XeNTaX

Hello there!

I recently taught myself basic coding (started with classic C and then iterated to some object oriented languages like Objective-C and PHP) and now that I understand some of the basics I would like to get in depth with a language more related to games like C# or C++ but I'm kind lost on where to start. Are there any design patterns, beginner terminology, I should look up first?

Most of the work I've done has been related to the MvC design pattern (for websites and apps) and I have also worked with some frameworks. Learning the syntax of C and read code was relatively easy but understanding the logic behind of why the code is written in a certain way is what broke my head most of the time. I don't want to carry that over to this stage of my learning process.

Any tips, direction?
Thanks!

daukun wrote:Hello there!

I recently taught myself basic coding

Hi,
that's what I did ages ago and it's the worst thing you can ever do, imho.
(But I guess you used a Programmer's Guide to C or whatever?)

If not then buy a good book or - if you've access to a university library, search there.
(I nether used one - but there might be good inet tutorials, too.)

Any tips, direction?
Thanks!

If you're using Visual Studio (express is free) I would suggest to investigate here:
http://www.codeguru.com/
Chose any project of your interest, try to understand the code and maybe change/improve it.

You might start with a simple one like recursively scanning a drive directory for filenames.

cheers

Thanks for your reply!

Haha yeah it was not an easy road to follow lol.

Hmm thanks for your suggestions, I don't know how I didn't came across with that site. I was actually going to read an old book of design patterns by the gang of four but going through the reviews I found out that it's way too outdated? On a more related search I found this one "3D Graphics for Game Programming by 3D Graphics for Game Programming. Seems like a really good book.

Looking by how the scripts are written, most of the things I can identify are loops, iterations to get paths, filenames, etc. Besides that, most of them read like greek to me lol.

May I ask how you got started reverse engineering game file formats?

daukun wrote:I was actually going to read an old book of design patterns by the gang of four but going through the reviews I found out that it's way too outdated?

Don't know it - but some basic principles never change. And sometimes old books shed a light on how we got to the place where 3D development is nowadays.

May I ask how you got started reverse engineering game file formats?

I'm pretty sure it was when stumbling over a wavefront obj file. I imported it into a 3D software (guess it was blender).

But I had to realize that games use binary files instead of obj.
Since I always hated "black boxes" I tried to transform these black boxed binaries into something understandable like obj.

And well, there was no book to read and I coded my own IEEE754 floating point conversion routine
because I didn't know that you can do it in C as simple as this:

float *pFloat ;

pFloat = (float*) pFileBuffer ;
fprintf( stream, "%f ", *pFloat) ;

Oh I see, well that pretty much what I was thinking on my head. But before trying to understand how these blackboxes works, it would be advisable to understand how a simple obj works?