How to make a game in C++ ?

[lucyaurora]

Okay ...Ive learnt
Iterations and If
Functions
Arrays (1 dim and 2 dim)
Structures
...In C++ as of now ...(Im still in school learning)

I know that a good game would require "classes"....but i dont currently know how they work...

So is there any way I can come up with a decent game ? something Ive been wanting to do as far as I can remember in my childhood :)

You dont need to write a long story ...An Informative Site link would be just about perfect ..
Any help you can give about just anything you think might help in me designing my first game is welcomed :)
I dont know how to begin.....I just need to know that then i can get going myself ..

Any suggestions will be much appreciated /Any trolling will be much abused :)
christmas poems

[mikrosfoititis]

Well, what kind of expectations do you have in building a game? How do you imagine it is going to look like; Because if you're planning to build some 3D first person shooter with awesome graphics rather than a simple tic-tac-toe board, then you're gonna need a lot more than just "classes", lot more than c++, to be precise.

[thines01]

Here is a video of someone talking about a c++ project with Allegro.

Here is a page talking about the basics of Allegro.

As @mikrosfoititis states: It really depends on your expectations.
Where do you want it to run (PC, Phone, Dedicated Game Box)?
Do you eventually expect to sell it?

[Fbody]

If you already know about Data Structures, you already know more about classes than you realize. "Under the hood" a struct and a class are the same. The only major difference is that a struct has a default access level of "public" while a class has a default access level of "private". Here is a link to the first of several pages on data structures in a much larger tutorial.

May I suggest the book Beginning C++ Through Game Programming by Michael Dawson? There are a couple chapters in there about classes, and it's game-programming-specific. It's not the greatest book in the world (I have Second Edition, Third Edition may be better), but you will learn from it and it should hold your interest. To be able to create full-fledged games you'll need a lot more knowledge about General Science (Physics, Chem., etc), Computer Science (Algorithms, Hardware, etc.), Math (Algebra, Trig, etc.), C++ and other Libraries that this book doesn't cover. But this should get you started.

As a side note, you'll also probably want to learn a little about Creative Writing. I'm in the process of reading a book titled The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design by Flint Dille and John Zuur Platten. This gets into the creative/artistic aspects of Video Game Writing such as creating characters (descriptions, psyches/personalities, backstories, etc.) and worlds (environment, history, etc.) rather than actual coding.

If you perform searches on Amazon (or similar), you should be able to find similar titles to either of these books as well.

[WaltP]

Any suggestions will be much appreciated /Any trolling will be much abused :)

And I'm wondering, as a moderator, just what kind of abuse you are thinking about? Remember the Member Rules. You can get banned by abusing others here... :icon_wink:

[ishaan3731]

Dude i wud suggest u to create a maze game.....ie treasure hunt game...u wont have any graphics in that but u can still use structures to create such game....add mines to ur maze.which decrease ur life....and mushrooms to ur maze which increase ur life.....use getch function to get input of user...abt the direction{n,s,e,w}..........store treasure at a particular location....also include hints at particular locations.....

just chk robert lafore.......for similar basic version of sch game!!!!

[Sharpsignal]

A great basic game to write in a console app is a black jack game where you just draw your cards using ascii characters.

[Tumlee]

Are you talking about before your class is finished, or in the long term?

If it's the latter, I recommend starting simple, like with a 2D game with simple sound effects. I highly recommend learning how to use the SDL library for this, as it has some pretty simple methods for drawing pictures to the screen, playing sounds, and getting input from the keyboard and mouse. There are tutorials all over the net which you can learn from.

Also, note that you don't really need classes to make a game, they just really make it much simpler and human-readable to write game logic. In the days when plain vanilla C was popular, you could get away with using structs and using function pointers to have different objects behave differently (although it could get pretty messy).

Since you've already learned how to use structs, you're already halfway home when it comes to learning how to use classes. The really big features that will be helpful in game design are virtual functions, inheritance, and polymorphism.

You can start with what I did when I first started with game programming, just remake Pong. It's extremely simple and will get you used to making two objects interact with eachother, as well as using classes correctly.

Here is a video of someone talking about a c++ project with Allegro.

I wouldn't recommend Allegro. It lacks quite a few features that would be useful in game design, and from my experience it is very unstable.

Because if you're planning to build some 3D first person shooter with awesome graphics rather than a simple tic-tac-toe board, then you're gonna need a lot more than just "classes", lot more than c++, to be precise.

Most professional games are written in C++. So no, you don't really need "more than c++". Popular titles such as Doom, Quake, the Call of Duty series, everything made with the Source Engine, and every iPhone/iPad game on the planet are written in either C++, Objective-C, or ye olde C.

[mikrosfoititis]

So no, you don't really need "more than c++"

No I'd have to disagree with that. The basics of a game could be covered with some good knowlegde of programming. A real 3D game though would inquire a lot of physics and mathematical knowledge combined to make it work. That's my point of view.

[Tumlee]

Well, if you're going to say that, you're going to also need a keyboard, a screen, and a pair of hands. ;)

I stand by what I said; as far as coding goes, you really don't need to switch to a different programming language.

[LdaXy]

nice suggestions, but seeing as the user already knows how to use data structures, he should start off with something a little bit harder than a black jack game. for a first time game programmer, pong is ok, but that would assume that the user understands some basic WIN32 programming (non CLI forms and whatnot) assuming that pong could be created as a text based game is ludicrous.

the best suggestion I could would to program a simple text based game. they do not require graphics, only user input which can be controlled extremely easily in the C++ console.
not only will it who the user the basics of game development, but also how a game should progress and interact with the user. once he/she feels ready they could tackle some basic opengl rendering, or make a more complex game using the sdk and/or language of their choice.

tumlee is correct, you have no need to switch languages, as long as you are proficient in C++ enough to make decent programs. however it is noted that some of the other languages have well maintained game engines like PyGame for python, DarkGDK for VB, the opengl wrapper for Java 1.6 -Minecraft was buit off of this, i think- and XNA + DirectX for C#. there is no standard language for game development; let alone the thousands of sdks for C alone. experiment with a text based game, try some other languages and sdks and see what happens.