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Great blog!
I'm a senior CS student here in Holland and we don't get C at all during college. It's heavily focused on Java which makes the transition from Java to C quite frustrating as a beginner.
I've been programming for over a year in Objective-C for the iOS apps (for my brother's work) and I like it very much (besides the memory management in C :D:D:D).
Recently I've been looking to expand my horizon by looking how games are being programmed and it made my curiosity even bigger than before. I really like it to make the music/designs/stories by yourself but most of all the programming.
It's a lot of work since I'm reading multiple books at the same time to learn more about the different aspects of making games.
I can only tell to anybody who is aspiring to become a game designer (programming side) that you just have to do it.
Nothing is easy and neither is this 
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On November 17 2011 07:36 shannn wrote:
I've been programming for over a year in Objective-C for the iOS apps (for my brother's work) and I like it very much (besides the memory management in C :D:D:D).
The memory management in Objective-C is very forgiving compared to that of C. 
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Just as a side note, if anyone in Australia is interested in video game programming, particularly high-school students about to finish, definitely check out Murdoch University's Games Technology major. It is extremely challenging, but very rewarding - a real no bullshit games major that you can double with computer science (this is what I'm about to graduate with). Most graduates go on to graphics/simulations programming, but if you wanted to move to somewhere with a real games industry, you'd be well prepared. No engines, no scripting (apart from your own, by interfacing between C++ and Luabind), just C, C++ and OpenGL, apart from one unit in which you use XNA and C#.
During my degree I've created 6 games-related projects, from small scale C/OpenGL demos in the early years, to fully featured game engines, games, and virtual environment simulations, as well as a Brood War AI using BWAPI! I've learnt not only about game programming and large-scale software engineering, but physics, game design, intelligent systems, linear algebra, and a bunch of other inter-disciplinary topics.
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On November 17 2011 07:41 Lysenko wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2011 07:36 shannn wrote:
I've been programming for over a year in Objective-C for the iOS apps (for my brother's work) and I like it very much (besides the memory management in C :D:D:D). The memory management in Objective-C is very forgiving compared to that of C.
That sounds comforting 
I don't really mind the memory management since it's quite good to learn and know how your objects take up memory and how they are being used.
My motto since I've been programming 5 years ago has just been: "Just do it ffs!"
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On November 17 2011 07:57 shannn wrote:That sounds comforting
The good news is that there are very good automated code analysis tools these days that can help you identify memory management bugs. Of course, you'll be best off developing a coding style that ensures that you minimize those problems to begin with.
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On November 17 2011 07:57 shannn wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2011 07:41 Lysenko wrote:On November 17 2011 07:36 shannn wrote:
I've been programming for over a year in Objective-C for the iOS apps (for my brother's work) and I like it very much (besides the memory management in C :D:D:D). The memory management in Objective-C is very forgiving compared to that of C. That sounds comforting I don't really mind the memory management since it's quite good to learn and know how your objects take up memory and how they are being used. My motto since I've been programming 5 years ago has just been: "Just do it ffs!"
I haven't had any trouble with memory leaks or anything at all yet, and memory management hasn't seemed to be much a tough topic at all. Perhaps one just needs a good resource to learn from, is all
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On November 17 2011 08:29 CecilSunkure wrote:I haven't had any trouble with memory leaks or anything at all yet, and memory management hasn't seemed to be much a tough topic at all. Perhaps one just needs a good resource to learn from, is all
Writing multithreaded or otherwise asynchronous code massively amplifies the difficulty of handling memory management. It can help to have a really good model in mind for how to handle this, but sometimes it is just an extremely tough problem.
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On November 17 2011 09:04 Lysenko wrote:Show nested quote +On November 17 2011 08:29 CecilSunkure wrote:I haven't had any trouble with memory leaks or anything at all yet, and memory management hasn't seemed to be much a tough topic at all. Perhaps one just needs a good resource to learn from, is all Writing multithreaded or otherwise asynchronous code massively amplifies the difficulty of handling memory management. It can help to have a really good model in mind for how to handle this, but sometimes it is just an extremely tough problem.
