RPGDX > Forums > Design and programming > Anyone know of any good WIN API tutorials

Gardon · Scholar Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 157

Fuck SDL. God damnit I'm pissed. WIndows is my friend now.

Can anyone help me out and give me some good tuts that they know of, or perhaps a good book on the subject (and please don't say LaMothe, cause his shit's older than him)

jason

zenogais · Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 2:55 am Post subject:

Gardon: If you can't handle SDL, Win32 will slaughter you and then eat you for breakfast. Seriously. Also, LaMothe's "shit" may be ancient, but so is the Win32 API. If you really want something that makes the API slightly nicer to work with try WTL. If you want something really powerful, that makes Win32 dev a breeze try Win32Gui. Win32Gui is a wonderful API, but it's got a very steep learning curve, although looking at it the documentation has improved greatly. If you just want straight win32 api browse CodeProject.org stuff.

One last thing, I mean no disrespect with this, but please do your research before you ask a question next time. You'll quickly find out though that the Win32 API is a bitch for anything beyond the simple.

Gardon · Scholar Joined: 05 Feb 2006 Posts: 157

This input thing is driving me crazy. I figured I'd take the trouble of learning Win32 to get around this problem.

And for some totally unrelated matter, my program won't recognize my timer class, and i don't know why!

So, rather than punch through the damn wall, I figured I'd so something else... learn WIN32 lol

Jason

RuneLancer · Mage Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 441

Just sayin' this but.. it isn't the API that's going to save your project.

I'm not implying anything but... it can often take more than a few months sometimes to even scratch the surface of an API. Programming isn't as simple a concept to grasp as, say, linear algebra. Changing the API you're using just means you're practically back at square one on the learning scale, and no further along...

Learn design patterns and algorithms; they're the bottleneck in your learning right now it seems, not the api. Mind, I just came back from a friend's right now and I'm not in a very legal state of mind, so don't take this too personal. But it seems like the problem isn't so much the API you're using as it is your understanding of its workings...
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Nodtveidt · Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 6:55 am Post subject:

SDL doesn't feature a very clean interface, and its underlying code is a horrendous mess. But I'm not quite sure what you're trying to do here, Gardon...if your problem is input, the Windows API is ultra-simple to use for just that, far easier than most other APIs actually. Of course, it depends on what kind of input you want and if you're using just the GDI or are using some sort of alternate library (DirectX, Open GL, etc). Keyboard can be handled through GeyKeyState (thread-specific) or GetAsyncKeyState (global), game controllers can be handled with joyGetPosEx, etc etc etc.

The Win32 API isn't as hard as some people make it out to be. Alternate APIs just tend to dumbify the whole process, hiding the details from you (sort of like using MacOS in the 68k days), making the Win32 API look daunting at first. It's really quite a simple thing to use once you get going, and its learning curve isn't steep whatsoever as long as you can think procedurally and not have your panties in the OOP shredder the whole time. What IS hard is trying to tackle the DirectX API head-on, but that is not an intrinsic part of the Win32 API so it doesn't count.
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zenogais · Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 1:32 pm Post subject:

notdveidt: Ever tried to use MDI with the Win32 API? That's no fun. However I do agree with you that learning the basics of the Win32 API is benificial, especially if you decide to start writing more complex programs in other, more abstract APIs.

As for your input problem, looking over your API you're quite simply doing it wrong. You could probably do with a different way of dispatching messages too, which would of course mean rewriting certain pieces of your input class.

LeoDraco · Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2006 6:06 pm Post subject:

zenogais · Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 1:04 am Post subject:

LeoDraco: Of course supporting as many platforms as possible is a good thing, but if you're just starting out it's also impracticle. I personally use both Windows and Mac OS X, and I usually tend to like deving on Mac better, but since ~95% of the world uses Windows it just seems like the more logical choice. Also, this thread was specifically targeted at the Win32 API - something I've tried to avoid touching as much as possible, however the occasional brush with it has been inevitable and also unpleasant.

