Know of any good C++ books for beginners?

[Brandon_c993]

I have recently decided to delve deeper into game programming,etc. I would like to know if anybody knows of a good book for beginners on the subject of C++, if so please give me the book(s) name it would be very helpful for me.....

[p_rushing]

Re: Know of any good C++ books for beginners?

Any book by Harvey M Deitel will be good, but they are expensive as they are big and used in College, etc. Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days will be a good cheaper alternative.

The Sams will not go much into advanced topics, but Deitel books will go more in depth into advance topics.

[Speedy]

Re: Know of any good C++ books for beginners?

I thought Java was being taught more prominently than C++?

[p_rushing]

Re: Know of any good C++ books for beginners?

I thought Java was being taught more prominently than C++?

Java is, but I think C++ would be easier to start with. Then learning Java would be easy.

[Hooe]

Re: Know of any good C++ books for beginners?

Java is, but I think C++ would be easier to start with. Then learning Java would be easy.

I actually thought Java was easier to learn than C++; that said I was using Java in a CS101 course here at UVa and the higher courses use C++, so maybe I just wasn't making complex enough programs to see how difficult Java might actually be.

Brandon_c993: If you want to learn game programming specifically and want to be able to see results quickly, I'd recommend learning XNA Game Studio. It's relatively easy to learn, and there are a number of good books on the subject (though be sure to get one that specifically deals with XNA 3.0; there's a number of compatibility issues with books dealing with earlier revisions of XNA). Finally, despite being pretty easy to get results out of, you can produce really good stuff with it if you put the time to it; XNA is built upon Microsoft's .NET framework, and as such has a number of built-in features to handle 2D graphics, 3D graphics, and sound.

All that said, many if not all XNA books and tutorials assume that you have at least a functional knowledge of some other programming language first, so au contraire starting by learning C++ isn't such a bad idea.

Here's a book I recommend for learning XNA: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-XNA-...9913536&sr=8-5

Finally, to give you a couple of idea of what XNA can produce, here's two videos of games made in XNA, the first being one that myself and a couple of other students here at UVa have been working on since the end of January during downtime from classes, and the second being a demonstration game by a guy named Benjamin Nitschke (how long it took to make, I'm not sure, but it probably took longer than just every weekend for three months).

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[Brandon_c993]

Re: Know of any good C++ books for beginners?

I actually thought Java was easier to learn than C++; that said I was using Java in a CS101 course here at UVa and the higher courses use C++, so maybe I just wasn't making complex enough programs to see how difficult Java might actually be.

Brandon_c993: If you want to learn game programming specifically and want to be able to see results quickly, I'd recommend learning XNA Game Studio. It's relatively easy to learn, and there are a number of good books on the subject (though be sure to get one that specifically deals with XNA 3.0; there's a number of compatibility issues with books dealing with earlier revisions of XNA). Finally, despite being pretty easy to get results out of, you can produce really good stuff with it if you put the time to it; XNA is built upon Microsoft's .NET framework, and as such has a number of built-in features to handle 2D graphics, 3D graphics, and sound.

All that said, many if not all XNA books and tutorials assume that you have at least a functional knowledge of some other programming language first, so au contraire starting by learning C++ isn't such a bad idea.

Here's a book I recommend for learning XNA: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-XNA-...9913536&sr=8-5

Finally, to give you a couple of idea of what XNA can produce, here's two videos of games made in XNA, the first being one that myself and a couple of other students here at UVa have been working on since the end of January during downtime from classes, and the second being a demonstration game by a guy named Benjamin Nitschke (how long it took to make, I'm not sure, but it probably took longer than just every weekend for three months).

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Thanks for the great insight so far.....I will have to look into XNA... as well as the C++ I have already been looking into....

[Haval93]

Re: Know of any good C++ books for beginners?

I am also getting into programming. My advice is to learn as many programming languages as you can. I am right now learning Assembly, then after that I will go onto C, Java, and lastly C++. Also I would check out Microsoft Visual Studios C++, it is another place to make games. There also is a beginner's guide for C++ there. Hopefully I helped out a bit...

[Hooe]

Re: Know of any good C++ books for beginners?

Thanks for the great insight so far.....I will have to look into XNA... as well as the C++ I have already been looking into....

No problem.

One thing that's worth mentioning is that programs built in XNA Game Studio are written in C# ("C-Sharp"). C# is more-or-less an expanded combination of C++ and Java; if you learn one of those, you'll catch on to C# quickly.

In fact, if you learn one programming language cold, it's not difficult at all to jump between many different languages (at least, in my experience, this has been the case).