Archive for the ‘Programming’ Category

I’m such a pansy.

Monday, December 21st, 2009

When it comes to people asking me about making windows in C++, I usually just say “It’s about 300 lines of stuff you wouldn’t understand.” Truth is, I hate writing the windows code. So here’s what I did to get around it (more…)

Posted in Miscellaneous, Programming, Random Ranting | No Comments »

Vectors – Part 1

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

One of the biggest challenges for a game programmer is understanding how to represent position and movement in 2D and 3D space. In this tutorial I will teach you the basics of understanding vectors in 2D and 3D space.

Vectors

For the most part, we use vectors. In math and physics, vectors are usually represented by a direction (angle) and a magnitude (length).
See the diagram below (imagine the hypotenuse as an arrow):

Triangle

Theta (displayed as θ) is your angle in either degrees or radians (I will always talk about angles in degrees). The hypotenuse is the longest side of the triangle (your length or magnitude). The adjacent side is the side that touches the angle you’re working with, the opposite side is the side across from the angle. The adjacent and opposite sides are often your X and Y components, respectively.

(more…)

Tags: c++, graphics, Programming, tutorial, vectors
Posted in Programming, Tutorials | 1 Comment »

Still alive and working.

Monday, December 7th, 2009

I’m still here, just been busy with life.

I’ve mostly been busy programming with OpenGL. I’m hoping to write a few simple tutorials using GLUT to get rid of the nasty Windows code. I’ll also be posting a DevIL image loading tutorial, because there are so painfully few on the internet. Basically, anything I struggle with finding information on, I will post a tutorial for when I get it figured out.

Planned so far:

Making an OpenGL window with GLUT (Windows)
Drawing primitives
Changing view and using a ‘camera’
Light
Materials
Loading textures with DevIL and displaying with OpenGL
Mixing materials and texturing
Putting it all together (Light, materials and textures)

Some extra tutorials

Tips and tricks (skyboxes, skydomes, skyspheres)
Collisions and 3D Vector math (probably split in two tutorials)
Screenshots with OpenGL and DevIL

That’s quite a bit of code to write, so it’ll take me a while. I’ll likely end up writing some over the Christmas break, and during work (working at the IT lab at Humber is boring, but it gives me lots of time to code!).

Anyway, heres a couple screenies of my program!

[View with PicLens]