Shooting Question

[keless]

Too many people rush into programming games without understanding Game States.

this is one of the most important and fundamental aspects of a game engine! When people ignore it, they end up with problems trying to get their application to do more than one thing. Further more, most people rush into trying to get a 'demo' up which focuses on the main playing aspect of their game. Eventually they build an intro/menu/options AROUND their original code, which is ugly and usually a hack. I strongly urge you to stop and do some research before rushing into a big project like an FPS or ANY game at all.

I know there arent many resources for such a thing, without going out and buying a $60 book that will tell you specifically how they implemented something, but without describing why.

For this reason, I have written the following set of tutorials introducing new game engine programmers to the basic concepts of a game engine. Including not only Game States and basic State Machines, but Resource Management, basic AI, a Level Editor and even a drop-down console.

These tutorials can be found here:
http://www.skyesurfer.net/keless/vgp/

The tutorials build two very basic game engines with very simple graphics. Its not the graphics or the games being focused on, but the engine and the basic theories behind it. This means without doing a whole lot of work, you can get ideas that will help you out greatly in your own projects.

Again, I STRONGLY urge you or anyone who is trying to make their first game to read and do these tutorials. It will save you a LOT of trouble. They are free, and you can do what you like with them. I'll even answer any questions you might have in Email/Forum/AIM.

The above tutorials are in win32/OGL, not IrrLicht. If you want an IrrLicht only example, and you think you're more advanced than this, look at the code provided in IrrLicht Tetris. It uses a heirarchical state-class system that really rocks:
http://www.skyesurfer.net/keless/IrrLicht/tetris/