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Well I got two more great questions about programming, so I thought I'd answer them again.
RtS)Night[Mare asked,
"I'd like to get into game programming anywhere in the future. Do you have any advice on what should i focus my attention in? Im still in college btw.
Do you have any good book to recommend to me? Do you think reading books of programming help? (because im more of a "teach me" person rather than to read a book by myself). Also, what languages do you think are worthier for this kind of programming?
About general programming, you said it helps tons to be good at graphics. I've always struggled with this. Do you have any advice here as well?"
I'll answer the last one first: I'm not talking about general programming there. It can help you get a job in the graphics industry. When looking for programming jobs, they're not going to ask if you're good at graphics, unless that's explicitly part of the job that you're applying to.
As for game programming, lately I've been delving into XNA. Namely, it's a free framework for creating games, has a very minimal learning curve (although to do the best stuff it can be a pain), and in general is fun to program with. It is C# code. There are a few books out for it, but more important are the websites that go over the information related to it - you'll learn far more from those. If you wanted to learn a separate system that isn't so babyish (they really do give you a lot of help with stuff in XNA), then I'd suggest DirectX and C++. There's a ton of books out on those, and I don't know any in particular, because I was too lazy to learn DX, and wasn't going to make a game in C++, so no reason to look for them.
Next, fonger asked,
"As a professional, how do you deal with the inevitable (in my case anyway) "but OMG if I abstract this just one more level, think of the possibilities!" and the subsequent torrent of design issues that crop up? This is usually a fast track down the burnout trail for me when I start off on a new project.
Essentially I spend all my time working on a perfect, "elegant" framework that will do all I want and just about inifinity more, and end up burning out before I even start on the application itself.
There are of course exceptions, but I've noticed that any software that actually functions and I end up releasing invariably has awful and unmaintainable code.
So in a nutshell:
1) Do you have - or have you at any point had - trouble with this sort of thing?
2) How did/do you deal with it, and do you still approach a new project with a view to putting it all together in the most elegant way possible?
3) In a professional environment, how often do you have to compromise code integrity to meet a deadline?"
I've never really had much of a problem with this, but I can understand why you might. I do view the project in terms of the most elegance, but I keep one thing in mind: Simple is always the most elegant (assuming it works). When I go to design a system, I ONLY make an abstraction when there is a clear need for it. In terms of refactoring, I constantly refactor in order to keep the code clean - there is only very rarely any time when my functions are not lean and clean. I have never sacrificed quality to meet a deadline. There is a strange reason for this, though. In terms of sheer speed, I can go quite fast sometimes. I recently had to take over a project with less than a week and a half to go on it, and I was able to fully rewrite the garbage that my boss at the time wrote (he no longer works there), and finish my stuff with 3 days to spare for our QA team to test it moderately well.
I've decided to develop a game on this blog. I'll only post snippets of code, but when I make an update, I'll post about it here and you can email me if you want the full code-listing. I'm going to "test-driven design" it to show its powers. It will be written in VC# in Visual Studio 2008, which requires .NET 3.5. If you want more information (such as how to download that and such), you can email me at wolfgangsenff@hotmail.com.
It is text-based for now, but will probably be moved to graphical in the future; I just don't want to bother going that route now. This will be mostly for people who know little about program design, but also complete beginners. However, I do think some more advanced coders can gain insight into different ways to think about modeling systems - I pride myself on my ability to think about things in a way that works really well for designing systems.
Does that sound okay?
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This sounds awesome. I know I'm going to be reading this.
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thank you very much!
edit: this is nightmare, on my brothers account, i forgot he made once :p
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Request to bold the questions at least or something for a little better readability. Just highlight the lines and press the big B button.
The game development postings is OK with me. I've already bookmarked this blog.
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Question:
I am doing my final semester of CS. Well, sort of. I am currently mulling over the decision to go for a programming project or industrial training as my elective. I would finish earlier if I went with the programming project but the catch is that I only have 14 weeks while taking industrial training would require me to stay back for another semester. And yeah, I still have 3 other subjects alongside the elective.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you think the stay back is worth the industrial training or should I just choose PP, finish, graduate, and get out in the real world, earn bigger moolah than being an intern?
Do you think I'd have enough time if I chose to make a 2D game as my programming project? would it be too much work to make the game multiplayer? I wonder if making a MUD would be just fine for a project?
I am obviously trying to get into the game industry.