Nodtveidt · Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 1:14 am Post subject:

Take what LeoDraco says with a grain of salt...the man is well-known to be an insane trombone player so you are forewarned. :) j/k of course...but seriously...that 'silly thing' is on the vast majority of user computers today, and you'd only be a GREAT fool to ignore such a staggering slap-in-the-face obvious detail.

zenogais: an MDI application in raw API isn't terribly difficult, just a lot of work. Realistically, it's impractical nowadays to do it (Visual Basic kicks ass for this and only anti-VB zealots deny it) but some people like to squeeze as much performance out of their app as possible and you can only do that if you code on the metal, which in this case would be using the API directly. Coding with the Win32 API is sorta like coding in assembly...it's low-level, it's very precise, it's efficient when done correctly, and apps tend to be a lot smaller than using some middleman library (because then you have the overhead of the library which introduces unnecessary bloat to your program).

Anyways, this could easily spiral into a OS war, an API war, or one of the other nine hundred pointless zealot/religious wars that coders are so well-known for, so I'll just leave it at this: if you want to learn the Win32 API, do it...you'll benefit from it greatly. If you don't, then you don't...plain and simple.
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Nephilim · Mage Joined: 20 Jun 2002 Posts: 414

Let me just pop in and say that those of us on the "path less travelled" OS'es would probably enjoy playing your game when it's done, so I'd encourage you to give SDL another go. While it's debatable that the Win32 API might assist you with your troubles, it is certainly un-beneficial for the 1 or 2 in 20 of us who would like to play your game but won't be able to simply because you choose a Windows-myopic API.

I suspect, as mentioned earlier, that abandoning SDL will not solve your problems - it will just shift them to a different API with which you have no experience. You will experience some trouble with any API until you (a) are familiar with the API, and (b) have good software engineering principles internalized.

But don't let that discourage you, though. There is nothing wrong with struggling with this stuff - you may not believe it, but you are learning why the various "best practices" and design patterns are the way they are, and when you have seen the difficulties you can run into, that just makes it that much easier for the light to click on when you're reading up on the solutions.

If I were you, I'd read up on some design patterns and look at some open source SDL games to see how they handle input. I imagine there are some SDL-specific forums somewhere where you could ask questions about specific technical frustrations with SDL - people have been down this SDL input road you're trying to follow before, so let them help you.

Take the time to read and learn, and you will find that the time investment will more than pay off when it starts saving you frustrations like you're experiencing now. And if you get too frustrated with your input engine, don't give up! Just shelve it for a while and work on something else, such as the map drawing engine, a conversation tree engine, or even your game graphics, and come back to it later when you feel up for it. Eventually, you'll be able to get it - it just takes some patience with the learning curve.
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LeoDraco · Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 9:14 am Post subject:

DrunkenCoder · Demon Hunter Joined: 29 May 2002 Posts: 559

Im quite ready to file this under "PEBCAK" but exactly what part of SDL input handling is giving you a headache?

There's good samples on the SDL homepage and loads of tutorials, SDL is probably the easiest most clean way to quickly get basic input and rendering going, and it's crossplatform.
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Nodtveidt · Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 12:26 pm Post subject:

DrunkenCoder · Demon Hunter Joined: 29 May 2002 Posts: 559

Nodtveidt · Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 3:29 pm Post subject:

I had tried to explain the major caveat with OSS somewhere but I'm not quite sure where...the main thrust of the point though is that there is a particular mindset that seperates commercial from independant, and that's "product" versus "project". The vast majority of OSS apps are headed and worked on by people with project mentality. Basically, what you end up with is a work-in-progress that is never finished...missing features that are "planned" but never make it in (and then the project usually gets dropped halfway through), a subpar interface, missing or utterly crap documentation, etc etc etc. And all under the guise of "work in progress"...aka a license to be a lazy fuck. :) Product mentality is altogether different...the idea is there, goals are set ahead of time, the project is organized ahead of time, everything is in place before the work begins and then the work does not stop until the product is ready for deployment or distribution. "Work in progress" is something the consumer never sees...they only see the finished product with all its features and documentation completed. Patches are not considered "work in progress", they're simply updates for an already finished product.

The number of OSS developers with project mentality is staggering, and only a few have any sense of product mentality (the Mozilla foundation is the only OSS group I can think of that actually has product mentality). That is one of the major reasons why OSS software will always take a back seat to closed-source proprietary software.
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If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows. - wallace