I am making a game in DirectX 9/C++. I do not have a lot of knowledge about directX. I want to make a map for my game similar to GTA 1. I want to know is there a way to make whole map in some other software and then import and render that map in my directX application.
If, not what are alternatives?
DirectX is not a game engine. DirectX is a programming API. Things like maps, game logic, and so on are completely beyond what DirectX does. It's your burden, as a programmer to implement these things.
Honestly, if you have to ask this question, you should not use DirectX directly, if you want results fast. Instead use an existing, available game engine and implement your game using that. In the past years a number of high quality engines have become available for little money or even free. To name a few:
Unity
Unreal Engine or SDK
CryEngine
Source SDK
There are also a few open source worth looking at:
IrrLicht
Ogre
CrystalSpace
You may also want to look at open source games, which engine you can repurpose. Specifically I'm thinking about Cube2 / Sauerbraten and it's successor Tesseract here.
I would really recommend to use an Engine like Unreal Engine 4. You can get it for little money and it does a lot for you. You can spend a lot of time in designing your game, so you dont need to spend that much time which directx and stuff.
Related
I have a tetris game programmed in JavaFX. I want to translate it into C++ to learn C++. What can I use in C++ to display the graphics and time the game loop, the way I did with JavaFX and the AnimationTimer class?
C++ really doesn't have any in-built compatibility for graphics. You need to learn an API.
Looking at JavaFX it seems to be a 3D rendering library. So this really is determined by how deep you want to go.
If you want to learn the baseline, engine design, etc. you could learn OpenGL directly which would teach you the nitty gritty of how all 3D graphics work and SDL2 http://wiki.libsdl.org/FrontPage for the OS interop. Timing the game loop can be done easily with the std::chrono classes.
If you want something slightly higher level where things like lights and such are already built for you I'd consider working with an existing framework that will give you practical experience towards game development. Most of these use scripting languages like C#, Lua, etc. Unity C# is great for something like this. Unreal Engine 4 has C++ bindings if C++ is the main consideration, but it is a bit heavy for such a small game but most game engines only use C++ for their optimized low level frameworks with scripting engines hooked on to them for ease of development while maintaining near optimal performance.
Ogre is another option for C++ open source engine that has a lot of documentation. http://www.ogre3d.org/ Which could be a happy medium between the 2.
If you don't care about 3D graphics and just want rectangles / images in your game something like QT could work well also, but that is a GUI framework more than it is a game engine which if all you are wanting is something like Tetris is fine.
So I have a bunch of experience with C++ and Win32 programming and I am looking to create a 2D game with a couple of friends of mine. I have also dipped my toe into DirectX and OpenGL, but would prefer to use as simple of a library / API as possible when developing this game both for reducing the learning curve and making the development process easier / faster. However, I don't want to limit myself to much with regards to what I can and can't do in my game based on my choice here. What functionality / features would I lose out on by going with something like Allegro or SDL vs jumping straight into OpenGL lets say. I realize you can do other things aside from just graphics with Allegro, etc., but will I be able to build a fully featured game with something like Allegro?
Yes, it is possible to create a good game with libraries like Allegro. There is a few nice games in their depot to prove that. And I remember a few shareware games created using Allegro. It all depends on what kind of game you want to create.
But AFAIK Allegro and SDL are C libraries and if you are familiar with C++, you may try SFML or Cinder which could further simplify the process.
If you are only into creating a game comfortably and don't care about the technology used maybe using a complete engine like Unity3D or Unreal engine, which are free until you make a considerable profit out of the game.
You will miss out the lighting part you generally do in a fragment shader. Other than that, using a pure 2D api can significantly reduce your amount of code, because you do not need to write your own shaders, nor the interface between shader and c++ code which is often even more work and maintenance than the shader itself. Since shader code is mandatory in modern OpenGl my recommendation is SDL2.
Where can i get some advanced game programming resources for c++?
At http://gamedev.stackexchange.com ?
More specifically, this question and lots of others tagged with c++
Start with writing some simple 2D games, e.g. Snake, TicTacToe, etc. Write these using any GUI builder you're already familiar with.
Then try to rewrite these games using a serious graphic engine, e.g. SDL, OpenGL, or DirectX.
Then try to write a more complex 2D games, e.g. side-scroller. Write these games with the graphic engine of your choice.
Then add some simple 3D effect to your 2D game, e.g. parallax scrolling.
Then rewrite this effect with true 3D, use 3D models/sprites, 3D environment, etc, while maintaining a 2D look and feel.
Then add some simple 3D look and feel, e.g. allowing characters to move in the Z-direction (to/from the camera), doing camera rotation, etc.
If you just got out of the command prompt and simple GUI, you'll probably want to start simple.
I'd very much recommend OpenGL as your API of choice. Since you've done some simple GUI programming, you'd know what an API is.
OpenGL has the following advantages (compared to SDL and DirectX previously mentioned):
-Its hardware accelerated (SDL is not as far as I know)
-Its 3D (SDL is 2D)
-Its cross-platform (DirectX is Windows only)
By far the best place to start with OpenGL is the Nehe tutorials.
http://nehe.gamedev.net/
Game programming becomes evident once you become a bit more familiar with the API.
Also, I'd heartily recommend GLUT (OpenGL Utilities Toolkit). It simplifies window creation and user input handling, among other things. Its great for learning OpenGL. It also happens to be cross platform.
Here's freeglut, a free GLUT implementation:
http://freeglut.sourceforge.net/
OpenGL is also a relatively simple and easy API to learn. You'll be going into 3D in no time.
What libraries are you using? You can try GP wiki. It can be a bit hit and miss depending on what you want to use.
