I have no money to spare as I am saving up for Black & White so I decided to get a book on C from the local library and a free Turbo C compiler. The book is a 1989 teach yourself C by Charles Siegel and written specially for Turbo C and Quick C. How is this to sstart programming? I have had experience with BASIC before and DIV, a simplified C/PASCAL for games. Most of C seems familiar to DIV language but working with this antique compiler and books makes me fear things may have moved on a bit... And programming in a DOS environment isn''t very nice after the easy Windows based BASIC, I especially miss the cut and paste and full screen control... So could someone tell me: a) Should I get a more recent book B) Where can I get a free good windows based C compiler or is Turbo C good enough c) Should I start C++ directly or start with C? Signed: ___T____

a) No. (Use help from compiler)
b) Go in Russia & buy any compiler(on CD) in subway for 2$
c) C++

But if to say seriously such compiler & book will not help you anyhow.

< oscp.pochta.org >

a) Web
b) "Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus" comes with a light version of MSVC6 (cost $50 though)
c) Ah you can start with C++, but at sometime you might want to check out the difference with C

...
B&W is overrated. It''s buggy. It''s interface is innovative but ineffective. It''s slow as hell. No you don''t understand - Windows is a speed deamon compared to this thing. It takes 3-7 minutes to load & save on my Athlon 1GHz, 256MB SDRAM, ATA66 machine.

It''s a very interesting game, and there''s potential to make a decent "B&W2: What It Should Have Been"

Perhaps they''ll release a significant patch for it...

The book will be must less frustrating.

Magmai Kai Holmlor
- The disgruntled & disillusioned

quote:Original post by os


a) No. (Use help from compiler)
b) Go in Russia & buy any compiler(on CD) in subway for 2$
c) C++

But if to say seriously such compiler & book will not help you anyhow.

< oscp.pochta.org >

Why are you even posting? First of all, if you don''t have anything good to answer to a question, don''t post. Second, if people wanted to know how to get stuff from a russian subway, they would''ve probably asked for it...



"And that''s the bottom line cause I said so!"

Cyberdrek
Headhunter Soft
A division of DLC Multimedia

Most of the suggestions above seem pretty valid to me, but I thought I would mention some other things that came to mind.

As to books: There are a number of really good on-line resources:

http://www.gator.net/~garyg/C/cref.html (A great C reference, and some good links)

http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/c-www.html (more links)

You also might check out the Graphics Programming Black Book by Michael Abrash. It''s a little older and starts out talking about 286 Architecture, but covers all the way up to Pentium and finishes up with post-mortem of Quake, and has some really good information. You can download the entire book (1200 pages) for free:

http://www.ddj.com/articles/2001/0165/0165f/0165f.htm

If you want to learn 3D programming, check out:

http://nehe.gamedev.net

He has some great tutorials, the first few would probably be useful for just general windows programming info, even if you don''t want to learn 3D programming.


As to compilers:

First, based on your question, it sounds as though you are looking for a good tool to write code in (an IDE or, Integrated Development Environment), as well as compile (Compiler).

Check out Dev-C++:

http://www.bloodshed.net/

Dev-C++ is not a compiler (BTW, neither is VisualC++, it too is just an IDE for MS''s compiler), but is a very good Development Environment written to work with the free minigw or cygwin compilers. If you get the full download, it installs with the minigw compiler, and you are ready to code. I would also recommend downloading the additional help files, especially the Win32 help, which appears to be the same as the help that installs with MS VC++5.

Another free IDE that looks pretty good, although I have never used it:

http://www.enigma-uk.freeserve.co.uk/

Enigma seems to be like a lite version of VisualC++''s IDE. The only problem is that you have to configure it with the compiler you want to use. Like the free Borland compiler.

There are some issues with using these free tools: many of the standard tutorials out there for game programming are geared towards people using VC++. This becomes an issue when you try to do DirectX or OpenGL programming, but you shouldn''t have any problems writing standard C/C++ applications. That''s not to say that it isn''t possible to write a game utilizing DirectX or OpenGL, it just becomes more difficult if you are unexperienced (Or at least I found it so). A site I mentioned earlier can help with this sort of thing. NeHe''s site has tutorials written with VisualC++ in mind, but there are ports of most of the tutorials for many other compilers, including minigw


And finally, on what to learn first:

Both will be important if you want to do game programming.
I learned C++ first, but wish I had started with C. Plain C is a bit simpler, and easier to understand, and I have found that there are some things that are very hard using C++ only, but become trivially easy using C.

Hopefully this info helps, and keep in mind that I am by no means an expert.

Cheerio,
Aaron

http://www.hollowworks.com