I’ve been coding with c++ for last 3 years, mostly my work revolved around using other libraries such as QT. I recently realized that for a guy who has been coding for 3+ years I dont really know much C++, cause I dont know much about Templates or STL or Boost.
To remedy it I decided that I shall learn new C++ feature and STL, then I stumbled on this excellent thread Learning C++ using a template. Which basically says that I should learn STL before anything else.
Now game programming is something I wanted to do from my undergrad days, I even wrote one flight simulator game for my project, but after some time it was discontinued.
My question is should I go on and try to make an opengl game, or try some text based game to learn C++. Would learning opengl be so hard an effort that it would distract me from actually learning C++. Also if not does somebody has some other idea ?
The STL and Boost are used in almost every C++ program, you don’t need to go to the videogames domain just to learn that… Videogame programming is a very complex application domain. Nevertheless, if game programming is what you enjoy the most, go for it. I’d recommend starting with SDL instead of OpenGL, it’s a higher level API. Another thing I recommend, start making a simpler game, like a Tetris clone for instance, and then move on to more complex types of game. A page I highly recommend for your game programming needs is GameDev.net