About gameinstitute

In all honesty, there are a lot of great resources out there for free that teach you how to program. There are even a good amount of books that help you with programming that don't cost as much like the course.

Sure it's nice that you get access to a library of models and whatnot, but once again, plenty of free sources out there.

I personally don't know the site that well so I can't tell anything about the quality, but if you're on a tight budget or simply don't want to spend that much money on it, search for some tutorials instead.

Rld_ is completely right, their are a ton of resources out there that you can learn from. If you have a question or are wondering how to do something then just Google it, as your probably not the first to be stuck on what your trying to accomplish. As for the things your trying to do... what engine are we talking about doing this in? From the looks of it, gameinstitute is teaching stuff using Unity3D (is this their site? http://www.gameinstitute.com/) The things you speak of could be easily done in Unity if you knew what you where doing (and I could probably help you get something to together if you'd like)

No,i'm interested in directx programming...unity uses c# anyway.

Well you said there are plenty of tutorials on the web that show the stuff I want to learn(loading a model,controling it's animations,creating slots,adding different weapons/controling them etc),I searched a lot,and never found anything,can you please post one of those websites here?

I don't have a big budget,but I have just enough to buy the course.

These are the projects (source code) that are provided(they're listed on the website):

Graphics Programming was the only course I took.

I purchased the Graphics Programming with DX9 course a few years back. It's definitely great quality, and when you say the forum is "dead', know that those few people are the people that wrote the actual book and the code (I talked to Adam Hoult directly about my questions on the forums).

You need to be motivated though, that course is not easy. I ended up taking the mid term and getting ~74%. I haven't taken the final yet because I migrated to Linux shortly after the midterm, which makes DX pretty much useless when compared to OpenGL.

The video presentations aren't really anything new, just a repeat of the book. The book explains thoroughly and well.

The website/courses look like they've been updated since I was participating, so I'm not sure what the changes have done.

The price is better, I got one course at $212, so the $99 for all of them is a good deal.

If you're not interested (really interested) in graphics programming, you probably shouldn't get the course (note that I can't speak for the animation, AI etc. courses).

If you are a fairly comfortable C++ programmer, I'd recommend you get Game Coding Complete as it teaches good principles and the structure for a well made game engine. Other than that, code tons of games, read tons of articles about coding those games better, and try new techniques out. Read everything you can get about game development, whether they are articles (hint: GameDev.net ), blogs, paper books (try places like Goodwill/DI for cheap computer textbooks, I have 10+ that have saved me hundreds), or even digital books (there's a 300+ game dev book collection circling around, and if you're OK with piracy, then get it). Your goal is to improve, so always be thinking of ways to learn more and improve your skills.

Experience is definitely the most important thing you can get, and the only price of it is time. Finish your projects, make new projects frequently (#1GAM has been great for me), and make sure you learn something from every project/push yourself. Experience will help you judge the scale of projects you can take on, but in the beginning, keep it small!

Goodness, I kind of lost control there. Oh well, hope that helps!

I will try to break the things for what you are trying to achieve. You should definitely grab a pencil and paper to get a holistic idea of what you are trying to achieve.

Loading a character:

involves loading the image that depicts the character onto the screen so you need to know how to load an image and then

add that image into a list. Then have your Game class be the one that go through this list and draws the object from the list onto the screen.

Moving the character:

involves some knowledge about kinematics from classical physics. Know that a dimensional vector represents your x and y coordinates of the object. Know that velocity = displacement / time.

Try getting this to work before moving on because you can just re-use the code from here and apply it into any moving object.

You can learn by just using Google. Google is your friend.

Examples:

collision detection java

how to load an image in java

canvas java

bufferstrategy java

You are bound to have access to the information you need in the first page. If you do not try, try a different keyword in the search.

I've only taken the C++ Modules and Unity Modules so far so I can't say for DirectX, but both modules have been with very high quality so far.

The forum may appear inactive, but the instructors are definitely active as they reply to any forum post inquiries usually within 24-48hours plus the fact that their Unity3D training workshop is still progressing (they give out new material every 1-4weeks). I plan to take DirectX soon and I've browsed some of the audio lectures and as far as I can say, the $99 was well worth it.

I encourage you to go ahead and ask them yourself either by submitting a support ticket as an inquiry http://support.gameinstitute.com/ or by messaging them on facebook directly https://www.facebook.com/gameinstitute

Cheers!

Perhaps your google is different than my google.

A simple search with "directx tutorial" gave me these:

http://directxtutorial.com/ (only intro tutorials are free though)

http://www.rastertek.com/tutindex.html

http://www.toymaker.info/Games/html/getting_started.html

These are the first hits I get and suit perfectly well to get you started (toymakes was in the stack overflow link).

http://3dgep.com/ although not specifically directx, also has some good information for you.

Apparently, from reading the posts, gameinstitute isn't all that bad, I don't know how fitting it is for a beginner though, but if these tutorials scare you off, you might want to reconsider spending money on it until you gain some basic knowledge that you can expand upon.

Taken from their FAQ:

I am a total beginner to game development with little or no programming experience. Is this package appropriate for me?

Yes, this is going to be a fantastic package for you. This package is structured to take you step-by-step through the process of building video games from the ground up, regardless of your prior experience level. You'll start out with plenty of detailed coverage walking you through the critical foundational areas like general programming in C/C++, mathematics for games, basic 2D and 3D graphics rendering, writing your own shaders, and implementing some core game AI. You'll also learn some important 3D modeling, animation, and texturing techniques. If your preference is to work mostly with "black box" game engines like Unity or Carbon, just this early material alone will give you an incredibly solid foundation.

As you progress further, you'll find yourself getting right under the hood of modern game technology to see how it really works behind the scenes. You'll start taking on more complex programming tasks, like exploring advanced surface shading models, real-time direct and indirect lighting and shadowing, forward and deferred rendering architectures, spatial data structures, spherical harmonics lightmapping, collision detection and response, constructive solid geometry, large scale terrain rendering, and so much more. Your art and level design skills will also improve as you get more familiar with modeling and game world editing tools.

Eventually, you will find yourself becoming very comfortable with the technologies behind both games and game engines. While you'll certainly have a strong foundation in place for building your own game engine, you will also be on very firm footing with utilizing 3rd party engines like Carbon, Unreal, or Unity for your game projects. This is quite an important point to bear in mind, particularly if you intend to pursue a professional career in the industry. In practice, you'll very likely wind up working with existing technologies developed and/or licensed by your employer rather than building new ones from scratch. But by developing a strong programming background, sharp math skills, some familiarity with game art, and maybe even pick up some experience on the hardware side, you'll be in great shape to tackle any game development challenge put in your path!

Hope that helps, Cheers!