Planet Chili

I have been out of school for a few weeks now and have been wanting to get back into programming. It has been what? Like 6 months since I did really any c++.

Recently I have just been playing video games when off from work. I would like to get back into programming, but I only a little over a month before school starts back up.

I want to do some 3d work. I recently watched all of chilis 3d fundamentals videos and understood most everything. Back a while ago I did some work with the vulkan api; however I think it may be too complex for me. I feel that 3d work just takes a long time to do in general. Even if you get a solid framework down, you still need models, audio, textures, etc.

On the other hand, I dont really know if I want to get back into 3d because last time I did, I got too frustrated and burnt out. I am just thinking of a way to spend this time productively.

Anyways... How have things been going here on the forums?

Try Unity and free assets ( models, audio, sprites, etc ). It's C# I guess, but you can do it.

The forum has been pretty busy these past 6 months, lots of new talent.

I personally haven't accomplished much in the way of finishing projects, but have been working on some. One is a MUD (mulit-user dungeon) client/server using the SFML framework. This if for an acquaintance and a Pong game for personal accomplishment...I'd have it finished if I'd stop trying to be so strict on myself about OOP.

I've been moving. Not done yet really. All in all, it's been a generally soul-crushing experience.

I don't recommend DX12/Vulkan for learning 3D. If you have built a generally full-featured 3D engine in DX11 etc. then you might be prepared to start messing with Vulkan.

Vulkan for me is like participating in a Nascar race, with no prior driving experience. Honestly its really not that bad if your good at teaching yourself, reading/understanding documentation, and c++ in general. I had no prior graphics api experience at all, T'was cray cray starting out. I just figured why waste time learning OpenGL or DX when my goal was Vulkan. It will take a while, but I felt it would take even longer to learn 2 or 3 api's. Learning how everything(hardware) works first. Then if it doesn't work(code) you already(normally) know how to fix it. Debug (flags) also helps a lot. You just need a end goal, and when you get burnt out, work on other smaller things that are still on track with said end goal. I try to always kill 2 stones with 1 bird, and hope today's not my day in the barrel.