Description:
Attempting to get my foot into the door with game programming I'm looking to peers to help me out!
Contents:
School Break
As you may have noticed due to inactivity on this blog, I am currently taking a small break from programming due to school. However, I recently quit my part time job so expect to see progress picking up here without doubt.
Quick Update
Wow, it's been three or four days since my last update. I've been working a lot and have only got through a few more sections in the book, currently learning more about gameplay. I don't have work today(thursday) or tomorrow(friday) so I should be able to get a bit more done.
I started to lose motivation for a bit, but a quick look through some current projects on torque gave me a desire to want to keep going. It may be a long road but I look forward to it. More on all of this later.
Daily Journal #5
Drowsiness sets in upon me and I suddenly realize in seven hours I have to be at work. And so concludes my learning for the night. I thought it was going to be another failure at learning anything but I was wrong, at about eight o' clock I really decided to start reading. I blasted through two chapters before finally deciding to call it a night.
"Two chapters?" you say... it may not seem like much but they were quite long. Each one was filled with at least twelve separate sections and they got to be quite long. In fact, the sections were even broken down into sections, i.e. 4.5.2 or 5.9.12. Anyways, I learned a lot more TorqueScript and I did end up re-reading quite a bit of it due to the fact that I have trouble staying focused when I'm reading.
I don't know how many people are checking this blog constantly as my stats are shooting up and down. 100+ visits one day to fifteen the next. Regardless, I will continue to post my doings to at least keep myself motivated. Tomorrow I start on 6.6.5, state machines. It's one hell of a long section too, hopefully tomorrow isn't too hectic at work.
Adios, mis amigos. Espanol es muy sobre clasificado en mi opinion.
Daily Journal #4
Unfortunately we all have those days in which we get close to nothing done. Today was one of those days for me. I began my day waking up at 10am and I believed I just had a short 11-2 shift at work. As it turns out my hours were 12-8 so I went next door to burger king and got breakfast and came back at noon.
Working through a day of impatient customers and annoying managers I made it relatively without problem to eight. I'm sure I haven't previously mentioned where I work, well I work as front counter at KFC. It's not much but I'm only 17 and Burger King wasn't hiring :). Anyways, it's not bad... but that's not why you are here.
So I got home at eight, rested until nine-thirty and got to work on learning at least something before going to bed. Unfortunately I did only make it through a few sections of TorqueScript, but it's something. Well I did definitely learn more about variables, functions, datablocks, packages, etc. tonight.
Tomorrow is one-hundred percent work free and I will be making use of my free time to work through the book (mentioned in previous post). Good night!
Daily Journal #3
Ah, the third day has come to a close. I blew through what I was hoping too and decided to begin what I'm here for, game programming. Whipping out The Game Programmer's Guide to Torque and Torque 1.5.2 which I bought a while ago, I got to work learning the ins and outs of Torque. For the purposes of simplicity I used the 1.4 demo that came with the book anyways. I went through level design, terrain forming, object placement, gui editing, and a lot more. I finally ended learning TorqueScript which is very intuitive.
So I am definitely looking forward to getting involved further in Torque and hope to learn a lot more tomorrow. The book ends with making a game which is of course where I am headed toward. Is anyone else looking into Torque, post if you are! I highly recommend it because of how powerful it is. There is a fault however, the documentation is quite sparse and until it is increased greatly you will need The Game Programmer's Guide to Torque or a similar book.
You can find Torque here, until next time!
Daily Journal #2
As my second day of learning draws to a close, I wearily post to my blog while admiring my headache's persistence. Pushing through inline functions, command line arguments, linked lists, recursion, variable argument lists, binary trees, three pages of inheritance and inheritance lists, as well as advanced class design I've decided to call it good for now.
I believe my progress is going very well and tomorrow I hope to be able to get through at least enumerated types, formatted output using iomanip, random numbers, using modulus, the three pages of templates(exciting), as well as the tips on the C preprocessor. Sounds like a fun-filled day indeed, I almost can't wait.
Traffic to this blog is slowly rising and am getting numerous returning visitors. Don't be afraid to comment as well. Thanks for reading and good night.
Great book of the post:
Mid Day Break
Blowing through switches, pointers,structures, arrays, strings, file input/output, typecasting, and classes I've decided to take a bit of a break. Next I'll be starting on inline functions but I'm going to go ahead and play some video games, get something to eat, and go outside for a while. Hopefully I can get through quite a bit more later when I get back though.
Side Update
About to start day two's journey I stumble upon a site with some pretty cool shirts. Just thought I would throw this up there and see what you guys think of them. I actually bought the one that says "If you kill me, I will respawn stronger than you could ever imagine!". Anyways, click the picture to check them out.
Daily Journal #1
As my first day of learning draws to a close I begin writing the first in a series of daily journals. Each day I study I will put a daily journal up with my progress at the time. Day one was just the basics, in about two and a half hours I went through outputting text, retrieving variables, conditional statements, loops, and of course functions.
Not too bad for a start but tomorrow should be a much more productive day, first lesson: switches. Hopefully I'll be able to get to some of the more complicated items such as pointers soon. Well that ends the first day, anyone watching I hope you come back for day two and more!
Resources of the Trade
I've scoured the internet for the best c++ resources and have found what I believe to be one of the best "absolute" starting point. From even the very beginning you can start to learn the basics of c++, there's some more advanced stuff as well but I don't believe I'm competent enough to touch on that yet.
The site is believe it or not, www.cprogramming.com. It has all of the tutorials you need to start out with c++ as well as an active message board for any support issues you may have. Anyways I'll be working through it all and posting my progress as I go.
As for the compiler I will use my favorite which is Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition, cheaply priced at FREE it works great. I recommend it if you can't dish out the money for the other Visual C++ versions.
The First Post
Ahh, the imaginative first post. Each blog has one and it's epic creativity is heralded through the length of the blog itself. This is in fact my first post and I affirm that it's epicness will one day be realized. I know I'm not the only person interested in video game programming and theres plenty others but I do hope I get to where I want to be.
This blog will serve as not only a place where I can post resources to beginning game programming but where I can post my progress as I learn, and hopefully gain some support. My current abilities are very lacking, disappointing in fact. I shall start over from the beginning and re-learn c++ and hopefully when all is done have a game to show for it.
This blog will run through my high school and college years and hopefully will end with one or more games presentable to companies as proof I have some expertise. I'm exciting to get started but am going to make sure I take every precaution possible to make sure I get there. I'll do what I can on my own, but I will need some support!
Any and all feedback to resources, progress, or anything else I post is definitely a plus. All I ask is that you keep it constructive. Thanks everyone and I look forward to beginning this life-changing project.
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