Elysian Shadows

i just want to make something other than calculators and random text adventures

learn SDL and go graphical!

One application that wouldn't require a gui but would still be useful would be a simple image format converter. you could have it so that the app takes a 24 bit bitmap (or any other image formats you know how to work with) and outputs a 32 bit image. This is useful for people who need an alpha channel for their images but are stuck with imaging software like paint. Doing this would give you a useful app as well as exposure to how image data is stored and how to manipulate it.

An encryption algorithm? Or perhaps a sorting algorithm.

You could try making Skynet

Do what I did when I was 12 and asked the same thing:

Make a porn encryptor.

richred20 wrote:i just want to make something other than calculators and random text adventures

Like what? We need more to work with than "I want to make something." What sorts of things interest you the most? Motivation is always easiest to find while working on a project you want to work on.

dandymcgee wrote:

richred20 wrote:i just want to make something other than calculators and random text adventures

Like what? We need more to work with than "I want to make something." What sorts of things interest you the most?

Motivation is always easiest to find with projects you have a passion for.

Make an ASCII cartoon, because they're always fun.

Or, better still, make some software to convert a regular .avi video into an ASCII cartoon...

ajtgarber wrote:You could try making Skynet

#include skynet.h

Im really just want something to do before i go into graphics anything would be nice but i haven't had any work with a gui yet.

If you really don't want to go graphical using SDL or something similar (which I would recommend at this point), and you're bored of making text adventures, why don't you try something in between? Maybe code a game which is in a console window, where the player is physically denoted with an asterisk; you give the player text commands like 'walk forward' or 'turn left' and he moves inside the console. You could even try and make walls denoted with '|'s, and the player has to avoid them. That might be quite cool.

JGorard159 wrote:If you really don't want to go graphical using SDL or something similar (which I would recommend at this point).

What gives you—or anyone for that matter—the impression that the OP is prepared to advance into graphical programming? Have you considered the OP's previous posts to ensure that the OP is not lacking in any fundamental areas? It seems empirical that the OP selects something that would increase their general programming knowledge before moving into a field that relies on many aspects which the OP has not fully comprehended; this is how poor habits are won.

wearymemory wrote:What gives you—or anyone for that matter—the impression that the OP is prepared to advance into graphical programming? Have you considered the OP's previous posts to ensure that the OP is not lacking in any fundamental areas? It seems empirical that the OP selects something that would increase their general programming knowledge before moving into a field that relies on many aspects which the OP has not fully comprehended; this is how poor habits are won.

OK, maybe that was poorly said . I was simply trying to say that there's only so much that you can learn with simple console applications, and it would seem that the poster has nearly exhausted all the capabilities of a console application (hence this post's creation), and provided that he/she has a good enough grasp of the basics of C++ (up to pointers, arrays, memory allocation), then in my opinion, a graphical API such as SDL is probably the best step.