ZFGC
Projects => Discussion => Topic started by: Theforeshadower on July 02, 2008, 03:12:49 am
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Well, still here on vacation. I went to a huge book outlet place which ironically has like no books for computers much less programming.
I did find one book that may help me pry away from my dependence to RAD programs.
The book focuses on C and DirectX.
It's the only other game programming book I have and the other one is pure console apps.
This new one is Windows 32 Apps, 2D, and 3D using Direct-3D.
It also teaches how to call and use DirectSound,DirectInput, DirectMusic,DirectSound3D, and some other DX stuff.
The book assumes C knowledge and jumps you right into graphics programming and such.
It also has a nice section on importing 3ds models and even has a free modeler program to use and such and teaches you how to make good models. Hopefully my miniscule C++ knowledge will help.
I know C is not a "good" language today with C++ and C# and Java and whatnot.
I only paid like 10 bucks for this thing as it is about 3 years old now and covers DX 9.0b...so yeah >.>
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Just because everybody else praises C++ doesn't mean you have to. Anti-conformity my friend. Enjoy your C/DX.
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C is not a bad language ;)
OOP isn't necessary for everything (although I would recommend it for games)
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I can understand where learning C and DirectX would have it's advantages to beginning programmers, however I would personally recommend something a little more platform-independent. Congratulations on having the motivation to learn a programming language though, it seems that fewer and fewer people have the patience to do that... I hope that the book suits you well.
As I'm sure you're well aware, you do not become an expert overnight, so please take your time and actually learn from your experiences. Take your time, and be sure that you do not limit yourself to that book. Try to program a few simple programs that are not examples in the book, yet within your capabilities as you learn. You will be surprised at how much this helps improve your skills. It forces you to think on your own, as opposed to simply copying code from a book into the compiler.
And never feel confined to that book alone. There are many great tutorials online that you can read as you are reading your book. There are many approaches to programming even the simplest programs, and I am sure that you will find these tutorials to help you think about these different approaches.
I wish you the best of luck in learning C/DirectX.
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Nothing wrong with C, may be more usefull to learn C++ if you want a job, but C is perfectly fine for tinkering around. DirectX on the other hand .... whhhhhy? Use OpenGL or something, far more simple and far more platform-independent.
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Nothing wrong with C, may be more usefull to learn C++ if you want a job, but C is perfectly fine for tinkering around. DirectX on the other hand .... whhhhhy? Use OpenGL or something, far more simple and far more platform-independent.
OpenGL is just a graphics library. DirectX is more of a game-development library. Anyways, considering that his selection of books was limited, I do not think that it was a bad choice. I just think that he should be aware that he should also learn OpenGL and C++ if he is serious about becoming a game developer. I'm pretty sure that most gamers either use or have access to Windows though, so it really wasn't a bad choice. Just not the *best* choice.
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Nothing wrong with C, may be more usefull to learn C++ if you want a job, but C is perfectly fine for tinkering around. DirectX on the other hand .... whhhhhy? Use OpenGL or something, far more simple and far more platform-independent.
OpenGL is just a graphics library. DirectX is more of a game-development library.
I'm well aware of that. The point is however that most of the other libraries in DirectX can easily be recreated with other open-source/cross-compatible libraries (audio=openal, input=hell just capture win32 msg's, ... etc, etc), or if that fails, by doing it yourself.
However I agree that Windows is the most common platform, but that dosen't mean you should limit yourself and your audience to it :S.
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Nothing wrong with C, may be more usefull to learn C++ if you want a job, but C is perfectly fine for tinkering around. DirectX on the other hand .... whhhhhy? Use OpenGL or something, far more simple and far more platform-independent.
OpenGL is just a graphics library. DirectX is more of a game-development library.
I'm well aware of that. The point is however that most of the other libraries in DirectX can easily be recreated with other open-source/cross-compatible libraries (audio=openal, input=hell just capture win32 msg's, ... etc, etc), or if that fails, by doing it yourself.
However I agree that Windows is the most common platform, but that dosen't mean you should limit yourself and your audience to it :S.
I realize that, but I have yet to see an excellent tutorial or book that covers graphics (OpenGL), audio (OpenAL), input, etc, etc. Therefore, for a beginning programmer or somebody who intends on creating games only as a hobby, DirectX is not a bad choice. As I said in my first post, I would personally recommend finding tutorials for other cross-platform libraries such as OpenGL, but that DirectX is not necessarily a bad library for hobby game developers and new programmers aside from it's platform dependencies.
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DirectX is good for some things, but OpenGL is better. Infact, there is an OpenGL enxtension for GM so things render faster :o
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Funny how performance tests have proven time after time that there is not a significant speed difference between OpenGL and DirectX. The only real advantage of using OpenGL over DirectX is the fact that OpenGL is more platform independent. Both libraries are excellent and have a lot of documentation so that you can easily learn to use them. It's up to the programmer to decide which one to use.
You can't fail with OpenGL. It's insignificantly faster than DirectX and more platform independent. It has enough documentation and tutorials that learning it should not be a problem. But if you would rather have a library that contains all essentials for game development and do not care about your projects being platform independent, than by all means DirectX is probably a better choice.
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We are going to slap you with barbed metal sticks.
At least it is learning programming, and if you learn C C++ shouldn't be too hard!
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This book you got... is it by Jonathan Harbour? The guy is one of my professors at school... I'm actually going through that book right now as well. He uses c and c++ and to be honest, it's not a good mix. I've been in his class that used ASM/C and that had a good mix, but this book... it's like he can't make up his mind... but I still like it. It's called Beginning game Programming I believe... something like that.
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Funny how performance tests have proven time after time that there is not a significant speed difference between OpenGL and DirectX. The only real advantage of using OpenGL over DirectX is the fact that OpenGL is more platform independent. Both libraries are excellent and have a lot of documentation so that you can easily learn to use them. It's up to the programmer to decide which one to use.
You can't fail with OpenGL. It's insignificantly faster than DirectX and more platform independent. It has enough documentation and tutorials that learning it should not be a problem. But if you would rather have a library that contains all essentials for game development and do not care about your projects being platform independent, than by all means DirectX is probably a better choice.
You realize that you contradicted yourself in that post, right?
Anyway, nothing wrong with C, we used it in my high school to program robots.
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This book you got... is it by Jonathan Harbour? The guy is one of my professors at school... I'm actually going through that book right now as well. He uses c and c++ and to be honest, it's not a good mix. I've been in his class that used ASM/C and that had a good mix, but this book... it's like he can't make up his mind... but I still like it. It's called Beginning game Programming I believe... something like that.
Yeah, it's that book...lol
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I got to Chapter 8 now I hit a spot that I can't seem to get past... some error with ALPHABLEND not being identified. Googled it and came up with nothing, checked my configuration, came up with nothing... I posted the issue on the author's site. I came across some issues here and there, let me know if you need any help with this book!
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I got to Chapter 8 now I hit a spot that I can't seem to get past... some error with ALPHABLEND not being identified. Googled it and came up with nothing, checked my configuration, came up with nothing... I posted the issue on the author's site. I came across some issues here and there, let me know if you need any help with this book!
Will do, sir! ^^
By the way, what compiler are you using?