OT: OpenGL Tutorial Writers

OpenGL OpenGL: Advanced Coding
21

Yeah, it should only take a couple of days to write a body of work to compete with the likes of this: http://www.opengl.org/developers/code/tutorials.html
or this: http://www.gamedev.net/reference/
or this: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/article_display.php?category=7
or this: http://flipcode.com/tutorials/

Don’t know why nobody thought of this before.
Sorry for being condescending nomad82 - I’m sure you mean well, and maybe there is room for some extension specific tutorials…but then again, we’ve always got good old Tom - http://www.delphi3d.net/

22

Well you can’t stop the Nomad guy from truying…

23

knackered: ey, no problem. something odd though: while there are a lot of websites with tons of tutorials out there, many newbies still find it difficult to get into graphics programming. my goal is to join the ‘teach-them-because-i-was-once-like-them’ bandwagon… .

honestly, i never thought of competing with these giant websites…i just want to help other newbies (come to think of it, maybe we are all newbies at specific topics/fields… ).

also, if you guys would read my second post…i said if anyone would want to write tutorials/articles that the community needs. perhaps you guys could help also instead? thanks. .

Mihail121: hey, thanks for the encouragement.

i’m a 20 year old programmer. i know you guys don’t care, but i just wanted you guys to know that i made this website to give back to the very same community that helped me (the community of people that made tutorials for newbies). this community taught me what i know, and i want to help pursue this goal also, to encourage other newbies that with enough patience and resource it’s not impossible to learn new stuffs easily.

.

24

To be brutely honest (and incredibly pious), I think there’s actually too much easy access
help around nowadays.
When I started out, I had to read books (from the library) on, superficially, unrelated subjects, and
spend hours reading through the “boring” stuff just so that I could understand the things that
I needed to know. Sometimes I wouldn’t even know what book to read to even get a start on some
subject or other - and I’d actually have to re-invent what other people had done before (perspective
projection and triangle clipping - I should get money for my algorithms!).
There was no bloody internet! (yes, I am that old)
As time goes on, I discovered that reading the “boring” stuff and thinking problems through has
opened up much more understanding than I could ever have gained if someone had just said - “all you need
to know is, swap these numbers round and bob’s yer uncle”.
Basically, if a person cannot learn, and become reasonable proficient at OpenGL from the plethora of
information around at the moment, then they should really look into doing basket weaving, or somesuch
passtime.

25

And not listen to this:

I’ve begann with computers from the stupid QBasic trying to figure out how a programm called “TalkBot 2” works.Then there was VisualBasic and so on.BUT my parent’s didn’t have money and possibilty to buy me and single book so i have to read through old and crapy english documents which i ofcourse didn’t quite understand.The actuall learning begann when i’ve discovered the Nehe’s site.Cool tutorials about the cooooooo API OpenGL and other cool stuff.10x to the tutorials i can programm with OpenGL.3 years after that i’ve got my first OGL book but i didn’t said me nothing new.The truth is simple:code samples are more usefull then anything else!

26

So not speaking english was a major hurdle to you? You should have learned english, then - or German, Dutch, French, or any of the other languages that most important texts are written in.
As for not being able to afford any books - aren’t there any libraries where you live? (libraries=place to borrow books from, free of charge).
There certainly seemed to be an internet connection…but no libraries?

27

A library with computer books here in Bulgaria???Are you joking???The only way is to order it and even then it’s not guaranteed that it will come.Anyway,i was learning english back then but i didn’t know it very well.No ofcourse,thanks god,everything is different…

28

Originally posted by knackered:
… then they should really look into doing basket weaving, or somesuch
passtime.

Already got ya covered. Look in my profile.

-SirKnight

29

Originally posted by SirKnight:
[b] Already got ya covered. Look in my profile.

-SirKnight

[/b]

30

Originally posted by knackered:
So not speaking english was a major hurdle to you? You should have learned english, then - or German, Dutch, French, or any of the other languages that most important texts are written in.
As for not being able to afford any books - aren’t there any libraries where you live? (libraries=place to borrow books from, free of charge).
There certainly seemed to be an internet connection…but no libraries?

You are a bit unfair. Not everyone can easily learn another language. I don´t know if you had to learn it, you seem to be english or american. Also many people start programming at an age, when you didn´t learn enough english in school to be able to read a book (about stuff which would even be hard to understand in your own language (if you are a beginner)).
Also libraries are really no help. Try to get a book about C++ in a german library. Well, some do have one or two books, but about 3D (game) programming? You are kidding! And also you have to realize, that most people are not that rich. American, english, german and a few other people are quite rich, so they are able to buy computers and books. But in many countries the people have not such a high living-standard. I am german, but still programming can be quite expensive. There are no german 3D programming books, since too few of those books are sold to make it worth to translate them. So i buy them at amazon.de and get them shipped. Every book costs 50 to 70 euro (usually 70). I think i have spent about 1000 euro only for programming books, and that´s not really much.

What i´d like to say is, that it is quite arrogant to say, that people should not be given information too easily, if you are in a position where you get information much more easily (and cheaper) than them.

