dictates the focus of the people working on the project. If i where making some "brilliantly beautiful massively epic in size" game I would require help from many people. people that can do different things to maximize their contribution to the game. i mean i would want the best art in the game so i will find the best artist. i want the smoothest game mechanics so i will get the best person or people that specialize in that. I would not want some body that can do a little of everything. I mean some people make a living just writing shaders for games. To be specialized is not to be less ambitious it just means you have become focused on one topic until your an expert above most above most in understanding that topic. the same applies to game artist many of them have studied and practiced just being an artist for many many years. the programs that many artists use can consume your time in learning just those let alone programing the the creative tool on top of being the artist using it.

Now with that said i thought i should share some of my situation just to give you a heads up. I completely feel the same way as you as far as trying to be a one man army. I to want to create my own indi game company by myself. but I will say i have no interest in recreating photoshop or 3dsmax in the process. I think my own game engine is ambitious enough potentially too ambitious but i have yet to get discouraged. I have a masters in graphic design and I been straight programming like a maniac for 2 solid years now and I am still in the process of producing my first game. a year project that you focus on and massage until it is very clean and worked out is good advice.

I am telling you from some one that has had a few Computer science classes in general programming and graphic programing as well as a formal education in graphic design its a very taxing endeavor you have put in front of you. If i could dispense any advice being that person that wants to run the restaurant and do some cooking, you should learn the most important restaurant running jobs first. i would put your check list you made on the wall and call it the old check list then i would start programming asap because with out the programming skills you don't have a game well at least the way your planing on going about it. then i would try to implement just a few of the more tangible things on your list there. After actually trying to program these things, you will learn very soon how incredibly naive you where when you constructed the first list. DON'T WORRY I to had this epiphany lol but you then scale down the ambition so your still planning on making awesomeness but the scale is more reasonable for one person. Another thing i would suggest is try not to reinvent the wheel. I mean you kind of don't need to make geometry making programs. i mean there are a lot of free alternatives that would work just find and it would move your plans forward immensely like not having to do that. now Don't be discouraged. i find your relentless passion inspiring although a little crazy. but its the passionate irrational ones that don't give up and do great things. so you will either crash and burn like no other lmao or you will make pure awesomeness. but first and foremost you really absolutely need to start programming so you understand how it WILL affect your predictions about time because i think your current estimates are WAY off for one person. i mean unless of course your some kind of prodigy. In which case i don't think you would be asking question on gamedev i think you would be to busy being a prodigy. I mean trying to figure out your compiler could take weeks alone. trying to get a window with a spinning cube with no help but the internet is going to take you a while i promise you. let alone topics such as collision detection,AI, physics, and shaders. I mean you have not even touched on object oriented programming yet or algorithms such as recursion or searching/Sorting. I think you should start getting your feet wet and come back to your list of awesomeness and update it. I do hope you can figure it all out. it sounds like it will be pretty sweet when you do. But even if you have to compromise a little don't be discouraged.

Just to help you with desplaying your code on this site there is a red code button {....} that will maintain all of your code indentation when you use it to desplay your code.it will help us read it a little better. Some bits of advice if you are trying to learn C/C++ with your game is try using some containers to organize your data such as arrays, enums, and vectors. I promise you if you try to learn these concepts more deeply at the beggining it will help you Immensely in the long run.  Also you should add way more comments that reffer to what your functions and expression are doing. this is good for both yourself when reviewing your code as well as for others trying to fix or understand your code.

Sorry about my first comment I should have said that one needs a deep passion to drive a game design from start to finish as a hobby. with that said I think your previous programming skills will definitely help. I agree with antiHUMANDesigns, because if you can find some other people that are wanting to be apart of a new game design, having people to work with can help move your design forward. It is also very fun to work with others. It also helps when working with others to over come obstacles. I think with your back ground you can potentially work with opengl or directX as an graphic API. I have found online tutorials on both that are very user friendly to get you started. Such as NeHe which will teach you the basics of opengl. also the opengl red book is online for free and it is a great source of info that can help you get started with making games with opengl. I find working with that language very rewarding although im sure directX is just as rewarding. But depending on how ambitious your design is you may want to bring on friends to help you out. But again sorry for potentially being seemingly discouraging. I think game design is very much rewarding personally and I think you can have much fun with it.

oh did not realize this person was banned never mind

where you ever able to fix this issue and if so what was causing the problem? going over your code i cant seem to think where the issue would be.

Take the c++ class if you can. Its a lot easier to learn in a class environment then it is on your own. questions that can take days to figure out can just be answered quickly by your professor or a fellow student. also it will be a lot of help in the long run even out side of game making. plus you are in high school you dont have to pay for virtually the class which you will in university or college.

Game Design is no hobby and knowing what kind of game you want to design might help answer your questions.

I have my own scene graph that i have set up. I am using asimp to read in my geometry but i am currently just reading in meshes. I wish to read in the animation as well. as it is i am reading in the meshes into my program at the begining and copying the meshes into a mesh class i created and then i am discarding the assimp library after that. i wish to continue this with the animation process. I dont want to port my program with assimp in it i just want to use assimp library in a different program just to collect the info and store it into my program. the problem i am having is trying to understand assimps node structure. I mean I understand the heirarchy of the library node ssytem but i dont understand how to translate a node and channels and the three keys with each channel ROT,SCALE, and POS. I just want to create a nice simple class that will hold the data associated with this assimp structure with out having vectors filled with <aiVectorKeys> or any assimp type really. i hope this makes sense. i just want to store all of the values assimp can give me in my own types void of assimp types.