Posts by blacklight

To reply to the "tutorial" suggestion... um, I wouldn't suggest "plain WIN32 API" anymore as a good way to learn/develop GUIs. It's outdated and clunky to use, albeit its a good "low-level" way of understanding GUIs.

Visual C++ 2005 is free and easy to use. It combines the visual ease of development of "visual-basic-style" development with the underlying power and speed of C++. I don't know if that holds true in VC2003.

For the "run a console application" question, if you use the .net framework ; there is a helper object that may prove useful:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.diagnostics.process_members.aspx

You build such an object, initialize it with the application name you want to launch, then you read the output or the error messages.

but... do that kind of trick only when your basic GUI framework is built and you have more experience with objects.

For linux GUI programming, I recommend Qt. It's a clean and feature-complete API... and if you ever want to get your application running on windows, there is a qt-free edition for win32 too (although it's not officially supported by trolltech, and you must distribute your source code along with the app, in order to comply with the license)

wxWidgets seems ok too, but i'm not sure it has a GUI designer as top notch as Qt. A bit higher level, there is kdevelop... that would manage a Qt project easily, no need to mess up with makefiles.

Before buying an expensive book; you can try to find a good directX tutorial online. Do the first lessons to see if you have enough motivation to go through a book :D

DirectX:
http://www.drunkenhyena.com/cgi-bin/dx9.pl

OpenGL:
http://nehe.gamedev.net/

But digging in directX or OpenGL is maybe far from "game programming", I'm pretty sure there are some high level libraries that will simplify your task and permit you to focus on the game mechanics and assets :-)
A quick google gave me http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/ and http://www.ogre3d.org/ ; and i'm pretty sure those are still a bit low-level.

Another path is to modify an existing game (for example: half life is moddable)

it finds stuff but what do I do now?

For the X errors, add

-L/usr/X11R6/lib -lX11

probably "-lXext -lXmu" may be also needed, but I saying that from memory of x-windows compilation, I dont have linux hands-on experience with allegro.

No one can point me where I need to go for DOS graphics, unless that can be done with OpenGL.

If you want to do your own rasterization, "pixel by pixel" display; yes you can do that with openGL. Just create a openGL window; then there are calls like glDrawPixels() , you give this function an array in the format you choose (for example, array of RGBA bytes for a 32 bit display). OpenGL offers double-buffering and full-screen mode.
If you want color-index mode, it's offered by openGL but I never used it; RGB modes are more powerful anyway.

So... with openGL you can go to the lower level and build your polygons pixel by pixel if you really want to... but you can also use the hardware acceleration to do that and let openGL do all the dirty work. :-)

Do you think that OpenGL is good for someone of my experience -- pretty much a complete beginner to 3D graphics? If so, is it simple to learn and use?

Yes yes yes, thats the best 3D library out there for those who want to learn "from the ground up". (like you already started very well, if you made your own wireframe 3D view). DirectX APIs are a total mess and will be thrown to garbage with the next DirectX10; in my opinion directX is absolutely not a good learning platform.

There are good online tutorials about openGL (see neHe tutorials). But my favorite everyday …

TurboC compiler and libraries are quite limited... more any more serious coding I suggest you install "recent" compilers. There are tons of free compilers around (VC2005 express is free to use for a while, with that you can do graphics with windows GDI or directX... ).
But heh, I dont criticize; since I built my first tools with TurboC, and it's a learning platform like another. I'm just wondery "why"... (2006!!! not 1996!!!)

Cool DOS graphics can be made with the "Allegro" library; it simplify all the SVGA usage; letting you focus on what you want to do (your 3D graphics!). Not sure it's compatible with TurboC; you may want to check out DJGPP compiler.

good luck