Basically, the situation at hand is im doing a directed study for my college, in designing computer graphics II. I took computer graphics I, the pioneering semester it was taught with openGL, and now the professor is looking to teach Comp. Graphics II, which will be a sort of "Real Time Simulation" course, the focus being on developing a small game engine focused on the rpg genre. It can be as simple as a one-room dungeon, to a full world, but we(my friend and I) have to design it so the course can be taught within the construct of roughly 3 and a half months. A daunting task, to say the least. So basically at this point we are looking for books and software. We have 600 dollars to spend towards the development, 150 of which are going to a graphics card for the professors computer to test out the code. so about 450 is left for books and software.
What we are thinking of doing, course-wise, is an expansion where the last class left off. We finished off designing simple 3d models of robots. Our plan is to advance that model to do simple movement animations. After that we''d use a program(not sure which, looking for most cheapest/practical for the situation) to model an ACTUAL character, and load it with c++/openGL, as well as developing a simple world/stage. After that, wed go into the development of a graphics engine, one that can load models/the world, including partial, simple particle effects and the such. Next would come a physics engine to apply simple physics to the game, effects, movement, etc. The final stage would be the implimentation of it all, loading/animating the character into the world/stage and giving simple keyboard/mouse commands to move the character/have him fight simple creatures.
We have decent grasps on openGL, enough to design/load a model of our own, and apply simple movement animations to it(that was the final project of graphics 1). Our main concern at the moment is how to tackle such as task to fit it into a 3-4 month course.
Why we come to you, the gamedev community, is trust in opinion. There are some really talented people here who''s opinions we have trusted for some time, and look to you for advice. What books/software do you all recommend to tackle the task, what do you recommend for modelling programs that arent super expensive(hello 3ds max
, we looked at some free modellers, etc, but are still unsure), anything you might deem useful to us.
Books we are looking at to purchase atm:
openGL superbible of course
Swords and Circutry
Game Architecture and Design
Massively Multiplayer Game Development
The course wont be a massive game development, as there isnt enough time in one semester, but more or less an introduction for students into game development, giving them an idea on how to design a graphics/game engine, in an RPG situation.
So thats the task. Please give us any feedback if you have ideas on how to approach this that might help, and any suggestions on software/reading material. We have an action plan to go with, but as I said, we trust the opinion of the community, so any advice will be greatly appreciated.
thanks guys, wish us luck! :D
) and come up yourselves with a short tutorial (5-10 pages).
