New News

Sorry blog, I haven't been posting on you lately. I've been busy with graduating from high school and spending time with family and my girlfriend. Now that I'm done with high school I'll have plenty of time to do three very important things:

1. Get My Drivers License
2. Apply to Universities
3. Study C++
   

My C++ study material includes:

• Bjarne Stroustrup's Homepage (Bjarne Stroustrup invented C++)
  
• C++: A Dialog, e-book recommended by some helpful people at http://gamedev.net
• Thinking In C++, another book recommended by peeps at gamedev
• C++ For Dummies (9 books in 1) and another book I have

I was reading C++: A Dialog a couple weeks ago, and surprisingly for a free-online book, I found it much more comprehensive (and concise) than C++ For Dummies. C++ For Dummies sometimes makes irrelevant analogies -- mostly about Arnold Schwarzenegger. I'll provide the blog with some examples of C++ For Dummies' faults later.

Programmers Hate Books

I'm excited to continue reading about object oriented programming in the second book of C++ For Dummies. There hasn't been much activity here for a while since I've been busy with school and the fears of life, but I think I'm back now and can dedicate at least an hour of my day to C++. Some programmers really hate books. Well, programmers don't really hate books, but I think the consensus among programmers about books is pretty bad right now. I can understand where they are coming from. I hate finding mistakes in the source code in a book for learning how to program. I'd expect an English grammar mistake from a book written by a programmer but not a C++ grammar mistake! Another detail I don't like about C++ For Dummies is when I'm reading a bunch of nonsense that's supposed to make the book entertaining when all I want to do is learn how to program! Before I bought C++ for Dummies, I should have asked for recommendations from people who are already in the video game programming business. I found a lot of helpful, experienced programmers at Gamedev. Anyhow, I'm interested in some of the books recommended by the blog author of Coding Horror

C++ is for "hardcore programmers"

C++ is for "hardcore programmers"

source: some random forum

Where've I Been?

My efforts to master the programming language C++ have come to a halt. Already made, playable video games have come in the way of creation and learning. In other words, I'm seriously distracted playing Final Fantasy IX . Don't hate. Final Fantasy IX is my favorite Final Fantasy out of the other Final Fantasies I've played: Final Fantasy V/III (not sure), Final Fantasy X, and Final Fantasy XII. There are a lot of things I didn't do when I was beating Final Fantasy IX the first time I played. The last time I played, I didn't completely evolve Chocobo. Yes, if you didn't know, you can evolve your Chocobo to walk over mountains and I suspect Chocobo will eventually evolve to fly. Besides not evolving Chocobo, I didn't try to gain all magical/physical abilities in the game through items. I'm doing that now with the help of handy dandy game shark cheats.


About C++. I still remember all the basic stuff: loops, ifs, functions, and inheritance. Anyone If a total noob is reading this post for advice, the best advice that a total noob can get is that computer languages are just languages. You use the language to speak to the computer to get the computer to do what you want. You can translate computer language into plain English. Programming in plain English would take much longer. Languages like C++ are much more concise. There are, however, computer languages that are almost plain English. I think BASIC would be an example of a computer language that is almost just English.

Another very important topic to understand is API (Application Programming Interface). API is code derived from a library of code. You can't use C++ alone to make programs that involve graphics. Well, you can, but you'd have to start from scratch, but thanks to programming libraries you don't have to. Allegro is a programming library. A bunch of more knowledgeable programmers than I am made this library, pretty much from scratch. A programmer can download Allegro and use its public functions and other public stuff within the library. (google: declaring public or private functions in C++) Whatever you use from the library is called the API.

New C++ Game Developing Book Arrived

Yahoo! Google! It´s finally here. I ordered it about 2 weeks ago, and it´s here: Game Programming All In One by Bruno Miguel Teixiera de Sousa. It´s a pretty big book, but Amazon told me of its size before hand: 952 pages including index and contents and a biography of the author. The book was published in 2002 by Premier Press. The book has it´s own website, but I haven´t gone there myself, thus I don´t know if it actually works: http://gpaione.kyuumu.com. The author also says you can go to http://gamedev.net chat if you want to talk to him personally ("Just ask for Akura" he says) so I went there only to find out that he probably hasn´t visited gamedev since he published the book. Anyhow, I met some nice peopel on the Gamedev chat that helped me out with some of the issues I encountered going through the first chapters of the book.

