pouët.net

I'm a newbie and need someone to point me in the right direction.

I've experience in C and Python but have never done anything 3D. I've played around with SDL a while ago and I've written a Wolfenstein 3D like raycasting engine.

Where should I start off? What language and on what platform? (I'm using Linux) Any libraries I should learn? Recommended tutorials/books etc?

http://nehe.gamedev.net/ is said to be a decent openGL tutorial

THAT was decent 20 years ago.

What else do you suggest except from NeHe? I am always pointing NeHe to newcomers because I can't think of something else.

Nehe is great to learn the basics.

So you recommend me to use OpenGL under Linux? Why not another platform?

Are there alternatives on Linux??

I guess the alternative is software 3d? At least with opengl you've got some chance of switching platforms or going cross-platform if you want to.

Well, I was thinking emulators.

Like emulators for older platforms, or wine? If you're thinking of any serious demo making with wine you're probably a lot better off just installing windows.

I was thinking older platforms. Definitely not wine. I just noticed that there's a lot of prods released for stuff like Amiga etc. I don't no why I'd wanna do that though.

I'd suggest you first do something complete with SDL, like a small demo or intro with a few simple effects, the timing loop, some music sync, a picture or two etc. That will give you an overview on what actually goes in a demo and it'll give you a better view on what you actually want to accomplish.

I have a page up with some basic info and a seminar that I gave at Assembly this year: http://elsewhere.stc.cx/demoprogramming/

Older platforms are very different to code than modern platforms and the learning curve might be a bit higher. If that's what you're interested though, go for it. It's definitely fun in its own way.

If you want to code for an older platform, do it on the real hardware. Emulators are often not close enough to the real thing for properly experimenting with demo stuff on them.

Anyway, do your demos how you feel like. It may be Linux+OpenGL, an existing platform, or your own homemade one.

If you know C and Python, then go with that. Should be easy to either plug OpenGL to it (and get some hardware acceleration) or do it all in software. Or use an existing demotool such as the recently released Ibniz. Or whatever else... :)

Forget about Nehe.
If you want to do OpenGL, just buy a hardcopy of the OpenGL Superbible 5. This way you won't be poisoned with outdated legacy stuff.

Do something for GBA. Make it awesome.

Thanks a lot for your help! Especially Preacher! I'll watch the video.
I'll definitely buy a book if I get to OpenGL.
I've found a tutorial at flipcode.com called The Art of Demomaking. It appears to be very informative.

the tutorial on flipcode is from 1999 and dealing with dos -_-

are there any good and not outdated OGL tutorials you can recommend?

and what about directx? are there better tutorials?

paldepind, have a look at www.dbfinteractive.com there are lots of tutorials and example code on there to get you started.

paldepind: The Art of Demomaking is good for startup of software rendering. If you want to go that way, you should get something like tinyptc, i think its for linux, its however old, but it should still work just to get up some "surface" blit'ing. then you can start code plasmas, starfields and those oldschool effects. if you want to more newschool then opengl. i dont even know if directx exists for Linux.

Thanks for the link indigo! Looks like there's a lot of interesting stuff.

DirectX is definitely Windows only.

I originally aimed for learning OpenGL but later decided that I'd rather start out with software rendering instead like Preacher suggested. ATM it seems to be more interesting and low level. Right now I'm learning x86 assembly and my first goal is to do some simple oldschool effects in DOS(box) with the 13h graphics mode.

Btw, I've found these two great online resources for OpenGL which somebody might find interesting: http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/ and http://openglbook.com/
Unlike NeHe they are up to date and are both teaching OpenGL 4 without touching any of the deprecated features.

i think you should look into the hornet website, theres a alot of code and docs on oldschool effects there.

with the GLSL sandbox at http://glsl.heroku.com or IQ's shadertoy or his 4kb framework you can do similiar things as with tinyptc, just with GLSL syntax and much more speed for trigonometry etc. including examples, not that i could make much sense of most ;)

paldepind: http://gargaj.umlaut.hu/processing/ should be a good start :)