Irrlicht Engine

Well, after killing countless over strained brain cells by beating my head against the wall, i've come to the conclusion being an artist in a programmers world sucks. I've got the completely sdrawkcab ssa way of thinking for this. I can whip up a decent looking ship model in minutes, but a simple hello world? HOURS! I could have had at least a quarter of the content for my game done by now, but no freaking programmers showed up on the forum I'm doing this to benefit. Not one! Not a single artist either. And we've got boatloads of both! Lazy ******. Sad part is, I know computers backwards, forwards, upside down, and blinfolded. I can write bash script. C-script isn't even that much of a problem. But C++ kicks my @ss every time! There's a conspiracy. It's the squirrels man! ......Wow, the complete meltdown of my brain posted on a forum for everyone to read, and no one to care about. Shiny. I'm off to get my sorry rear fragged playing TFC. Hopefully tomorrow will shine some new light on more than the shiny new dents in my computers casing.

I wonder...
I know how you feel.... though I prefer Quake 2.

http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... 0403#70403

no single 3d modeler responded

Kannon wrote:Well, after killing countless over strained brain cells by beating my head against the wall, i've come to the conclusion being an artist in a programmers world sucks. I've got the completely sdrawkcab ssa way of thinking for this. I can whip up a decent looking ship model in minutes, but a simple hello world? HOURS! I could have had at least a quarter of the content for my game done by now, but no freaking programmers showed up on the forum I'm doing this to benefit. Not one! Not a single artist either. And we've got boatloads of both! Lazy ******. Sad part is, I know computers backwards, forwards, upside down, and blinfolded. I can write bash script. C-script isn't even that much of a problem. But C++ kicks my @ss every time! There's a conspiracy. It's the squirrels man! ......Wow, the complete meltdown of my brain posted on a forum for everyone to read, and no one to care about. Shiny. I'm off to get my sorry rear fragged playing TFC. Hopefully tomorrow will shine some new light on more than the shiny new dents in my computers casing.

Have you tried making game mods? Do you want to make a game engine, or a game?


If you really want to learn C++ you should learn C first. I highly recommend the book "The C Programming Language" (http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/cbook/) by Kernighan and Ritchie. You should learn the basics of C and pointers before you go to C++, IMO.

For C++, the best book is "Teach yourself C++" by Al Stevens (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/155828 ... 45?ie=UTF8)

The "Teach yourself C++ in 24 hours" and the "for dummies" books are horrible, horrible crap. Bjarne Stroustrup's C++ book while good, is not very layman friendly.

I thought "for dummies" was ok, but it leaves a helluva lot of stuff out

A good refrence with lots of examples

http://www.phim.unibe.ch/comp_doc/c_man ... index.html

its mainly c but has some c++

It also sucks to be a programmer with limited/no artists

and it really **** to be an artist without money

What sucks in programming is not the language itself but all the mess around compiling, linking, seting up a project, etc. It's still the same stuf we did 20 years ago, the edit-compile-link cycle with all the problems of unlinked symbols, missing dlls and crap like that.

i think almost anybody can learn to program, but actual art talent is at least half just natural talent. i can't even draw! ive taken 2 classes in sketching and computer graphics but still when i try to draw anything it looks like some 4th grade kid drew it. its mis-shapen, flat-looking, and cartoonish at best.
i have absolutely no ability to capture perspective or to make any of the wonderful visions in my imagination actually come out on paper or the PC screen the way i saw them in my head.

now THAT sucks.

i am able to do a very limited amount of 3d modeling, but any program more complex than milkshape drives me batty. the only thing i can seem to model in 3d that turns out looking decent are weapons and props. unfortunately, my ability to make textures for them consists of basically scouring google images for photographs of stuff, and then photoshopping them together to try and make a crappy texture for it.

also, c++ is not an ideal language to learn first. it's powerful, but really easy to write awful code in c++.
i'll prolly get flamed for this, but try using irrlicht.NET in VB.NET(there's a lot of VB haters lurking on teh interwebs), its a lot friendlier to the user, and easier to quickly make something cool in VB than c++. both c# and VB share the advantage that the project setup and just getting stuff to compile is WAY simpler than c++. so give that a shot

I think Im actualy very lucky to be able to model, draw, program in c++ or whatever language and even create some music. This comes from my old Amiga days where i used to make small games and demos with my friends. The problem is that i do all of this about 1/2 slower than anyone who just secializes in one thing. Theres allways a downside for everything.

wow yeah, the neverending problem, programmers may have a MIT postgrade but they are nothing without artist ^.^

As for ggod books, the best one is C++ How to program from Deitel, just ggogle deitel.

elander wrote:I think Im actualy very lucky to be able to model, draw, program in c++ or whatever language and even create some music. This comes from my old Amiga days where i used to make small games and demos with my friends. The problem is that i do all of this about 1/2 slower than anyone who just secializes in one thing. Theres allways a downside for everything.

How do you manage that? I'm into all the same stuff, but never get good at anything because there's always something else I wanna try out.

Irrlicht is to blame, now! :p I've just bought a midi controller, splashing out all my savings, just to find this engine a few days later and going back to programming (something I hadn't done for 10 years) while said keyboard gathers dust in a corner... the bad part is I'm loving it.

As this is my first post (Hello all!) I feel obliged to thank everyone here in these foruns, I've been learning a lot reading you guys. Now I'll just go back to work fixing my ship's controls...