Book Image

OpenGL Game Development By Example

By : Stephen Madsen, Robert Madsen
Book Image

OpenGL Game Development By Example

By: Stephen Madsen, Robert Madsen

Overview of this book

OpenGL is one of the most popular rendering SDKs used to develop games. OpenGL has been used to create everything from 3D masterpieces running on desktop computers to 2D puzzles running on mobile devices. You will learn to apply both 2D and 3D technologies to bring your game idea to life. There is a lot more to making a game than just drawing pictures and that is where this book is unique! It provides a complete tutorial on designing and coding games from the setup of the development environment to final credits screen, through the creation of a 2D and 3D game. The book starts off by showing you how to set up a development environment using Visual Studio, and create a code framework for your game. It then walks you through creation of two games–a 2D platform game called Roboracer 2D and a 3D first-person space shooter game–using OpenGL to render both 2D and 3D graphics using a 2D coordinate system. You'll create sprite classes, render sprites and animation, and navigate and control the characters. You will also learn how to implement input, use audio, and code basic collision and physics systems. From setting up the development environment to creating the final credits screen, the book will take you through the complete journey of creating a game engine that you can extend to create your own games.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
OpenGL Game Development By Example
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Into the third dimension!


You already live in a world with three dimensions. You can walk forward and backward, side to side, and jump up or duck. The reality of three dimensions becomes even more apparent if you are flying or even swimming.

Most 2D games operate by allowing the player to move left and right, or jump up or down. This is what we did when we created RoboRacer2D. In this type of 2D game, the missing dimension is depth. Our Robot could not move further away from us or closer to us. Considering that we were drawing him on a flat screen, it shouldn't be too surprising that he was limited to two dimensions.

Simulating 3D

Of course, artists found a way around this limitation hundreds of years ago by observing that as an object gets farther away from us, it gets smaller, and as it gets closer to us it gets larger. So, a simple way to represent 3D in a 2D world is to simply draw the more distant objects as smaller objects. 2D games learned this trick early on and used it to simulate...