Game Programming in C++ Start to Finish

Welcome to the CD-ROM



Note from the Author:

Adventures through game programming is an exciting and fascinating journey. Whereas in the early days there was not enough game programming information or resources available for the beginner, nowadays there almost feels like there is too much. The goal of this project was to teach you enough about game programming to give you some foundations and helpful tools to creating your own games on the PC.

As with other tools and libraries, ensure you are working with the latest version of the Peon library (or to find errata information) at http://gameprogrammingstarttofinish.wazooinc.com.

Good luck, have fun, and keep coding!

Sincerely,
Erik Yuzwa

About the CD-ROM

  1. SDL û http://www.libsdl.org û Simple DirectMedia Layer
    The main SDL libraries, including SDL, SDL_Image, SDL_Mixer and SDL_Net of this popular open source cross-platform game creation toolkit.
  2. CEGUI û http://www.cegui.org.uk û Crazy EddieÆs GUI System û The popular open source cross-platform GUI framework.
  3. Lua û http://www.lua.org û The Lua Interpreter û The popular open source scripting library.
  4. OpenAL û http://www.openal.org û The Open Audio Library û The popular cross platform high performance audio library.
  5. ReplicaNet û http://www.replicanet.com û ReplicaNet û The popular object oriented networking middleware solution. Note: When performing the install of this product, please use the license key generated for this book.
  6. Tokamak û http://www.tokamakphysics.com û The Tokamak Physics Library û Use this powerful physics library to handle almost any physics calculations in your game world.
  7. Audacity û http://audacity.sourceforge.net û The popular Audacity sound utility which is used to edit and work with various audio file formats.
  8. BitmapFontBuilder û http://www.lmnopc.com/bitmapfontbuilder/ - This handy utility is used to create bitmap images of your favorite system fonts.
  9. CVSNT û http://www.march-hare.com/cvspro/ - This tool provides a Windows flavor for the popular CVS code repository system.
  10. Doxygen - http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/ - This popular utility is used to generate navigation friendly HTML documentation of your code.
  11. InnoSetup - http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php - This Windows favorite is used to create and package installation scripts for your software.

Demos

  1. Autodesk 3ds Max8 - http://www.autodesk.com/ - The popular 3D studio modeler product which can create effective and realistic models for any 3D environment.
  2. Graphic Remedy - http://www.gremedy.com/ - The popular gDEBugger « tool which is used to hunt down and isolate problems with your OpenGL commands.
  3. MoleBox - http://www.molebox.com/ - The popular MoleBox Pro « utility which is used to package together the assets of your game into a compressed binary format.

System Requirements

To compile the accompanying source code provided on this CD-ROM you will need a PC capable of compiling C++ modules. The sample projects included are compatible with either Visual Studio 6.0 SP6 or Visual Studio .NET 2003 (other compilers are an option but are untested at this time).
To run the sample game, you will need any version of Windows (newer than NT4.0) with at least 1 GHz CPU and a minimum of 256MB of RAM. You will need a 3D accelerated video card with at least 32MB of onboard VRAM and the latest drivers from your vendor.