Problems With The Book

1. It was published in 2002. I overlooked this on Amazon. The next time I get a book on C++ I´m going to ask for some references at the Gamedev chat and probably not ask for a book that´s so out of date. I can still learn a lot from this book, but I know I´m going to have to buy another book after this or rent a professional game programmer to teach me about the Source... code.

2. So far, I´ve caught 1 fat error in the question section of Chapter 2. It´s cool that he has a exercise section for the reader to test their knowledge, but it sucks when the answer to the question in the answer section is wrong. You probably want to know the question, here you go:

What would be the value of Result after following operations?

int Result, A, B;
A = 4;
B = 23;
Result = 9 + (A++ - --B) * B

The answer is -471 and I spent at least thirty minutes with a calculator trying to figure out how. I finally went to Gamedev chat to find out that the code is undefined behavior or something. Wierd stuff. For those that don´t know what A++ or --B are, i´m happy to inform that they are Unary Operators.

What´s Wizard(cool) About The Book?

It teaches you how to make a very simple game called Monster and it teaches you about Artificial Inteligence and Physics in programming games.

*adding GameDev to my favorite sites :D*

Finished Book 1

I finished Book 1 of "C++ All In One Desk Reference For Dummies (7 books in 1)" I´m on my way to mastering C++. I understand just about every important topic in C++: variables, operations, conditions, functions, objects, classes, pointers, addresses, inheritance. All that´s missing is understanding arrays and learning a graphics library - whatever that means.


Book 2 of "C++ All In One Desk Reference For Dummies (7 books in 1)" is about UML, Unified Modeling Language. Instead of moving on to Book 2, I´m going to review Book 1 for anything I missed or didn´t grasp. I think I´ve gone a long ways on my journey the past couple of months, and in just a couple weeks I´ll be getting a new book that will teach me about game programming, which "C++ All In One Desk Reference For Dummies (7 books in 1)" doesn´t do for me.

Where I am Now

#include <>
#include <>
#include <>

functions or function prototypes...

main()

{
variable declarations and inititializations;
statements;
sending addresses of variables to parameters that are pointers;
return 0;
}

functions of the function prototypes if there are any

That was not real C++ code; however, those are most of the concepts I understand so far in C++. I understand classes and objects too, but I really haven't gotten there yet. I'm still furthing my understanding of the new operator and pointers.

Primer Plus, Another C++ Book

I´ve been looking into another book: C++ Primer Plus

The For Dummies book I have on C++ sometimes dozes off. For Dummies sometimes just goes into things that don´t aid me in understanding C++ programming.

the Adventure at C

Get it? Adventure at C (Adventure at Sea).

I'm still on book 1 of C++ ALL-IN-ONE DEAK REFERENCE FOR DUMMIES. I'm stuck at pointers *page 119*. Pointers are a confusing concept to me. The book even tells me to meditate on this one. It's not how to change a variable through a pointer or pointing to other things that confuses me. What confuses me is how pointers are used in classes and functions. It's just all unclear to me right now. I want to get a new book:

This book looks like it'll go straight to the point on how pointers are applied in Game programming.

Anyone Interested in Game Programming?

C++ is Ceasy - I mean easy

C++ is turning out to be a very easy language. After going through cplusplus, cprogramming, and C++ For Dummies (7 Books in 1) everything is clear to me. Unlike how I started this blog not too long ago, now I pretty much fully understand how source code is divided into functions among other ways. Source code can be divided into other source code files, classes... Wikipedia has a sweet article on the definition of Application Programming Interface (API) but this concept isn't really important to me now, but it will be when I get farther into C++ for Dummies. API will probably be important to me when I get to half of C++ for Dummies. I'm usually around page 100, still trying to fully understand how dividing source code into files works.

*asking a question about source file directory

Google Trick: C++ in Blogsphere

Finding out if other bloggers in blogger.com have written anything useful about C++ isn't easy. Blogger.com doesn't seem to have its own search engine. Anyway, I bet there's a lot of people out there that don't know about this:



Just type that into the Google search engine and the output will be all web pages pertaining to blogspot.com that contain the term C++.

Why Cplusplusnoob?

I've been trying to understand the basics of C++ for a long time now, and there is a lot I still don't understand. I don't understand how to divide source code into classes or functions yet, and I don't know how # include works to summon the functions of already compiled programs (e.g. string.exe). I'm a real newbie at C++ hence the title of this blog.

*I hope that by the end of this year I'll be posting and explaining the source code for 2D games in C++.