Hello, I have spent the last few years learning programming and looking into both DirectX and OpenGL. I have come to know OpenGL fairly well, and grasp programming well enough to do what I need to. I want to make a game..but I just don''t know what to do. Does anyone have any help for me, where do I go, what do I do? Where is something that can teach me to make a game with what I know? I just feel so lost in this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Try the hands-on-interactive forum

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/forum.asp?forum_id=33

if you''ve already taken a look at that I guess you need to figure out exactly what kind of game you want to do. And then design it - then you will be able to ask the right questions here.

To make a game, you need a graphics engine (in your case based on OpenGL) and a game engine. Professionals code these two apart from eachother, but you can offcourse ''merge'' the code from the start, but that will be more difficult to debug.

"My basic needs in life are food, love and a C++ compiler"
[Project AlterNova] [Novanet]

quote:Original post by Vich
To make a game, you need a graphics engine (in your case based on OpenGL) and a game engine. Professionals code these two apart from eachother, but you can offcourse ''merge'' the code from the start, but that will be more difficult to debug.

"My basic needs in life are food, love and a C++ compiler"
[Project AlterNova] [Novanet]

And a sound engine, and an input engine. The sound engine is the hardest part.

well.. you already have all the interfaces to get input (keys, mouse, etc.) and give output (sound, graphics). the question sounds like you realized that those are not the game and never will be a game. in a perfect world you wouldnt need input/output until the game itself is finished.. in the real world you want to test and debug though.

you could still try to concentrate on the game at first by ignoring everything directx or opengl. use a simple 2d console output and basic key input to get the "skeleton" of your game working, then change your basic 2d output to a fancy graphics engine (by then you might already have a good idea of the functions it has to expose to the game). i know its tempting to immediately start hacking away on some graphics, but you dont have any moronic publishers expecting to see the first fancy graphics after a few weeks and can afford the luxury on concentrating on the game itself at first.

quote:Original post by PlayGGY
And a sound engine, and an input engine. The sound engine is the hardest part.

A sound engine is optional, but in most cases needed. The input is part of the "core" so it''s often not really an ''engine''.

"My basic needs in life are food, love and a C++ compiler"
[Project AlterNova] [Novanet]

In short:

int main() {GameState gameState;do {    gameState.ProcessBasedOn(Input());    DisplayWithGraphicsLibraryOfChoice(gameState);} while (true)return 0;}

All you have to do is create all those useful functions and classes, as well as a basic menu system. This is called the game loop.

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[edited by - clum on December 1, 2003 6:03:17 PM]