Game Creating? 2

[FridgeRaider]

I am 15 years old and have been fiddling around with Qbasic and some other languages when i came across the complete Visual Studio 6.0 boxed set at a yard sale for $50. I was astonished at that i had been so lucky to find this. Anyway, ive been looking at making a career in game design and game programming and was wanting to know if you could make games with Visual C++ and if you can is there any tutorials out there that are any good for doing this. Also, what languages do bigger gaming companies like microsoft use to program their games. Thanks for your help!

 

[timmay3141]

Pretty much all games are written in C++, but that may change to C# in the not so distant future. If you have no experience with C++, don't even try to program a game yet. I program games for fun, and it was very frustrating the first time even with background in C++ and Win32. Learn all the features of C++ very well, write some programs, and then learn the basics of Win32. Make sure you are very comfortable with pointers and polymorphism in particular. Get used to using GUI code, as you'll probably need to write your own. Once you're done with that, you'll need to pick a graphics API (OpenGL or D3D, either one works) and learn it. Once you know all this, it should be fairly obvious how to make a game, and nobody should really need to tell you what to do.

 

[BlackDice]

Go for it! I wish I had been able to start that young. But in contrast to what timmay3141 said, I still think C++ will always be better than a JIT language such as C# or even managed C++. Native C++ code executes faster and gives you more control over everything. The .Net stuff may be OK, but in a graphics-intensive game, you don't want to let the .Net runtime deallocate your memory when it feels like it, you want to be able to do whatever you want with your memory. The best book I've come across so far for teaching the basics of C++ is written by Ivor Horton, "Beginnning Visual C++ 6.0". After that, I recommend "The Zen of Direct3D Game Programming" by Andre LaMothe. Good luck!!

BlackDice

http://www.stillwaterexpress.com

 

[timmay3141]

Let me first agree with you by saying that managed C++ was a terrible idea and should never be used by any one, for any reason, because it destroys the single advantage of C++ over other languages. However, when Longhorn comes out, there will be literally no performance benefit using C++ vs C#. Longhorn is designed to be a managed operating system, so I've even heard that C# may be faster. As it currently stands, games that are well written C# is at worse 95% the speed of well written C++. That 5% would matter for a pro, but for someone just getting into came programming, the productivity gain is well worth it. And managed DirectX is much much much less of a hassle than unmanaged. Anyway, I'm not just saying this myself, I'm telling what I have been told by people who program much better games than me (some of them professionally). I got it at gamedev.net, a site with some tutorials and excellent forums for graphics and games. I'd definately encourage you to make an account there.

One last thing, do yourself a favor and learn the math and physics. It will make things much simpler for you. I suppose I can't force you to learn all the math that would be helpful before you start programming games, but a good working knowledge of the basics of linear algebra are a must. You should know how to work with matrices and vectors, and what dot and cross products are and why they are useful. It would help to know some basic numerical techniques (like Euler's method) for differential equations as well.

 

[FridgeRaider]

Blackdice, i ordered "Beginning Visual C++ 6" right before i read your post, lol. And timmay3141 i have been looking at gamedev.net for some time while i was using Qbasic back a while ago. I'm not planning on making a game with graphics at the moment but actually wanting to make a text-based MMORPG. I think im a pretty good writer so i think that it shouldn't be too hard since ive been figuring out things using Qbasic and if your familiar with DarkBasic. Ive already figured out the item engine that im going to be using and the prompt and most of the quests and stuff so i should have a working demo finished in the summer for ppl to try out. And thanks for the tips everyone!!!

I'm a man on a mission...A mission so dangerous it could mean life or death...A mission to the fridge!!!

 

[PerFnurt]

>I'm not planning on making a game with graphics at the moment but actually wanting to make a text-based MMORPG

Then perhaps you should check out LPC (a C/C++ looking language designed for that very purpose) and DGD (a driver for that kind of stuff).

See

http://phantasmal.sourceforge.net/DGD/

/Per
[sub]
"It was a work of art, flawless, sublime. A triumph equaled only by its monumental failure."[/sub]

 

[FridgeRaider]

No, im going to stick with c++ becuase im hoping to pursue a career in programming and all the job applications that i looked at required 3-5+ years of C++.

I'm a man on a mission...A mission so dangerous it could mean life or death...A mission to the fridge!!!

 

[FridgeRaider]

do big companies use visual c++ or c++ to create programs and which one is better?



I'm a man on a mission...A mission so dangerous it could mean life or death...A mission to the fridge!!!

 

[timmay3141]

Visual C++ is just a compiler. It's not a different language. And I'm sure most game companies use Visual Studio .NET because of its excellent debugger and user interface.