Right now I''m just about to enter high school and i want to start making video games. Right now i know a bit of C++ and i know i need to know a ton more to make a full engine, but i want to know what is in it and how the certain functions are used. And could anyone suggest some easy projects to work on that would have some relevance to game programming?

quote:
what do you need to know to make an engine?

For a Quake engine....oh...EVERYTHING

To get started, you should Start Here





_____________________________________________________

ICQ #: 149510932

Google - OpenGL - DirectX - Windows Guide Network - MSDN - Symantec Virus Info

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." - Albert Einstein

hi, just think of the game engine as a set of functions that puts your game on the user''s screen

i know where ur comming from, i just came into high school and had the same dillema. Writing a decent game engine is pretty advanced (at least to me, and i''ve spend months on the web doing nothing but reading, and LaMothe''s book Try to write a simple pong game using Direct Draw tutorials on GameDev. Just blit some rectangles onto the screen. It''s pretty easy once you understand what''s going on

You should really need to have in mind what do you want with your engine, its capabilities, its limitations, the user interface, if it´s going to be MODable (like Half-Life), for single or multi player.

Then (I think) you should start coding something very objective, for example, in an adventure game engine, a scene, with a character, some actors, and a inventory, and step by step taking those elements out of the code and putting them in a customizable file.

Just my two cents out...

I''m sure this question has been answered [insert large number here] times already, but I''ll post anyway.

First off, writing games is more than just using DirectX or OpenGL. To start, you need to know how to use a programming language that you''re working with. You can use many languages, although most games are written in C/C++, but you need to know the one you choose very well.

Chances are, if you make your objective writing Quake 10, you won''t go far. I also started programming in high school. My first "original" idea was writing a program to create a file on shared network drive and fill it with random strings . We were using DOS/Netware I think on 386 and 486 so there wasn''t much protection.

I suggest you learn a programming language first. Understand the special abilities of your language, its peculiarities. Be able to do a single thing in five different ways. Only then tackle game creation.

Write a simple game like snake, pacman, tetris, or tic-tac-toe. I did a snake in DOS 13h mode. Then move to more advanced projects. You can skip 2D and go directly to 3D if you want. I started reading tutorials on DirectDraw but moved to Direct3D after the first one. Since I suck at making artwork, 3D things interest me more because I can get away with sloppy graphics but relatively more interesting scene design/physics/etc.

The reference section on GameDev is very helpful. Make full use of it. Even if someone told you what''s inside a game engine, what good will it be? If you''re curious, you can download source code for Quake and take a look at it yourself.

If you really want to start with the games, you can head over to NeHe''s tutorials and see if you understand them.