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I have a decent knowledge of sdl,opengl and fmod. i am looking for a recent tutorial or book on the basic of making a game engine. Most of the book and tutorial i found are using old dead library like glut and glaux or simply outadated like nehe tutorial.

I made a tower defence for a school exam (wich was pretty nice) working 100% without any bug but there is no real structure i got a main.cpp with over 2000 lines . its a litle messy =p download link: http://www.filehost.ws/k7f62z787yd4 by the way i do not own the copyright of this game because it was made for my school. i can share it freely but nobody cant make any money from it without me and institut desgraff allowing it. do not claim to have made this game and etc...

The one thing i would really like to understand is the structure and how everything is linked togheter.

i do not want to use a tutorial to copy it or anything else like that but simply to understand the structure behind it. no server stuff.

i would really apreciate if the tutorial/book use opengl and sdl because i really love to use them

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2 Answers 2

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I honestly think that a book on a game engine can be only worst for a beginner, i also read some some of this books and most of them are wroted with just 1 platform in mind, without focusing on the language, and in the end if you learn how to initialize 1 context for your rendering you are blessed.

I think that you have to focus on your language, simply because the fact that you can master or not your library of choice only depends on how good you are with that language, if you can't say what a library does, it's probably your fault about some missing concepts about the language.

The architecture and the design of your application also heavily relies on your know-how about the choosen language.

Most of the books about rendering techniques are good for teaching you what to expect from a certain context or a certain use of the hardware, what your application really will do only depends on what your write in the code and a book about a game engine can only be a bad refactoring of some design patterns oriented to rendering and you end up using only this patterns with a closed mind.

Do yourself a favor and buy a book about advanced techniques with the C++ rather than one about a pseudo game engine design, or buy a book that can give you a broad view about the rendering world without focusing on the programming libraries at all like this one.

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thanks a lot for your advice you cleared my mind. also for my game i did not have enough time to make a real clean structure. But yeah a advanced c++ book would be usefull and would be what i need for the lvl i am currently. im learning new stuff of c++ every project and having more knowledge would give me a better path on how to build a good engine –  cedric Aug 16 '12 at 19:49
    
@cedric you should rate and/or accept the answer according to your original question, don't forget to do that! –  user827992 Aug 16 '12 at 21:24
    
sorry im new to this forum. im actually reading the template book. really intersting information. –  cedric Aug 17 '12 at 2:03
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Given that you have already made a working game and are comfortable with sdl and opengl I'd rank you as more than just a beginner, although I'm sure compared to all the things that you want to know it certainly feels that way!

The book I'm recommending is not language specific (though the code examples are in c++ they are easy to follow), not Graphics API specific (though it does mention opengl and directx in areas where there are implementation differences) and is NOT a programming guide (in that it does not show how to program the things it explains).

What is does, and does brilliantly, is to explain techniques people have used in game engine development for real games of different styles. It provides tonnes of links to websites and discussions to help you further your knowledge in specific areas and it (and for me is the important part) fires the imagination.

What I mean by that last one is that as you read how other people have done things and the kind of techniques they used, you will automatically start thinking about what you could do with these ideas and how they fit into the projects you are excited about.

Here's the link for the book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Game-Engine-Architecture-Jason-Gregory/dp/1568814135/

I hope it helps you, I find myself picking it up often just to flick through and grab ideas for what I want to play around with next!

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