darren, if u are confident with c++, i think you should directly take an API course (DX or GL) perhaps.

for instance, gl course comes with lots of source codes. but not really complex stuff. as I said before, depends on your current level. I guess you can also chat with course instructors before registering for the course..

good luck

It really depends on the course.
I have taken game mathematics and direct3d...
Game math was an excellent course. The instructor was very helpful and the material was quite interesting.

Direct3d was different..
They changed instructors and we started with the old Textbooks, then we continued with the new textbooks. The old textbooks were updated much later. Then the engine code we were given: The engine did run. But from some version on it didnt run on my machine. The instructor was not able to help me and it took quite a while before he answered questions in the message boards. So i was not able to try out the sourcecode from week 4 on. It also depends on what you expect, like it was said before. I wanted to learn how to build a small engine on my own, but the course presented a complex engine that we were going to change a little. It wasnt possible to use source from the examples in your own code withour doing major changes since the engine was layered and depended on a lot of custom methods.
All in all its a nice engine and i could learn a lot, but it was the style of course i prefer.
I guess now that there was some time to rework the code and textbooks and its better now. I also know they had a busy time when i took the course. But its just not right to be left alone by the instructors.

I heard of some excellent courses so i still think you should give it a try. I will probably take other courses at gameinstitute, its the only institute i know that offers game coding courses and while time passes, they will get better and better.

Good luck!

Has anyone ever had any problems enroling on a gameinstitute course? I am having real problems!! After I enter my payment details a page loads telling me to be patient but then literally a hour and a half later still nothing has happened. I have sent an email to gameinstitute.com but as yet have had no reply. I noticed their site was down a couple of times yesterday so this might have something to do with it. Anyway i''ll keep trying because the courses look to be just what I was looking for.

Darren

I just thought I'd add my 2 cents. Im currently on week 10 of the Direct3d course and to be honest I'm not too happy. The text book that you download a chapter of each week is pretty good, the problem I have with the course is the samples you download. Each week the text book explains the underlying principles of what the week is about without too much code which is great, however the samples that go with it are not set out to "teach" you anything, they are there to show you how to do it.

For example the one week about rendering primitives, it goes through rendering all the basics which is easy enough to follow without much code but then it goes on to meshes, the .x file meshes is fine but then onto .zcb. The text book does not explain how to load a zcb scene but instead tells you to examine the source for that week. Normally that would be fine except that the source is very sparsely commented which to me is a big problem. I find that code someone has written to teach someone else is generally very well commented making sure the student knows every step of the way what is going on, but the samples provided dont do that at all.

Another assumption I make about teaching programming is that when you are explaining something through source code you take the easiest approach possible and then after that (when hopefully the student has a grasp on what is going on) you follow it up with the way it should be done (optimised and most likely confusing as hell ). But not on this course, for example the mesh week: It gives you the SDK of their engine to try and work out how to load a zcb scene, however they wrap/use IStream to do it. Now maybe it is just me but I have not seen this before and from what I can tell it is not very well documented anywhere. I then remember that you get a meshviewer project with this week so I figured aha that must be what im supposed to be looking at, it will be a simplified version for the zcb loading. Which in all honesty it is, but it is still written "not for beginners" (in my opinion).

All the above points (about comments and "teaching code") I have formed from previous forrays into learning programming from the internet,books and other courses and it seems to be the "common" way of teaching programming but gameinstitute have not followed it.

Having said all of that the text book is really good for explaining the principles behind a lot of direct 3d and is well worth the money (the cost is equivalent to a programming book anyway), I just dont put much confidence in the samples they provide you with for "learning" from unless you already have some experience with the topic (e.g. if you already now kind of how to load a zcb scene- or another file format- then the code they show would probably be really useful).

Maybe its just me and not having much time to devote to studying the samples (I commute 2 hours to work each way every day- doesnt leave me time for much else other than on weekends).

[edited by - Zeke on August 1, 2002 7:38:18 AM]

I took the C++ and am currently taking the math course. The C++ course offered a lot for me. It gave me a direction of where to go and gave me good coding practices. Because of them, I actually understand classes and passing pointers.

The math course I am taking is wonderful! Even though I am not using it at the moment, I have found already that I programmed my own little RPG. It has increased level with more rpgs and what not. I might expand it, but their courses do help. I probably won''t take any of their 3D courses right away, because I want to mess around with 2D stuff for a while.

I''m getting carried away, but these courses are wonderful. If anyone has any questions then email me at ''webmaster@dontresist.com''. I hardly come on here, so it will be hard to reach me. Just email me there.

- Adam Russell

Just a quick update, I managed to enroll on the Beginning C++ course, (They were having registration problems but they are sorted now.) As I enrolled late I am actually able to look at all the materials provided for weeks 1 and 2, with week 3 materials coming online over the next week. I have read the textbook for Week 1, it is well written and easy to understand, you also get alot of info (The first weeks textbook is 42 pages long!!). The source code provided is easy to understand aswell. I am going to proceed with week 2''s work over the weekend, had a quick look at it already, and can''t wait to get some free time to really get stuck in.

Darren

We´ll be waiting for more news from you. Especially when you get to week 4 and you start to deal with the win32 code and Direct3D.