Hi... I''m new to game programming... And is wondering which book to get. Tricks of Windows Game Programming ( Gurus Edition ) or OpenGL Game Programming. Please reply ASAP! Thanks. -Atomic BroadGames

Flip a coin and pick one. Very few of the regulars on here are going to get into an OpenGL vs. DirectX debate again, and the moderators are pretty good at shutting down these threads.

If you want to educate yourself to the differences between the two APIs, follow this link.

in this case, the first book is primarily 2d as far as what you learn of directx, the second is primarily 3d, so make your pick there, and if you ever make an engine, support both direct3d and opengl, no reason not to

I have the OpenGL book. I would highly recommend it. I don't even program in OpenGL, as I prefer DirectX. The book is the only one for beginners that I've come across that actually discusses how to go from starting an engine to creating a small working game. I've used a lot of the code in my directx games.

Just go through the examples in the directx sdk if you want to learn directx. Get the book if you want to know how to program a game.



[edited by - gogglepants on December 13, 2002 6:04:02 PM]

I would recommend directdraw if your new to game programming. Its usually good to start out with 2d games, plus directx9 will support directdraw with faster speeds and stuff.

Well... Whats the OpenGL book like? Does it have Microsoft Visual C++ with it? Because at the moment im using Dev for C++.

The OpenGL Programming Guide, aka "The Red Book," teaches with C source and the glut/glu/gl/...et cetera libraries, and your Dev C++ I think already comes with the standard Graphics Library APIs and can compile C/C++/Visual C. All I needed was to download Nate Robins'' GLUT library, because that''s what it uses a lot. Once you dowload that, you need to read the Readme.txt file to see where to put the .DLLs. I think one in the \WINDOWS\Sytem and one in the \WINDOWS\Sytem32 folder - don''t get lazy now. No, you don''t need to learn C. It''s the same thing as Visual C++ and can be compiled with any type of C compiler. The only thing is, if you have all C syntax, then you can save your text file to a .c instead of a .cpp. What''s more, the "C" taht is used in the book is nothing more than nothing. What you need to be worrying about is how you''re going to memorize all of those OpenGL commands. In the end it doesn''t matter what language you write your OpenGL in, one can simply assume that the book is written in CPP, and you can "convert" it if you want. But really it''s the same. I hope I haven''t given you all this info for the wrong book. You WERE talking about the Red Book, right? Or were you talking about that Andre Lamothe one. They didn''t have that at Borders, so I couldn''t get it. All they had was crappy DX crap. and Windows crap.