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Originally posted by bennythebear:
i don't know how to program, especially not in c or c++. programming is interesting to me though. i like knowing how everything runs, and how everything is done. i keep bouncing between networking, programming, and web site development. know of anything that involves all three?

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Any networked game that has a website promoting it. :P

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oh...and do you know where i can get more info on game programming(websites, books, etc.)? thanks for the site.

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If you have little/no C/C++ experience, you can get overwhelmed quite easily by diving into the game programming sites like http://www.gamedev.net . I suggest you pick up a couple of books, one on C/C++ and one on game programming. I recommend "Thinkinng in C++" by Bruce Eckel, and then hit amazon.com and search for books on game programming for beginners (and be sure to read the ratings/reviews so you get a good one!)

Also, simply ask here! Lot's of knowledgable folks can help you out with specific questions.

Brian

Edit: I linked to gamedev.net above. Here's a good page on that site for you: http://www.gamedev.net/reference/start_here/

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[This message has been edited by BrianT (edited March 27, 2004).]

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Originally posted by BrianT:
AmazingJas, I have a Torque license, and their restrictions (or lack thereof) are really good. Have you done any development in it yet? All I've done so far is download the Torque source and got it to compile, but I haven't actually used it for anything yet.

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You can get other game engines which are much easier to use - but they're limited in what they can do (AFAIK - I only tried a few before settling on Torque). They tend to be aimed at a specific genre for one thing.

Torque on the other hand gives you the full source code behind it. So while there's a fairly steep learning curve involved, ultimately you can do whatever you want in it. And the Garage Games forums are full of people willing to help out when you get stuck.

As for myself, in a little over a month I had written a funtional game of Checkers that could be played over the internet. So if you're serious about it, and have decent programming skills, I'd certainly recommend it.

I have forgotten almost all my C knowledge and never had much C++ training. But I do have Torque.

Would you mind giving a brief run-down on how you did Checkers with it? Share the .exe? Source code?

Thanks a million.

Joyous Easter to all!
Tim

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Called by God. The passioned plea of a father. The journey awaits at Jarod's Journey.

1) I wrote a custom GUI control for the map/board. Since I'm planning to use this for future games, I actually made it a lot more complicated then you need for Checkers. But basically it lets you display multiple bitmaps at various locations and sizes on the control, and handles mouse events to let you know which bitmap the user clicks on.

This part was fairly simple really, although it took time to learn how to do it. Basically I just used the existing bitmap control as a starting point, and added support for lots of bitmaps. Then took a look at the mouse events control for how to handle mouse events, and incorporated that in. I'd say it took me a couple weeks to get the basics working, although I've continued to enhance it since then.

2) Next I wrote the actual Checkers code. With the map control handling the actual display, this was really just straight C++ programming. I think it took about a week to get this going, after which I had a functional hotseat version of the game.

3) The last big piece was adding the network support. Modified the Checkers code to to send/receive messages so it would work over the internet.

I would say this was the hardest part to figure out. I had to go through the Torque example script and code to figure out how it was connecting. Took me a couple more weeks to get this working, followed by another week to write my own connection class so it worked the way I wanted it to.

Anyway, that's it in a nutshell ... don't know how useful that is without the code, but there you have it!

BTW - I didn't know much C++ when I started this. I've been working in VB the past 7 years, and I at least knew the C syntax. With that, and looking at the existing Torque code for examples, I was able to figure out what I needed. That's why I said you need decent programming skills - not necessarily C++ skills.

[This message has been edited by glenfar (edited April 12, 2004).]