Beginning 3D Game Programming

Introduction

Introduction

So You Want to be a Game Developer

Just about every developer I've ever met has at one time or another wanted to be involved in game development. Video games are more than just an idle interest to most: they can be a downright obsession. People become immersed in these virtual worlds and often begin to fantasize about creating such rich fantasy lands themselves.

Don't be fooled by the pretty graphics, the wonderful stories, and the moving musical score. Writing a game is hard work, and it takes a special type of developer to be successful. Aside from the obvious technical talent required, a good game developer should possess other intangibles, such as actually being a gamer. It's not impossible to write great games as a nongamer, but it certainly makes the job more challenging.

Becoming a game developer is certainly no easy task either. Virtually no game development company will hire you without experience, and it's hard to get experience when no one will hire you. There are a few courses and even some schools dedicated to teaching game development. However, the best way to get your foot in the door is to make a demo reel. It shows the prospective employer what you are capable of doing and how you go about doing it.

Reading this book will get you well on your way to producing a compelling demo reel.

Who Should Read This Book?

The most common question I'm asked is why anyone would want to write a game using the .NET framework. Other questions include, "Isn't that just for web server applications?""Isn't it slow?"These are naturally important questions to the game developer(or prospective game developer, as the case may be), but they come from misconceptions about what the .NET framework is.

The .NET framework is not the latest version of the web server, nor is it an extension of any of the server components. It is certainly true that you can create powerful web server applications using the .NET framework; however, there is so much more. It includes a capable client-side Application Programming Interface (API), and with the release of Managed DirectX, virtually the entire DirectX API is now exposed to the .NET developers. It opens up an entirely new array of applications that can be written, including games. To think the .NET framework limits you to server applications is somewhat naïve. It can produce complex client-side applications as well.

The lingering question of performance still remains, and it's not one that I can simply write off. Anytime a "new"language or runtime is introduced, developers are naturally hesitant to adopt it. It wasn't long ago that many games were still written in Assembly because the game developers didn't believe that the C or C++ language was fast enough to do the things they needed to do. The .NET framework is no exception to this rule. Until someone actually proves the performance of the .NET framework, the game developers will look at it with a suspicious eye. Throughout this book are a number of games developed using the .NET runtime exclusively. It's been said that actions speak louder than words, so rather than speak at length about how the performance of the .NET runtime compares to the native world, I let the real-world games in this book make the point.

Why Would I Want to Use the .NET Framework

Anyone who's ever written Windows programs both with and without the .NET Framework recognizes the difficulties of writing even simple Windows applications using the Win32 API. The .NET framework was designed to provide a simpler way to do the common things you need to do in a Windows program and to eliminate many of the things that the average developer doesn't want to worry about, such as memory management.

With developers freed from some of the more mundane tasks, such as spending three days trying to track down a memory leak bug, they can actually add features to the games they are writing. Too many times, great features are cut from a game because of the amount of time dedicated to solving problems that the .NET framework solves for you.

Another interesting feature of the .NET framework is that it is language agnostic. As long as the features being used are Common Language Specification (CLS) compliant, any language that can use CLS-compliant features will work. In the past, the developer who only knew Visual Basic would have a difficult time transitioning to code using strictly C++. Now, the developer using Visual Basic .NET can transition to C# more easily because there are only minor syntax differences between the two languages. The code in this book is written in C#.

Why This Book?

I wrote this book to meet the needs of a development community that has been sorely lacking information on this topic. Too many potential game developers have been turned away because they couldn't find the information they needed. The majority of game development books on the market today cover 2D graphics, which is a nice place to start, but the majority of games written today are fully 3D, and gamers expect that now. It's not that you can't still write a great 2D game, but if that's all you can do, you're limiting yourself needlessly.

This book will not teach you how to write a multimillion-dollar game. This book will give you all the tools and information for you to teach yourself how to develop in-depth, fully 3D games. You will be implementing two complete 3D games during the course of this book, and by the end of this book, you will be able to design and implement your own 3D games and call yourself a game developer. The final game in the book is left as an exercise for you to complete.

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