OpenGL is the Open Graphics Library and it is maintained by the Kronos Group, which is a consortium of top-tier companies that include board members such as ATI nVidia, Apple, IBM, and more. Microsoft used to be on the consortium, but left and decided to make DirectX, a competing closed graphics library that only runs on Windows (at least without some sort of emulation layer or wrapper like Wine or Cedega).
This is the second part in what should be a four part series on how to program your very own Pong clone. The first article went over setting up your environment in your favorite OS, now this part gets into some of the mechanics or details on how to actually get started.
Before I start with anything, we have to think about simple animation. In fact, animation is just simply a series of static images, with each image slightly displaced from the last.
So what does that mean? (more…)
There’s a great article on Beyond3D about the technology of a 3D engine. The article’s split up into parts and part two was just released (after a several month wait!). Part one discusses a lot of the general concepts for a 3D engine design in an easy to read and abstract level, but part two goes into deeper detail. Both make for interesting reads, though part two sort of jumps into an ocean at no discernible point. (It covers scenegraphs I know, but why start there? Why not animation? Look for my own part two of programming a pong clone to animation and early concepts in game programming.)
If you ever wanted to program your own video game, this is a good place to start. I remember when I started learning programming it was surprisingly difficult to find out how to make an honest and simple game. In fact, after reading most programming books, the only type of game you could make would be a Zork clone.
You are in a dank cave and you can see nothing, but you hear a walrus in the distance.
What do you do?
- Look for the walrus.
- Watch The Big Lebowski
- Decide that the walrus is Paul.
This is not to knock Zork in any way! Zork is a clever, well written, and extremely well thought out game (even if my pseudo-quote isn’t). But in a world where we’re spoiled by moving objects, you want to know how to move and interact with something on screen. The problem is it takes a lot of different knowledge sets to get the job done. But in this post, you’ll get started learning how to make your very own Pong clone. (more…)