Guidance Needed
Author
Hey guys,
I started programming 6 years back in C/C++ and C#, and i can say that i'm very experienced in all of them. Two years back i decided to be a game programmer..and started jumping around reading some books...like "Wordware - Introduction To 3D Game Programming With DirectX" , "Sams - Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus, Second Edition - 2002"..but i always quit reading 'em after a while.
i donno where to start..how to get a game done (like Tetris, not Doom)..i need some gudiance, because i wasted much time doing useless stuff..and as i think, the learning curve in game programming is very slow..is that true?
I would ask anybody who had the same bad feelings when he was starting getting into the game industry, to give my some tips..books to read...tutorials to follow..articles...best practices..anything helpful, and at the same time..TO THE POINT.
Thanks in advance.
Your friend step is to have a solid understanding of the languages. That means variables, condition structures, iteration structures, functions, classes, etc.
Then write something simple, dont use DirectX or OpenGL, just use drawing functions available in Windows. Keep it simple, a card game or something.
Then learn what a game loop it, the idea behind frame-based programming (where instead of performing a whole task at once, you subdivide over a series of frames). Tetris would be good for this.
Then just read all the articles you can, and finish the books you started.
Then write something simple, dont use DirectX or OpenGL, just use drawing functions available in Windows. Keep it simple, a card game or something.
Then learn what a game loop it, the idea behind frame-based programming (where instead of performing a whole task at once, you subdivide over a series of frames). Tetris would be good for this.
Then just read all the articles you can, and finish the books you started.
Here a 3 tutorials for Tetris, Pong and Breakanoid with C++ and SDL:
Link to Aaron's Tutorials
Do some simple games and go from there.
An even simpler game would be TicTacToe or a textbased Role-Play-Game.
Link to Aaron's Tutorials
Do some simple games and go from there.
An even simpler game would be TicTacToe or a textbased Role-Play-Game.
I was in a similar situation as you, I was competent with C and C++, and wanted to learn how to program games with them.
Personally I do feel I learned a lot quite quickly by doing DirectX tutorials. I started off with these ones first, which were a very basic introduction to DirectX. They're a bit dated now (DX 8), but are a good introduction. Just load the projects into Visual Studio, get them running and read the source code.
I then went on to try and make a game. Like others have said, learning how to build a basic game framework is a must - get your window up, have an update loop that passes the DT through to the game's components, then a render loop that draws everything. Try to keep things object oriented so you don't get bogged down in nasty C-style code.
After you get that far, it's really all just expanding your knowledge and learning more technical skills. DirectX alone is a huge API, but I found once I knew the basics, just looking at the API documentation was often enough to get me started on other sections.
The learning curve is steep but it doesn't have to be too slow. You just need to be dedicated! Good luck.
Personally I do feel I learned a lot quite quickly by doing DirectX tutorials. I started off with these ones first, which were a very basic introduction to DirectX. They're a bit dated now (DX 8), but are a good introduction. Just load the projects into Visual Studio, get them running and read the source code.
I then went on to try and make a game. Like others have said, learning how to build a basic game framework is a must - get your window up, have an update loop that passes the DT through to the game's components, then a render loop that draws everything. Try to keep things object oriented so you don't get bogged down in nasty C-style code.
After you get that far, it's really all just expanding your knowledge and learning more technical skills. DirectX alone is a huge API, but I found once I knew the basics, just looking at the API documentation was often enough to get me started on other sections.
The learning curve is steep but it doesn't have to be too slow. You just need to be dedicated! Good luck.
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