OpenGL Programming

So I'm currently taking a graphics programming course, and its pretty intense even though we just started. Apparently it really helps to learn Linear Algebra even though it's not technically a prerequisite. So I'm giving myself a crash course in Matrix operations. WOOOHOOO.

Anyway, you should check out OpenGL. It's not object oriented, but it is awesome. Their site has some really good documentation as well. A helpful library to have when using OpenGL is glut. If you use Windows, here is a pre-compiled DLL of glut for you. Otherwise you probably know how to compile it yourself, or can at least find instructions on how to do so much better than I could write. If you use Visual Studio (which seems to work pretty well for some strange reason), you can check out this site which includes instructions on setting up OpenGL and glut in Visual Studio 2003, but it can be adapted to work with 2005 quite easily.

So when you have some free time, try some OpenGL programming. It's easier than you think and a lot of fun! I'll be posting some of my projects up here in the near future.

"Prey" - An Awesome Game

If you haven't played Prey, you should. It's seriously one of the best games I've ever played. It's got a lot of stuff that makes it unique such as wallwalking, gravity switching, "spirit walking" and "death walking". I wouldn't do these features justice by talking about them here, so why not check out the official website. It has screenshots and in-depth descriptions of all these things.

The game also as an awesome story, which I like. Multiplayer isn't everything. So if you have some time, go check it out.