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:-)Boss Benz:-)

Which C++ book do you have ?

The C++ language covers things like containers and streams, but does nothing graphics or UI based. In order to learn how to program for Windows/OSX/etc., you need to use an API provided by the OS you are using.

What sort of thing do you hope to write ? How basic is the book ? Do you know what an ostringstream is ? How about this : vector < pair < int, string > >::iterator ? The best book on C++ IMO is the one written by Bjarne Stroustrup, if you don't have it, you should.

If you can give me a better idea of where you are and where you're hoping to go, I'd be glad to offer some more advice. I'd also recommend a site like www.codeproject.com, which is orders of magnitude more lively than this one (130,000 members, hundreds of posts a day ), and full of C++ examples and heaps of people who will love to help you.

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:-)Boss Benz:-)

The book you have appears to no longer be in print. Was it written before 1996 ? If so, it is out of date.

Games are probably the most demanding thing to write. I'd recommend doing some simple graphics based stuff first. You've not said what platform you're on, I am assuming PC. Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus by Andre Lemothe is a good book to get you going on a lot of this stuff. As for C++, you should know at least how to use the C++ container classes, how to write a class structure, how to read and write data to/from disk, etc. before you start work on Quake V :0) The Stroustrup book will certainly show you all that. There are many other features in C++ such as templates and namespaces that you don't *have* to be totally familiar with. The beauty of C++ is that it is a good learning language if taught right, but is also able to continue to meet your needs as you learn and look for more complex features.

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:-)Boss Benz:-)

This is my basic guide I give to get to game programming, just because I did it the wrong way and had to go back:

Use C++ if you can, but study it in this way:

First, learn the basics. Ivor Horton has a great Visual C++ book. I read the first half of it all the way up to before it starts MFC programming.

He covers things like:

Datatypes
Loops and Conditionals
Object Oriented programming
string manipulation, plus alot more of the basics.

Do yourself a favor and do NOT touch WIN32 programming until you understand the basics of C++. I hit a brick wall because I tried to skate forward and had to go back.

Then, after you feel ok with the basics of C++, learn the basics of Win32 programming. A good book for it, but it's a monster, is Programming Windows by Charles Petzold. A great site to get you started is http://www.winprog.org. Click on tutorials and he goes thru window basics.

Then, it's on to DirectX or OpenGL. Whichever you prefer. Both are good choices and perform well. DirectX is specific to windows, OpenGL is not. I personally chose DirectX because I know Microsoft. I use their commerce products for a living. That's the only reason why. A good book for DirectX is Programming Role Playing Games in DirectX.

whew! That's all I have to offer unless you have further questions. I hope this helps.

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Much greatness is achieved thru faith and perseverance.

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:-)Boss Benz:-)

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I'm out of my mind... and into the mind of Christ -G.S. Megaphone

#include<iostream>

using namespace std;

Is that wrong, or what?

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:-)Boss Benz:-)

using std::cout;
using std::cin;

etc. for whatever parts of std you use.

Also, don't overuse endl, especially where performance counts. It does a flush as well as a newline.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Christian:
Yes, it negates the whole point of having namespaces. You should put

using std::cout;
using std::cin;

etc. for whatever parts of std you use.

Also, don't overuse endl, especially where performance counts. It does a flush as well as a newline.

---

Okay a while ago I stumbled on the info about endl, but I didn't realize that using namespace std; is bad. Where exactly do you find this kind of info, Christian? This is exactly the stuff that I can't seem to get: the idiosyncrasies of C++ that'll really take my coding to the next level.

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Rowan † GODCENTRIC Christian Demoscene

[edit]
The March issue of Windows Developers Mag will also run an article from me on a debugging framework I wrote which illustrates how to extend iostreams.
[/edit]

rowan - I'm afraid you're programming C with classes, stdio is a C library. iostreams is far better, because it is object oriented and highly extendable. You can define your own stream operators, your own streams and your own manipulators. I write quite a few articles at www.codeproject.com, including several on STL and iostreams if you're interested. I also wrote an article on namespaces for DDJ, but I must admit while they've said they still want to publish it, I have no idea when.

[This message has been edited by Christian (edited January 14, 2003).]

I rarely use text mode streams so I don't need the overhead of <iostream> (which as far I can see are just C++ wrappers for stdio). fwrite() works fine for dumping binary objects.

I also like making variable argument list functions like:
MyMessageBox(LPCTSTR pszFormat, ...)
MyTextOut(HDC hDC, int x, int y, LPCTSTR pszFormat, ...)
and using _vsnprintf to format the output string.

I think STL is usually total overkill (though I frequently make my own template classes). I've never used the 'string' class. I use a lot of DWORDS, UINTs and BOOLs, and I love hungarian notation.

I guess I learnt C++ the Microsoft way

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Rowan † GODCENTRIC Christian Demoscene

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:-)Boss Benz:-)

With JBuilder, designing a GUI should be easy. You should be able to get the personal edition of JBuilder 8 online for free - if your connection can handle the download.

Note that the personal edition of JBuilder is for personal use only - can't use it to design stuff you're going to sell.

I'm working on figuring out how to use BeanBuilder.

I've created graphical apps without these tools Java - it's not too hard to create a GUI for a program with just code - these tools just make things a bit easier.

Java supports OpenGL if you download Java3D or OpenGL for Java. No need to wait on C# to support DirectX . If you want 2D, the latest VM and SDK for Java already has support for hardware accelerated 2D - using DirectX when in Windows, of all things. I recommend getting the Media Framework for added functionality also. If you use Java, your software will run on Macs and on Linux machines also, without modification. As far as I know, C# only supports Windows.

Of course, C++ is the most popular language for programming games.

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:-)Boss Benz:-)

quote:

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Originally posted by BenjaminBenz:
Yeah, I'm kinda confused with how to incorporate 3D graphics into my programs. I'm ten billion times better with Java than C++, and I like it because it's cross platform. Is C++ like the BEST game desing language or what?

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C++ is the most popular because it's low-level, and allows the game programmer to push the limits of the hardware. Games are pretty competitive.

quote:

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I've heard that Genus3 is pretty good. I'm not thinking to distribute my stuff just yet, I just wanna make it. For GUI design: I find that Microsoft Visual Basic is the best because you can creat X,Y coordinates for your buttons and stuff.

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Visual Basic is nice, but combining programming languages can be difficult. In any case, there exists GUI builders for every major language. Java has Beans (and JBuilder, but it costs $$ for anything other than personal use), and I think MSVC++ has some sort of GUI builder for C++. Make the GUI in the same language you make the program in.

I'm not sure what "Genus3" is - you have a tendency to misspell . . .

It's probably a type of Game toolkit, which isn't the same as a language.

If you want to do 3D, start simple - don't make a game at first, make a simple demo, such as a rotating cube.

I've found that the first few tutorials in NeHe are pretty simple. Try them first.
http://nehe.gamedev.net/

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:-)Boss Benz:-)