And everyone, who gets seriously into programming, will very quickly come to the point, where he has to search very intensly for information, since it is so advanced, that there are no real tutorials about it (i have experienced that quite often, already). That means that a “real” programmer will learn to develop algorithms by himself. And he will learn to search for information. But it is a hard and long way to become a good programmer, which becomes even harder every day, since technology evolves rapidly and a good programmer has to know as much of it as possible.
So why don´t help them to get started easily ? Because of nehe and others the “beginners” forum is certainly much less full of stupid questions than it would be without them.

I think i said enough now. There is so much i still have to learn about information technology, that i don´t want to spend even more time telling you my opinion about such an unimportant topic.

Jan.

31

Hi,

I think knackerd is right in that there’s no urgent need for new basic tutorials. If you want to help the beginners, some random tutorials won’t get you very far, since that’s what the net is full of. Maybe a good series of tutorials that would take the beginner through an optimal learning curve might be better, altough there are a few of those too already.

Then you could specialize on more exotic techniques, but then you’re not helping the beginners anymore, I’m afraid. Game engine design is one thing there isn’t as much quality information about, perhaps you could have a series of tutorials about it, preferably resulting in a fully featured game engine. Of course, Tom’s got that covered too, but those articles are getting a little old already.

Anyway, if you deciede to go with a little more exotic stuff, I’ve got a half-written grass tutorial lying around with no place to be published in, so guess I could give it to your site. If I ever get the boring implementation part written, that is.

-Ilkka

32

Must’ve missed that issue Knackered, what was in it? Expect to hear news of what I’ve been working on soon…

I remember getting my library to get in all of Michael Abrash’s books sent up from some central library thing in Birmingham… 50 pence it used to cost me. Then having to use both hands* to carry it home and scrutinize… hehe those were the days…

  • Zen of Assembler was bloody huuge, I was only young!

[This message has been edited by Nutty (edited 04-28-2003).]

33

You’re,it’s damn hard,but after 2 years(with the help of god) i hope to come to study in Germany and get the hell out of this living nightmare.

34

I used to feel the same about Manchester.
Is Bulgaria as bad as Manchester?

Nutty, Edge magazine have done a massive article on Climax this month. They’ve got sections on the Solent offices, Brighton offices, and Nottingham offices. Which one are you in?
What are you working on? Warhammer? MotoGP2? Sudeki?

[This message has been edited by knackered (edited 04-28-2003).]

35

I’m in the Solent office. Great views eh?!

I’m not working on any of those, my project hasn’t gone public yet, but it will anyday.

36

Yep, looks pretty nice, Solent.
Good luck with the project.

37

knackered / justhanging: err, no, again, my second post was asking if anyone here would want to write a tutorial that you think the community needs. i mean (as an example), information/article/tutorial on photon-mapping just don’t come by in gamedev/flipcoe/opengl.org do they? . to the people that have done photon-mapping, this would be “basic” to them, since they know it, but to those that haven’t, it’s not basic…

…this means that ‘basic tutorial’ is relative. you guys seems so assured of yourselves on what you have accomplished and seem so proud already…help others perhaps instead of showing us the struggle you went through to learn what you know… .

hope you guys know what i mean.

38

Originally posted by JustHanging:
[b]Hi,
Anyway, if you deciede to go with a little more exotic stuff, I’ve got a half-written grass tutorial lying around with no place to be published in, so guess I could give it to your site. If I ever get the boring implementation part written, that is.

-Ilkka[/b]

ey, sure i’ll put it on my site…so long as it’s finished… . lemme know if you’re done…thanks! .

39

Originally posted by knackered:
To be brutely honest (and incredibly pious), I think there’s actually too much easy access
help around nowadays.
When I started out, I had to read books (from the library) on, superficially, unrelated subjects, and
spend hours reading through the “boring” stuff just so that I could understand the things that
I needed to know. Sometimes I wouldn’t even know what book to read to even get a start on some
subject or other - and I’d actually have to re-invent what other people had done before (perspective
projection and triangle clipping - I should get money for my algorithms!).
There was no bloody internet! (yes, I am that old)
As time goes on, I discovered that reading the “boring” stuff and thinking problems through has
opened up much more understanding than I could ever have gained if someone had just said - “all you need
to know is, swap these numbers round and bob’s yer uncle”.
Basically, if a person cannot learn, and become reasonable proficient at OpenGL from the plethora of
information around at the moment, then they should really look into doing basket weaving, or somesuch
passtime.

err…i wasn’t asking for opengl tutorials… . (again, my second post here would say what i wanted – it seems my first post would’ve meant that though… ). so i don’t understand why you’re mentioning this…

but you’re right, there’s enough information already in learning opengl api… .

40

Well, I guess something you can really do knack is throw the thread off topic!!!
Do we have some kind of throw exception error handling for this?? Maybe std::throw_exception( )?
Did you read books on that too???

Nomad… I have some stuff that you might want to add to your collection…

I have three different camera systems done using euler angles and quaternions… All three systems show different ways to acomplish the same end result. There is stuff on ROAM, on sky boxes with cube maps, sky domes and stuff… Feel free to take anything and add it to your site… Just make sure you give credit where credit is due and give appropriate references. http://141.217.130.254/miguel/

Yeah, that is a temp address.

-+= La Mancha =±