My skill level would be having gone through a couple of 2D game programming books (WinAPI) but no fully self implemented games of my own yet (which is why I'm considering my first to be my programming project). Main languages are the popular 3 Cs and Java. Do I have enough time?
I haven't picked up DX yet. Trying to start in the next week or so(no matter which elective i choose).
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On August 06 2008 11:38 Aerox wrote:
Request to bold the questions at least or something for a little better readability. Just highlight the lines and press the big B button.
The game development postings is OK with me. I've already bookmarked this blog.
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Question:
I am doing my final semester of CS. Well, sort of. I am currently mulling over the decision to go for a programming project or industrial training as my elective. I would finish earlier if I went with the programming project but the catch is that I only have 14 weeks while taking industrial training would require me to stay back for another semester. And yeah, I still have 3 other subjects alongside the elective.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you think the stay back is worth the industrial training or should I just choose PP, finish, graduate, and get out in the real world, earn bigger moolah than being an intern?
Do you think I'd have enough time if I chose to make a 2D game as my programming project? would it be too much work to make the game multiplayer? I wonder if making a MUD would be just fine for a project?
I am obviously trying to get into the game industry.
My skill level would be having gone through a couple of 2D game programming books (WinAPI) but no fully self implemented games of my own yet (which is why I'm considering my first to be my programming project). Main languages are the popular 3 Cs and Java. Do I have enough time?
I haven't picked up DX yet. Trying to start in the next week or so(no matter which elective i choose).
It's very possible to make a game on your own in a semester. I did it for a programming projects class my 2nd year and it was a lot of fun... there's nothing like coding your own game 
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On August 06 2008 10:49 Senff wrote:
I've decided to develop a game on this blog. I'll only post snippets of code, but when I make an update, I'll post about it here and you can email me if you want the full code-listing. I'm going to "test-driven design" it to show its powers. It will be written in VC# in Visual Studio 2008, which requires .NET 3.5. If you want more information (such as how to download that and such), you can email me at wolfgangsenff@hotmail.com.
It is text-based for now, but will probably be moved to graphical in the future; I just don't want to bother going that route now. This will be mostly for people who know little about program design, but also complete beginners. However, I do think some more advanced coders can gain insight into different ways to think about modeling systems - I pride myself on my ability to think about things in a way that works really well for designing systems.
Does that sound okay?
If you go through with this (nothing against you, it's very common for projects to go unfinished), it would be awesome to learn a bit about how to properly design and code a game. In other words, go for it!
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this is really helpful. i'll probably have a question in the near future =). i'll be starting my cs degree in a few weeks! i was wondering do you know of a website where you can post code and people review it? i have been making a black jack card counting game and when i finish i was hoping to get my code looked over so i could become aware of bad habits. thanks
oh ya forgot the game is programmed in c++ with allegro, which is a game programming library.
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On August 06 2008 12:29 AcrossFiveJulys wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2008 11:38 Aerox wrote:
Request to bold the questions at least or something for a little better readability. Just highlight the lines and press the big B button.
The game development postings is OK with me. I've already bookmarked this blog.
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Question:
I am doing my final semester of CS. Well, sort of. I am currently mulling over the decision to go for a programming project or industrial training as my elective. I would finish earlier if I went with the programming project but the catch is that I only have 14 weeks while taking industrial training would require me to stay back for another semester. And yeah, I still have 3 other subjects alongside the elective.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you think the stay back is worth the industrial training or should I just choose PP, finish, graduate, and get out in the real world, earn bigger moolah than being an intern?
Do you think I'd have enough time if I chose to make a 2D game as my programming project? would it be too much work to make the game multiplayer? I wonder if making a MUD would be just fine for a project?
I am obviously trying to get into the game industry.
My skill level would be having gone through a couple of 2D game programming books (WinAPI) but no fully self implemented games of my own yet (which is why I'm considering my first to be my programming project). Main languages are the popular 3 Cs and Java. Do I have enough time?
I haven't picked up DX yet. Trying to start in the next week or so(no matter which elective i choose). It's very possible to make a game on your own in a semester. I did it for a programming projects class my 2nd year and it was a lot of fun... there's nothing like coding your own game
What kind of game did you code? 2D? 3D? Which framework/library? How many levels? Multiplayer or not?
I guess I may go with the programming project. I just need to estimate what types of games are feasible in a semester.
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EPT
