how to design board games in c++

[bvgsrs]

Hi,
I have the basic knowledge in C++ and C. I am now looking for workign on some game programming.
Well, in C++ how can I get those buttons, text boxes frames etc as we have in Java or VB.
would you suggest me some books or links also, that can help me in this activity.

Thanks.

[thekashyap]

Use MS Visual C++ (get Visual Studio).. you can find lotsa online tutorials for that..

[Ancient Dragon]

Here is a link to basic win32 api gui programming. It doesn't teach you how to write games but it does introduce you to adding buttons and other controls/resources to windows.

[~s.o.s~]

> I have the basic knowledge in C++ and C.
Better start off with some console based games. They would help you in concentrating on the logical aspects of the game without wasting your time in developing the GUI.

Plus commercial games make use of API's like DirectX and OpenGL and not just plain old Win32. Once a console based program is ready, making a graphical version of it won't be much difficult.

[phalaris_trip]

During this year we (my college year) have covered far less than 60% of basic C++ syntax.. we never touched on pointers, structures, classes, namespaces or any modularization... whatever else I learned I learned as a hobby.

And yet, sometime in the third week of next year we will start using this graphics package: http://www.libsdl.org/
I guess what that says is that it must be relatively easy!

According to my next year's lecturer, there's only about 3 functions or something.. draw screen, draw sprite and something else.. it focuses mostly on your algorithms, and you need to have a decent knowledge of maths to use it..

Here is a link to someone's page from my college:
http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~wfoc/programs/
There you can download the game he made using this package, just as a taster of what you can achieve..

[Sturm]

if your learning sdl look at some of my sdl functions under c++ code snippets. I think you will find them helpful. I know I do!

[bvgsrs]

hi,
well when I was doing some google on this subject ... I came across these terms like OpenGL ... windows programming etc ...
so would one of you please let me know what actually is OpenGL and what are the tools IDE etc what we require to work with it.

is OpenGL different from Visual C++ ??? can the programs of OpenGL be compiled and executed using the Turbo c or are there are any seperate editors / compilers for the same ?

Thanks for all the links and suggestions that I have been receiving ....

[~s.o.s~]

Your concepts seem to be shaky.

OpenGL and DirectX are API's, or simply put, libraries which you can use in your program to render graphics on the screen. There are other alternatives, but these two, by far, are the best and famous. DirectX is exclusively used in almost all commercial games and is properietary to Windows.

Visual C++ is a tool, C++ is the language used for developing games and OpenGL is the API which provides the graphics rendering functionality. Your game in C++ won't look much different than a normal C++ with the exception of some API calls and mandatory entry point functions.

Considering that a primitive set of functions is provided by OpenGL and DirectX, beginners almost always make use of Game Engines which act as wrappers around these API and help in developing cross platform games(if OpenGL is supported by your game engine).

Read here for more information. But still, considering that the little information you have on this subject, it would be better to stick to console games for a while, till you get the real feel of _Game Development_.

[Sturm]

if you really really want to get into graphics development, allegro is a very very easy API.

here for tutorials and here for website.

[bvgsrs]

Thanks for all the responses. They were quiet helpful. I am inching very slowly in the process of learning to program. Also one of links that was quiet helpful is http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread50370.html
It contains hyperlinks to various topics on C and C++ programming.

Ram Sharma