Game Development Community

C++ newbie

by Andreas Bergstr · in Technical Issues · 10/08/2002 (10:17 am) · 5 replies

I've bought a copy(legal of course) of MS Visual C++ 6.0 Standard Edition and some books:

* Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days (translated into Swedish)
* 3D Game programming with C++
* Introduction to MS Visual C++ 6.0 SE(shipped with VC++)
* A book for newbies about C++ in Swedish

I'm currently reading Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 21 days, what should I start with after that? Should I start with the "3D Game programming with C++" book directly? No? My goal is to be able to code games(game engines). Sorry if starting a thread about a personal thing but i need tips!

And sorry if my english sucks in this post, I'm kinda tired. Goodnight.

Have a nice day!(or night ;-))
/Andreas Bergstrom
Sweden
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Torque Owner Jeremy Tilton
#1
10/08/2002 (10:29 am)
You definitely are on the right start. SAMs is a good intro to stuff. When you wanna start with games, think about how you wanna go about it. OpenGL, DirectX, etc. Object Oriented Programming would be good too, so if you can find a book that teaches Object Oriented design and programming, that will help you. Which book is "3D Game Programming"? If that is the Direct3D book published by Prima Tech, I do NOT reccomend that as the one to start with. A good overview of DirectX is found in "Multiplayer Game Programming" by Todd Barron. People hate this book for its title, but forget about the title. This book is good for an intro into the DirectX API, and it goes over various aspects of it such as DirectAudio, DirectInput, DirectPlay, Direct3D, and windows programming, and how to use them all using Visual C++ 6.0. You'll have a good base of DirectX after this book, then you will probably be able to understand some of the harder to read books like "3D Game Programming" from Prima Tech...of course, I'm only assuming that's the book you have, because there are a ton of books with that title.

DryFire
#2
10/08/2002 (1:29 pm)
definatly go with object oriented design if you wan.

Andreas Bergstr
#3
10/09/2002 (5:48 am)
The "3D Game programming book is from "Coriolis Technology Press", but it's about Direct3D programming. Thanks for the tip I'll take a look on that book.

Torque Owner Jeremy Tilton
#4
10/09/2002 (10:12 am)
Then that book may be good..I don't really know it. I just hate the other one. I think it is actually called "Direct3D Game Programming" and it is published by Prima Tech (The green and black LaMothe Series). I hated it as a beginner book because it is so incredibly hard to follow. The one I reccomended (Multiplayer Game Programming) is from the same series. I liked this book for a few reasons:

The prose reads really easily. The author is funny (IMO) and I like his little remarks about games he's playing and stuff. A lot of people rated it bad for this fact, but I think it is good to have a loose tone, and remind the reader that EVERYONE involved in game development (even the guy that wrote the book that helps your development)should be a gamer first.

Source code in the book is awesome! Again, a lot of bad remarks about this. The deal is that he duplicates a lot of code int he beginning of the book, so you'll see the same code over and over. What makes this useful is that he bolds the changes to the code so you can see the additions he makes to the code after discussing some stuff. I found this method very effective.

Teaches ya how to use DirectX in Visual C++. I honestly had no clue before reading this book. But it shows you the little settings you gotta chcnage and stuff to get it all working.

Very good broad basic DirectX book. DO NOT READ THIS BOOK EXPECTING A TON OF MULTIPLAYER STUFF. Expect an introduction to a lot of different aspects of DirectX, not JUST DirectPlay. Good luck, and have fun. Programming is sweeeeet. Programming games is even sweeter.

Andreas Bergstr
#5
10/10/2002 (8:38 am)
Well I'm gonna buy that book, doesn't matter if it should suck it was kinda cheap...

Well this book that I have on the shell har only a foreword by Andr