Win32, OpenGL and ODE Physics

2005 Report

By Alan Baylis 23/12/2005

Well it is nearly 2006, which means it has been over four and a half years since I first began writing tutorials and example programs. At that time many programmers would have been happy making a good Quake clone and that is what drove most independent game developers. Today the technology behind game development is increasing at an exponential rate and practically beyond any one persons understanding. But this shouldn't discourage you from wanting to learn computer graphics and game development techniques. Untold applications use the same technology used in games for demonstration or educational purposes and the focus on realism is far less. And the day when every website uses 3D graphic interfaces is still yet to materialize so we shouldn't despair that there isn't a place for our skills when planning for the future.

If, however, you just want to see your winning idea for a game come to life, then you might consider skipping the hard work and save a lot of time by paying the amazingly small price for the Torque game engine. On the other hand, if you are a control freak like me and want to make a game to your own specifications then I wish you all the best.

As you may have already read, I have finally cleaned up the source code for all of the OpenGL examples written for the Dev-Cpp compiler and also released a new build of all but one of the demos for the Visual Studio 7.0 compiler. The Video example program gave me so much trouble converting it over to the VS compiler that I just had to leave it for now, as did the ODE template program which needs a rewrite too. I'll get to those and finally write that ODE tutorial that I've been promising for so long in the new year, so until then have a great holiday and take it easy.

Merry Christmas
from Al.