Ok well i''ve been working on C++ and have been going through a book to help me out. Well i''m learning a lot about different classes and commands and how stuff works and bla bla bla, but i learn nothing about my initial goal which is how to program games and such. I''ve flipped through the book I''m using (btw it''s Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours) and it doesn''t seem like it ever covers how to put stuff on the screen. Also my school is doing a C++ class which i decided to take and well that''s dumb, cause everyone in it doesn''t know shit and it goes slow, and they book that that uses doesn''t get anyone either. What I need is the very basics, how do i put things on the screen, all i can do is put some text on it and I don''t know where I can start to program some real things. I don''t want to necessarily use any program language besides C++ because i''ve already learned it. I first started off with a bit of C when i first started but abandoned programming all together for a while and now i''m doing C++. Can someone please point me in the right directions or give me some basic fundamentals to lay the ground work for graphics of games or apps, thanks so much.

use SDL:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1592000304/qid=1042240580/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-7595564-5571834

Here's a link:
Window's programing tutorials
You can also google for things like "OpenGL", "DirectX", "Win32 Programing", etc.

I suggest you work on a little Win32 before heading off to graphics APIs and such. It's not important for you to get everything down right away (it'd be damn hard to do that anyways), just try to absorb the basics and know where to find more info if you get stuck.

AFAIK, getting off the black screen is usually accomplished simply by using specific libraries.

[EDIT] If you do go into something like SDL, you don't need to worry about Win32 at all, but it's always useful knowledge.

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And the Phoenix shall rise from the ashes...

--Thunder_Hawk -- ¦þ
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[edited by - Thunder_Hawk on January 10, 2003 6:41:15 PM]

Thanks for your hasty reply.

I always knew that it was a matter of libraries and I think i serached for them one time, but I found things that were much to complicated (like 3d graphics engines and such), thanks a lot I will check out the link you gave me and try to work through it.

Actually if you know a place to get libraries to do so it''d be very much appreciated, thanks.

Mouse, you will rarely find a C or C++ book that covers how to do graphics. This is because the language is suppose to be independent of the hardware it is working with. Really all you can do in C++ is read, write and compare values at memory addresses. If you happen to write some data into a memory address and that memory is located on the video card''s frame buffer, then viola you have a pixel on the screen. However, the language does not know or care anything about that. It just knows you want to move some data into that memory and is happy to try and do it for you. This may sound like a complicated way to do things, but that is why there are libraries such as SDL and DirectDraw that give you nice functions to call and help you out a bit with the low level stuff. SDL is very good for getting some bitmaps on the screen quickly. Good luck!

hmm I guess that answered my question, cool, thanks. Lots of smart people on these boards.