Well I get better and better each day. Eventually I am going to be able to use all of the OpenGL capabilities and do it well. My question is what is the next step? How can I go from good programmer to excellent game programmer? I don’t understand the industry very well. Are there schools that you guys recommend? I figure about another year and I will know the red book really well and be really good at OpenGL. If I wanted to go a step higher what should I do? What do OpenGL masters do? Mostly game programmers I suspect. I am getting to a point where I would like to do a side project and submit it to a web site for everyone to see. Anyone know of a website that accepts submissions? I am leaning towards making a game since I love games.
Vader… you must confront Vader… only then, a Master you will be.
OpenGL is always expanding, recently at an incredible rate. You have to keep mastering the new stuff just to keep up. Then there’s the application areas and algorithms, some of which are highly specialized and they also change and grow. If you ever think you’ve mastered everything you’re probably wrong and even if you’re right time will make you wrong.
P.S. for the latest stuff go to the source, that means mainly NVIDIA & ATI web sites and specs on OpenGL.org, some of the specs on OpenGL.org can be a bit dry and inpenetrable, especially if you’re not familiar with all the related concepts, that’s where the developer relations stuff from NVIDIA and ATI helps a lot.
Use google, Luke!
and may GeForce be with you!
My Mantis-style OpenGL has no equal.
Mastering opengl should not be your main concern if you want to write games. Make sure you’ve got mechanisms in place for things like basic triangle rendering (start with primitive shapes, like spheres/cylinders/boxes), an object property mechanism (so you can change properties at runtime to aid debugging new features), collision detection, route finding, camera control, some kind of high-level language for describing behaviours. Make sure you have a fast, clear and consistent maths library. Make sure you use a scenegraph structure for your graphics - any other type of scene representation should merely be a specialised node stemming off the scenegraph (bspnode, octreenode etc.). This will give you the most flexibility.
Per-pixel lighting etc. should really be the icing on your cake, not the sponge. The last thing you should do, rather than the first.
Once you have these mechanisms in place, you should find that the more advanced graphics techniques should be easier to ‘drop-in’ to your structure.
When you do get to the advanced graphics stage, make sure you use a shader scripting language (an existing one, such as rendermonkey’s xml files, or one of your own making).
Tip
You have not to master OpenGL to write
powerful games .
About the mastering time
It depends on you .
If you implement every thing you learn
(Recommened) you will take and all your life
become OpenGL Maximum at 3 Years (My
Opinion) .
else
if you learn OpenGl and donot implement what
you learn i think it is useless to learn it .
Hope you good and the best in your life .
Hazem_vb
Originally posted by Hazem_vb:
[b]Tip
You have not to master OpenGL to write
powerful games .
About the mastering time
It depends on you .
If you implement every thing you learn
(Recommened) you will take ,And All your life
become OpenGL , Maximum at 3 Years (My
Opinion) .
else
if you learn OpenGl and donot implement what
you learn i think it is useless to learn it .
Hope you good and the best in your life .
Hazem_vb[/b]
What I’ve found so far (and, no, I wouldn’t consider myself mater of all of these 
Learn how to learn.
Then learn how to debug.
Then learn how to build, by studying many many examples, good and bad, and building on your own. Don’t matter much if it’s databases or the Linux kernel or Quake.
Then learn how to be listening and considerate in a team of very mixed people.
Then work at it for another ten years, all the while keeping up with development.
I suppose a good college education is a good base. I’d go for Math if I could go back, I think, or possibly EE. CS isn’t actually the most solid foundation, as most of it is evolving so quickly that you’re probably better off just doing reading on the side.
Originally posted by Hazem_vb:
I Forget to tell you that is an excellent
site in Game Programming
http://www.GameTutorials.com
Bye
Hazem_vb
An OpenGL Game Programmer
All of the above +
if one day you come up with some original idea and end up impressing all the CG society with your paper and your working demo, you can consider yourself a master.
It’s kind of like the chemists and physicist who do research and after a few years, they discover something big.
V-man