Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1. Building a Game Application
In this chapter we will set up our Visual Studio project and build a basic OpenGL ap-
plication from scratch. We will be using this application throughout the topic by ex-
tending its capabilities and introducing more features in the later chapters.
We are not going to build anything as complex as the latest multimillion dollar budget
First-person shooter or Real-time strategy games in a scant 100 pages, but we are
going to learn as much as we can about using OpenGL graphics and Bullet physics
by writing small 3D demos. These demos will teach you the foundations necessary to
build customized physics and graphical effects in other game projects. Sounds fun?
Then let's get started!
Application components
In order to create the simple 3D game demo applications of this topic, we will need
the following four essential components:
• Application layer
• Physics
• Graphics
• Input handling
The reason for the application layer should be pretty obvious; it provides a starting
point to work with, even if it's just a blank window. Meanwhile, we need the remaining
components to provide two important elements of any game: visuals and interactivity.
If you can't see anything, and you can't interact with it, it would be quite a stretch to
claim that what you have is a game!
These are the essential building blocks or components of most games and game en-
gines, and it's important to note that each of them is independent of the rest. When
we write code to implement or change the visualization of our objects, we don't want
to have to worry about changing anything in the physics system at the same time.
This decoupling makes it easy to make these components as simple or complex as
we desire.