By "resources," do you mean tools? Libraries? Tutorials? I have a bunch of useful game developer links in the sidebar of my own site. I also think "Mathematics for Game Developers" was very helpful. It has a second edition as well.
So the title says it. I couldn't find any info on how actualy build effects into 3D game. I'll maybe stick to some engine later, but for understanding of this whole thing I would need to try it on my own for this time. I found a few about particle systems which may be the right way but any other connection between DirectX and particle systems on google gave results as 3DSmax and etc.
So I would be thankful if you would point me on some tutorials for this, or explaining it...
Last possibilitie would be pointing me on some simple engine focused on this thing (I don't really want to fight through tons of code and understanding how this engine works, I just need to see how they implement this FX stuff).
Thanks
PS: the other possibilitie would be if you know about good book discusing this. It can be more complex but apart from tutorial, books are usually wrote more basicly so this would be also nice way to go
First of all: particle effects are just one kind of effects, it's better you specify the word particle engine :p.
Secondly: search int he articles of Gamedev, it's really the best resource if you want things like this. You can find lots of articles and even better, tons of links, and useful information on the discussion boards. Two articles I can link to is the NeHe lesson about particles in OpenGL, it's not directx but NeHe tutorials for OpenGL are very good. I also found one for directx8 and VB (so a little bit older).
Keep in mind though that a particle engine is often a huge performance hit if you can't optimize it yourself, so try to look at open source game engines (e.g. OGRE) on how they implement it or even better, specific particle engines.
So I would be thankful if you would point me on some tutorials for this
You need to download microsoft DirectX SDK.
In addition to it, you should try NVidia SDK.
You may also try ATI SDK. Study them all.
In addition to them... there are couple of books on OpenGL: "Red Book", "Blue Book", Orange Book . "Computer graphics using OpenGL" by Francis Hill is also a very good one.
Get this info, and start reading.
how actualy build effects into 3D game
This question is too broad. There are lighting effects, particle systems, post-processing effects, physics (which are also effects), and even character animation is an effect. It is unclear what kind of effects you are talking about.
What do you think is better DirectX or OpenGL.
They are more or less equal. You can do same things in both of them. Try both and pick one you liked more. OpenGL is better for playing around and experimenting (because you can easily draw triangle without messing with hardware buffers), available on larger selection of platforms, plus GLSL is better than HLSL (because it doesn't "compile into assembly"). DirectX is geared towards performance from the beginning, available on XBox360, and 9th version was actually good. openGL is more "abstract" and DirectX is closer to hardware.
If you could use the factors as simplicity, area of usage, performance, number of examples and resources etc
If you want simplicity, you should forget about making game engine. You'll have to learn quite a lot of things if you want to deal with 3D.
Both DirectX and OpenGL are used for making 3d-related products.
You can get good performance with both DirectX and OpenGL, and get poor performance if you don't know what you're doing.
Both DirectX and OpenGL have insane amount of examples and books - just search for it. They weren't made yesterday, so enough information is already available.
You need to select goal, select platform, select your API, research available technologies, and start writing code. Wondering "which one is better" is a waste of time. 3D knowledge and algorithm are equally applicable to both APIs.
OpenGL is the best bet to learn I feel. Glut is available free of cost and has all the functions you need to implement a particle engine. Plus theres loads of sample code online. I like the way functions are . Easy to remember and use logically
The best books for learning D3D9.0c/D3D10 are by Frank Luna. Just put him in to amazon or google and you'll get results. He teaches how to build a fully-fledged game engine from scratch.
I'm playing around with OpenGL and I'm finding myself writing code that I feel like I shouldn't have to write.
GLU and GLUT are nice but not really what I'm thinking of.
Code to load .obj models (vertex and normal vectors) from Blender and render them.
Code for collision detection.
Code for navigation/camera stuff.
Code for simple terrain generation.
But at the same time I feel like a full-blown game engine is more than I need.
Are there any good libraries built on top of OpenGL that I could take advantage of, perhaps to create relatively simple games? I don't necessarily need all of the items listed above. Those are just examples of what I'm thinking of.
Yes.
I can't be more specific as I don't write my own game engines but I do have a list of libraries online at this location, most of which sit below being a full engine.
Ogre
Irrlicht
openscenegraph (replaces performer)
Depending on how much you need, one of these toolkits / libraries might suit your purpose.
GLUT - OpenGL Utility Toolkit
Ogre3D - OGRE Object Oriented Graphics Library
Open Inventor - OpenGL toolkit for scene management created by SGI
Performer - OpenGL toolkit for real-time rendering created by SGI
I learnt my opengl stuff from GameTutorials and Gamedev. Unfortunately gametutorials are no longer a free selection of tutorial (there's some examples) but they were good. Coupled with SDL, you would have code to do everything you wanted - and you'd be able to understand what is going on under the covers, something I find is very useful later on (if, for example you wanted to write HTML5/WebGL code later).
A lot of the game engines aren't as well documented as I'd like (well, weren't a few years back when I was looking), but they might still do what you need. Sourceforge has many, including Ogre3d, Irrlicht, and CrystalSpace.
In general I agree with your sentiment. There is a school of thought that says that programming should consist of pluggable modules. Once youve written an OpenGL app, you should be able to grab a model loader, and/or a skeletal animation engine and plug them in.
The depressing thing is, most of the game engines on that list (that Ive looked at) are all or nothing propositions. They provide an entire framework and do not really take into account the more common real case scenario.
That said, all is not lost. A lot of those engines package up a number of other 'utility' libraries into their distribution. With a bit of patience it is possible to piece together the component libraries yourself: OpenAL for the sound, Freetype for font rendering, libpng, libjpeg etc for image codecs