COMS 4160 Video Game Project Resources

• The OpenGL Programming Guide book (aka "The Red Book") recommended for this class is perhaps the best guide to learning OpenGL programming. The errata for this book is available online, as well as the source code.
• The "official" OpenGL Website. This site is the most comprehensive collection of information about OpenGL, including programming tips, tutorials, and developer documentation, as well as the latest news about new OpenGL applications.
• SIGGRAPH'99 Advanced OpenGL Programming Course Notes. These course notes from the Advanced OpenGL course at the SIGGRAPH conference contain a wealth of information that goes beyond the basic techniques discussed in the Red Book. There is a particularly good section on "Tuning Your OpenGL Application" for peak performance. OpenGL/GLUT source code from the 1997 course is available  online.
• "Way cool, way fast OpenGL rendering techniques." Like the title says, this page includes links to discussions and examples of a number of interesting rendering effects possible with OpenGL.
• Nate Robins's OpenGL tutorial programs demonstrate basic OpenGL functionality by allow the user to interactively modify parameters and see the effect on the 3D scene. These programs are also available in the class directory.
• An older index of OpenGL resources.
• The OpenGL FAQ and Troubleshooting Guide probably has answers to many of your questions.
• Online manual pages for most of the OpenGL, GLU, and GLX commands.
• The Mesa 3D Graphics Library is a a freely available implementation of OpenGL that you can download and install if you are using a computer platform that does not already support OpenGL (such as Linux)

Windowing and Interface Toolkits

• We recommend using GLUT to handle the windowing and event management for your OpenGL programs. GLUT for the Sweet Hall machines is already installed (you've used it before). The primary GLUT Web page has pointers to GLUT information, including documentation for GLUT API and GLUT sample programs, which are also available in the class directory.
• GLUT by itself provides very limited GUI widget functionality (only menus). The Micro User Interface (MUI) toolkit comes with GLUT and can be used for buttons, text fields, sliders, and other widgets. Some brief MUI documentation is available online.
• We've experienced some annoying bugs with MUI. Another simple UI toolkit that sits on top of GLUT and OpenGL is The Picoscopic User Interface (PUI). Note that PUI requires that you program in C++.
• GLUI is yet another C++ GUI library that sits on top of GLUT and OpenGL.

Game Development Resources

• Gamasutra is a Web site devoted to game development. It contains articles about all aspects of the game industry and development process including a number of feature articles on game programming. Gamasutra is a supplementary site of Game Developer magazine.
• GameDev.net. Another site aimed at providing resources for game developers.
• VIS-SIM.ORG. This site serves professional developers of visual simulation systems such as flight simulators and military training applications. Video games and visual simulation systems share a broad range of development issues, from designing realistic 3D environments to real-time rendering of complex graphics.
• Real-Time Rendering Resources. This resources page contains a compendium of links relating to this new book on real-time rendering, and covers many topics of interest to developers of video game graphics engines. A copy of the book itself is available on reserve in the Stanford Math/CS library.

3D Modeling and Game Content

• A 3d format conversion program by Thomas Baier. To convert from a 3ds file to a C file use 3dto3d myobj.3ds /if1 /of18. Beware that creating detailed objects like this can result in files over a Mb that some compiler will choke on. Speed is also compromised.
• Ultimate 3D Links is a great starting point for programs and data for 3D game content. In particular, check out their links to shareware 3D modeling programs as well as their numerous links to collections of thousands of free 3D models and textures (follow the index links "3D Objects>Free Objects" and "Textures>Free" on the left side of their Web page).
• Viewpoint Digital is one of the leading 3D content providers in the video game industry. Although most of their models are expensive, it is fun to browse their extensive online catalogs of 3D models and textures.

Advanced Rendering Effects

• The NVIDIA developer relations site has a number of great demonstrations of advanced rendering effects in OpenGL, often along with source code, presentation slides, or whitepapers

Text in OpenGL

• A number of libraries exist for doing text better and easier in OpenGL. Here are pointers to a few: glBDF, TexFont, GLTT, FNT.

Sound

• The SL sound library is a fully portable (except MacOS) audio driver suited to C++ and GLUT applications.

Motion Capture

• Some sample motion capture data, along with an example OpenGL viewer, is available here.
• More free motion data files in a variety of formats are available here.