Orangeatang

If you really want to learn DirectX11 then the Rastertek tutorials are excellent... you will have to write quite a bit of code (there are lots of different things to set up when opening up a window from scratch), but it's reasonably well documented.

 

http://www.directxtutorial.com/LessonList.aspx?listid=11 has a lot more documentation if that helps, but you'll want to head back to Rastertek for more interesting effects.

nothing I new'd inside of DrawFont

But if there's something you've allocated in the DrawCall class, then it's not going to be de-allocated when you delete your DrawFont instance.

 

For a parent class's destructor to be called when you delete a derived class, said desturctor has to be virtual.

I think it has to do with the override of spriteBatch.Draw that you are using.

Exactly. 

 

You want to use this version http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff433987.aspx

XNA is great for 3D - especially if you're comfortable with C#. You could also try out MonoGame (http://www.monogame.net/) - an open source implementation of XNA which works across multiple platforms.

You've pretty much got the information you need for the first three questions, but I'd like to add that http://www.rastertek.com/tutindex.html is one of the best resources I've found for a practical approach to learning DirectX11.

Assembly is a thing of the past

Not if you've spent any time doing some serious debugging (especially on the PS3).

 

Inline assembly maybe, but if you're trying to track down a bug that only occurs in your retail/release build it's pretty much essential. 

As far as DirectX goes, you can't beat http://www.rastertek.com/tutindex.html

If you already know c++ I wouldent reccomend beginning c++ through game programming. That book is for beginners.

Absolutely. If you already know c++ I don't think that book will help you much. If you want to improve you skills though, I'd recommend Effective C++ by Scott Meyers. 

 

Also, you probably aren't going to find anything in those XNA books that you can't get for free online. There are so many tutorials and examples out there (http://www.riemers.net/)

You write cross platform games in the same way as any other cross platform software, by keeping the platform specific bits as separated from the rest of the code as possible so that you can rewrite them easily for each supported platform.

This.

 

Core game mechanisms usually work independently of the platform, although you have to be careful :

 

HashMap<int, List<string>>

 

will result in a compile error on the PS3 (at least with the compiler I've used)... it tends to think that the >> is a bitwise shift.

This site is fantastic for both OpenGL and DirectX

 

http://www.rastertek.com/tutindex.html

I don't use XNA at all, but, isn't XNA dead? (Miscrosoft isn't supporting it anymore, last I heard).

 

I'm sorry I don't have an aswer, but I'm curious as to why you're still using XNA

Just today saw that XNA is dead, but for learning if think get some good experience from it Later what I learn now with XNA, I will able to adapt to other API ;)

Check out http://www.monogame.net/

 

Based on XNA, supports almost any platform you can think of and has an active development community.

 

Also - do add your project or the code that's breaking down... very hard to debug otherwise

Yeah Maya is not the cheapest way to go if you want to learn about building models for your game.

 

Check out Blender (http://www.blender.org/), it's free and there is a large and active community. There are also plenty of tutorials available to get you started (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro).

 

As far as your experience goes, if you don't want to spend a long time familiarizing yourself with a programming language then use an existing engine - there are plenty out there. As Yourself said, Unity is a good way to go (and it can easily import models from Blender).

Virtual functions are fine... the overhead that they incur negligible in most cases when you consider the benefits. That being said, like anything in C++ it can get out of hand - virtual functions are a tool, and should be used when they're needed and they fit your design pattern.

Oh that's hilarious


Anyone actually believes that using a debugger is lazy can't have worked on anything more than small hobby projects.

I'm currently working in a code base with literally millions of lines of code, and hundreds of coders making changes every day... efficient debugging is an essential part of programming.