Coding newbie... sort of.

[aliem]

Hello... I'm currently taking classes in C++ and have already learned Visual Basic on my own time. I want to get more advanced more quickly in C++... so I'm wondering what are some good thick books for me to dig through to learn on my own time. I'm planning on making a mod for Half Life 2 that will be almost a total conversion of the game... not even using guns (sports games). I can already do modelling in 3dsmax (i have legal version not pirated) so I'm going to be doing lead programming, lead modelling and some mapping (have worldcraft experience). Two of my friends are doing sound, texturing, more mapping and maybe a little programming after they learn it. I'm hoping the mod won't just be another throw away like there are a million right now... I actually think we can do a good job. So I'd just like some names and authors of some good programming books.

 

[Fallout2man]

http://www.cplusplus.com

They have some nice tutorials on the basic concepts of C/C++ as well as a somewhat complete standard library refference.

Personally I've been looking for a good refference manual for all of the standard libraries (Cplusplus.com is missing STL refference and their iostream refference is a bit confusing). If you've got Visual Studio then MS usually includes a copy of the MSDN which also has some helpful refference to the Win32 API.

 

[Lordblackadder]

Do you really need to be a programmer in order to put a game together?

I thought there are ready packages and patches that you simply splice
and go.

Well I guess one still needs to know the basic structure, but you can probably rip that off of existing games simply by looking at the code.

 

[aliem]

i thank the three of you.

 

[Echelon]

depends on what you wanna achieve. sure there are some packages which allow you to put some 2d or 3d games together with dx7 quality. ut the engine and most of the stuff is already predefined and they're more for learning purposes. if you want to put a "real" game together you need to be able to code.