| Computer games are by far the most popular type of software. The market for game software is huge—practically anyone with a PC can use games. If you are like me, you probably play your share of computer games and have your own favorite categories. And because you are a programmer, you might have thought of many ideas that could be the basis of a game—if only you knew how to get started on the project. As you will see after reading this book, writing a computer game is not as difficult as you might have imagined. In fact, once you see how a game is written, you have a number of well-defined steps that you can follow to create your own game. After you have had some fun writing your own game, it may even become a source of income for you.
The basic premise of Programming Windows Games with Borland C++ is that whether entertaining or educational, all computer games have certain common elements: graphics, sound, and a mouse- or keyboard-based user interface. Thus, any programmer (with some imagination) who masters the basic techniques of manipulating images, generating sound, and controlling the mouse or keyboard can write a computer game. The best way to learn how to program games is to see working examples that illustrate how an imaginative idea can come alive in a computer game with graphics and sound.
Programming Windows Games with Borland C++ teaches intermediate to advanced level C++ programmers how to use object-oriented programming techniques to write computer games. Borland C++ offers exceptional support for Microsoft Windows programming, includes the ObjectWindows Library (OWL)—a comprehensive C function library—and provides a full set of programming tools such as MAKE, TLINK, TLIB, and the Turbo Debugger. The games presented in this book are meant to run under Microsoft Windows 3.1 because Windows offers a rich graphical user interface for the games and, more importantly, because there is a shortage of games that run under Windows. |