Ah I see, I haven't done anything multi-threaded yet.
I've written the next post in the series, which is on writing colored text and images to the console's screen buffer: link.
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Great article Cecil! I'll try it out sometimes.
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Why aren't you in the Strategy section writing awesome guide's on how to pwn it up in the ladder??
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On November 17 2011 13:42 ImDrizzt wrote:
Why aren't you in the Strategy section writing awesome guide's on how to pwn it up in the ladder??
Busy with school yo
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Do you have any articles that you can recommend on pointers and how you use them, why you use them, and what you use them for?
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On November 20 2011 00:18 ArcticVanguard wrote:
Do you have any articles that you can recommend on pointers and how you use them, why you use them, and what you use them for?
Yeah I wrote a pretty long article on pointers here: http://cecilsunkure.blogspot.com/search/label/Pointers
Is this enough info? Let me know if you would want to know more, and I can probably write it as my next article
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On November 20 2011 06:54 Inori wrote:
Recently I keep hearing from various sources that game dev is worst position a programmer can go to in terms of work stress. You're forced to work hard for months, constantly doing overtime (even unpaid) because of deadlines and etc. Then you finish it, have a little party and the cycle begins again with next title.
Is this in any way true?
Yeah at certain companies it's a real issue of over-working employees. There was a popular EA wives dispute where a large group banded together to protest against how EA was treating their husbands. I don't know all the details but you can easily google search the topic.
Where I worked it wasn't an issue really. One guy even had only 4 days a week of work during hardcore crunch time, and he was an integral designer, lol.
Afaik it's a known issue that's been progressively getting better.
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Awesome blog. I had to learn a little bit of C programming last year for university and I was pretty good at whatever they were throwing at us. Unfortunately, I have forgotten most of it because I stopped practicing (no more assignments) but am willing to learn again. I have already bookmarked your blog and please know that if you happen to keep writing guides about anything related to C, I will be reading them. Thank you.
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For those who want to start at a bit higher level, remember there's also always UDK and CryEngine 3 SDK's for you to use.
http://udk.com/
http://mycryengine.com/
I personally use UDK myself so if you have questions about that i can probably answer some of them!
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I never get why people always talk about wanting to do game development in any discussion about programming. There is so much else you can do. Network programming, POS solutions, Database programming, web-based stuff. While i've not written any full-fledged games for modern Windows OS versions, I have dabbled in graphics based programming, the pinnacle of which produced a screen saver where I ripped sprites from various Doom based games and had them fight on screen. I wrote my own alpha-blending code, movement code and effects code and while it was the most fun I've ever had writing code, Id never do it for a living. There is way more money in other types of projects, specifically any thing that requires a Database. Someone always wants a program to manage customers and pricing and all that stuff. The game industry is way too competitive and unless you lease an engine from someone and base your game on it, its incredibly time consuming when compared against other types of software programming.
Do it if you absolutely love it but don't expect to get riches from it.
TLDR; There are other awesome stuff you can do with programming skills besides games.
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On November 20 2011 14:43 SarR wrote:
I never get why people always talk about wanting to do game development in any discussion about programming. There is so much else you can do. Network programming, POS solutions, Database programming, web-based stuff.
Game development includes all of those. You can pick most types of specializations and find some kind of application in games if you really care to.
One thing worth keeping in mind is that the best programming jobs are those where one learns a great deal about the subject area of what one's software is used to do, and applies that. So, being a game developer is probably a better long-term career than just being a guy who knows web development, because you have to have deep knowledge outside the technical tools to get anywhere.
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SarR: The reason that games come up so much is that they're so much more interesting to the casual beginner. Someone who's already got experience might find those things more interesting, but a beginner looks more at the finished product.
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EPT
