Elysian Shadows

I'm a sophomore in high school. I was trying to figure out what to do with my future, and trying to direct that future to programming in the game industry. I realize now I have no real grasp of the win32 api. I only use C++ and SDL/OpenGL.

Is it a necessity to know win32 programming if I plan to be a software engineer?
(I'm assuming if I need to know win32, I'll need to know DirectX as well.)

If it is necessary, I'll probably need to get to work learning how to use it immediately.

Hell no Multiplatform is the future.

K-Bal wrote:Hell no Multiplatform is the future.

That's my opinion too. Especially because Mac users are on the rise, DirectX will most likely die out as the "industry standard". It mostly already has, except for Xbox360 titles. C/++ and OpenGL ftw!

Awesome.

Thanks!

I wouldn't waste your time forcing yourself to learn it. It's one of those things that you'll pick up as you move along. It's not the end, its a means to an end. It's "Just another API" that you'll end up becoming familiar with if you're a part of any big windows project. Similarly if you work under Unix or Linux, you should become familiar with X11. If you're still in high school, focus on programming concepts and don't limit yourself there. That said, while "multiplatform" may or may not be the future (Multiplatform here really means Mac + Windows), the favor is still overwhelmingly on the windows side. I believe all the Windows OS's combined still account for over 75% of the market share which is nothing to shake a stick at. Mac users only appear to be on the rise, which they are.....but at an extremely slow rate (about 1.5% per year) if you look at it compared to even the growth of just Windows7, which isn't counting the massive WindowsXP user base.

I won't even get started on the OpenGL v. DX thing here as my stance on the issue is documented and certainly not in favor of OpenGL. In a nutshell, OpenGL is going absolutely nowhere fast and there's absolutely no way in the cold dark corners of icy hell that it will ever be the "industry standard" again. Developers for the most part have shunned it away into the dark corners of the universe and become ill at the thought. It's a mess of outdated driver code and mixed mode graphics whose functionality is built on vendor implementations of shaky specification which is built on top of an egregiously aged API. .......It's a sand castle. Either way, Win32 does not mean you have to learn DX. Again, OpenGL and DX are "just some other API's" which you will learn should you need to, they're not preclusive to programming Win32.

Focus on concepts. You'll find that well written games are, for the most part, platform agnostic. This is because the concepts are platform agnostic. Concepts over semantics. I can never say that enough :]

(isamgray: Yet another Dallas-ite on the board :] ....one day we'll rise up and steal your cookies.)

qpHalcy0n wrote:I wouldn't waste your time forcing yourself to learn it. It's one of those things that you'll pick up as you move along. It's not the end, its a means to an end. It's "Just another API" that you'll end up becoming familiar with if you're a part of any big windows project. Similarly if you work under Unix or Linux, you should become familiar with X11. If you're still in high school, focus on programming concepts and don't limit yourself there. That said, while "multiplatform" may or may not be the future (Multiplatform here really means Mac + Windows), the favor is still overwhelmingly on the windows side. I believe all the Windows OS's combined still account for over 75% of the market share which is nothing to shake a stick at. Mac users only appear to be on the rise, which they are.....but at an extremely slow rate (about 1.5% per year) if you look at it compared to even the growth of just Windows7, which isn't counting the massive WindowsXP user base.

I won't even get started on the OpenGL v. DX thing here as my stance on the issue is documented and certainly not in favor of OpenGL. In a nutshell, OpenGL is going absolutely nowhere fast and there's absolutely no way in the cold dark corners of icy hell that it will ever be the "industry standard" again. Developers for the most part have shunned it away into the dark corners of the universe and become ill at the thought. It's a mess of outdated driver code and mixed mode graphics whose functionality is built on vendor implementations of shaky specification which is built on top of an egregiously aged API. .......It's a sand castle. Either way, Win32 does not mean you have to learn DX. Again, OpenGL and DX are "just some other API's" which you will learn should you need to, they're not preclusive to programming Win32.

Focus on concepts. You'll find that well written games are, for the most part, platform agnostic. This is because the concepts are platform agnostic. Concepts over semantics. I can never say that enough :]

(isamgray: Yet another Dallas-ite on the board :] ....one day we'll rise up and steal your cookies.)

Alright. I appreciate the well thought out response.

isamgray wrote:

K-Bal wrote:Hell no Multiplatform is the future.

That's my opinion too. Especially because Mac users are on the rise, DirectX will most likely die out as the "industry standard". It mostly already has, except for Xbox360 titles. C/++ and OpenGL ftw!

Couldn't agree more.

I'm not gonna take a side on the DirectX vs. OpenGL issue, but unless the DirectX API ends up on *nix (linux especially), I'll probably stick with openGL. But that's just cuz I'm a diehard *nix user so idk if my opinion on the matter really makes a difference