Crispin Wellington wrote:
> On Mon, 2002-10-14 at 10:22, Jason Stechschulte wrote:
> 
>>I know there are a lot of programmers on this list, so I'm hoping
>>someone might be kind enough to help me.  I already am a so so
>>programmer.  I'm comfortable using Perl and PHP and I have a little
>>experience in C/C++.  
>>
>>I'm now thinking of taking the next step and starting a real programming
>>project.  I'm thinking of writing a game.  My question is this: Does
>>anyone know of a book that doesn't teach you a language, rather it
>>teaches you  how to do an entire project.  I'm more interested in
>>something that says by going through this book you will create this.
>>Then the book focuses on that one task from planning to final
>>implementation.  
> 
> 
> I don't know of any book like that, but there are many books that are
> language specific, and can be interpreted in terms of your own chosen
> language.
> 
> If your project is 2D and you want to develop it rapidly and robustly,
> and want it to run on all sorts of machines (not just linux) then I
> recommend using Python with the pygame library (bindings to the SDL
> libraries). Python has extremely string OO including multiple
> inheritance. Pygame is a high powered and cross platform game dev API.
> The games will run on Windows, Mac, Linux and BSD. Its also an ideal
> chance to teach yourself IMHO the second best programming language in
> existence today. Ive been programming computers for over 10 years in C,
> C++, Java, Assembler, Perl, PHP and when I found Python it was like
> discovering a hidden secret. Only LISP will server you better (all IMHO
> of course... no fundamentalist language flame wars please).
> 
> Python can be slow, especially in large nested loops, but coding half
> Python, half C is very, very easy (many, many times easier than in other
> languages like Perl, Java etc). So in the end you may wish to optimise
> parts of your code in C functions. Optimisation is always best at the
> end of a project (Python even has a complete code profiling system built
> in so you can work out where delays are!). But with todays computing
> power, and a 2d game, your bound to have oodles of CPU cycles to burn.
> Check out the pygame website www.pygame.org
> 
> You can distribute your python games as standalone executables (carrying
> all .dll or .so dependencies) using "Installer" when its finished. You
> can even sell it (Python's license is quite liberal). 
> 
> If you want to sell your game, and need it to be *high speed* binaries,
> then C/C++ is probably the way to go.
> 
> Kind Regards
> Crispin Wellington

While most games are developed for Windows systems, you can find a lot 
of useful information at gamedev.net and such.
Also, the book "Linux Game Programming" might be a help, even though it 
doesn't take you through a project so much as describe the tools 
available and what can be done.
Most books don't really take you through the process of a game, but 
"Game Architecture and Design" is a nice read that takes you through the 
design process in a way that will make you organized.
The "Game Programming Gems" books might be a good reference for 
different coding samples/ideas.

As far as walking you through from start to finish, Gamedev.net is your 
best bet. Warning, it is Windows-centric mostly, although there is a 
*nix forum and I find the forums to be very helpful.
Hope this helps!
Gianfranco


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