I''m kinda off the subject but I was interested in taking some online classes at www.gameinstitute.com. Does anyone have any comments or have any kind of experience with this school? Thanks!

I just enrolled for the Intro to C and C++ class. I have to say, it''s very interesting, and I wish I had more time. I will say this though, I''ve already studied some programming on my own for about the last year in my spare time. So alot of the concepts are already familiar to me. But if someone had zero programming, they might feel a little lost or rushed. In 6 weeks, they go from basic data types, all the way to object oriented programming techniques...with an emphasis on how games utilize certain C++ programming idioms.

Even with my foreknowledge, I''m finding it hard to keep up. I''m also a little disappointed that its completely M$ concentric (even their webpages uses .asp, so I experienced some weird anomalies with Netscape6.2 and Opera...just use IE 5.5+). Admittedly, you can program the console stuff on Linux pretty easily, but once they get to windowed programs, it''s win32 and DirectX all the way. From what I''ve read ahead, no MFC.

But for 45$, I''d say it was worth the price...it''s actually explained things to me better than some of the books I have (mostly how the preprocessor works) and a few other tricks.

I've just enrolled for 3D Game Programming with Direct3D and so far I think it's decent. The lecture notes are to the point, and there is a lot of demo code with the course.

The courses are definitely for programmer types though. You really should make sure you meet the recommended prerequisites, such as C/C++ for the course I'm taking.

My company (not game related) has sent me to $500 seminars related to software topics. They weren't nearly as in-depth as the GI stuff.

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Edited by - BS-er on January 20, 2002 6:51:11 PM

hey prince, just wanted to let you know that if you have any questions you can feel free to email me. BS-er makes a good point though (how ironic ) in that you should make sure you meet the requirements, since instructors use them to plan their lessons and the rate at which they progress. 6 weeks is a short time span, and a lot of information has to be crammed in. Note that even though exams are made available during the last week, you can may still take them after the class is over for a certain amount of time (it can vary from a week or two to a month or more). This let''s you catch up if you were too rushed and the forums are still open for you to post questions forever.

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