I am planning to make an RPG. However, I don''t know what to do about the graphics engine? Can someone tell me how to render, says, 3d studio max images, in OpenGL? I know u have to read the vertices and stuff, but how do I know where they are in the file (how does 3ds max save the files)? BTW, it doesn''t have to be 3ds max. It could be any 3d modeling program. It just has to be easy to use. Thanx in advance.

If you check out Nehe: http://nehe.gamedev.net/ He has loads of tutorials on doing 3D work. There are loads of coding examples where ASE files are loaded and displayed in OpenGL. Type "ASE Loader OpenGL" in Google and it brings back about 480 hits.

I hope this gets you started!

Thanx. Any more posts would be appreciated.

http://www.gametutorials.com also has among other things a .3ds model loading tutorials

if you want to roll your own 3ds max loading routine checkout:
http://www.killfactory.com/3DSInfo.txt
for a 3DS max file format specification

-me

Just a quick note,

If your interested in seeing a finished product more than going through every pain staking task of creating graphics engines, sounds engines, you could use something like:

http://www.demogl.com/download.asp for graphics and
http://www.obrazstudio.com/gaudio/ for audio. Once you have something working you could always re-write the libraries your using to learn the underlying techniques yourself.

I''ve seen a lot of demo''s and unfinished code on the web, it would be nice to see something working even if the person didn''t build the graphics engine themselves. I''m not sure why everyone wants to reinvent the wheel.

"I''m not sure why everyone wants to reinvent the wheel."

Its a learning experience.
Plus you get more satisfaction knowing you didn''t need to use any one elses code.

What compiler is the best to use for this kind of a project? Right now I have Metrowerks CodeWarrior, but many of the files u guys have been suggesting require Visual Studio.

any compiler is fine as long as it supports the language standards. Visual C++ seems to be the industry standard. and those files will compile under any IDE/compiler as long as you set up your own makefile or whatever project file the IDE needs.

-me

[edited by - Palidine on November 21, 2002 6:48:06 PM]

It is a satifying feeling to know you created everything from scratch and understand it inside and out but I''ve seen so many people trying to recreate the Quake 3 engine. It would be nice to see more trying to build the game of their dreams and spend less time working on core libraries. Learning experiences are good but finished products are very powerful and progress things further.

It seems like everyone wants to be John Carmack. I for one would like to see more demo''s and shareware games released and the fastest way of doing that is to use high-level api''s.

Imagine how many people have spent hours creating their own 3d model loaders and most of them would of ended up with the same result. Now imagine if half of those people used a pre-existing library and spent the rest of their time on game play. Imagine how many different types of game play would of arisen?

Im a professional programmer, I didn''t write my own server side parser and sql server for my online applications, someone else already did a good job on those, and since those projects are open source, I could contribute code if I felt a certain feature was missing or something needed to be improved. Instead, at the end of the day I have finished products ready on time and under budget because of pre-existing tools and libraries.

If someone is already a strong C++ Programmer, they can look over an open source pre-existing library to see how it works and purhaps improve it but reinventing the wheel can be a waste of time.

Re-use code, don''t reinvent it.