Iv'e been teaching myself C++ for years now (I just started

What are you asking?

Is it a good idea to learn OpenGL? Well you only have two options and even though I'm a Microsoft apologist, I don't recommend the other.

Is it a good idea to learn OpenGL from the ground up? You'll be pretty limited in your graphical options if you don't learn the inner workings of OpenGL.

>>58952357
>Is it a good idea to learn OpenGL? Well you only have two options and even though I'm a Microsoft apologist, I don't recommend the other.
>hurr what is Vulkan

>>58951295
OpenGL is being replaced by vulkan. So i would go learn that

>>58951295
>>58952287
>>58952357
>>58953293
>>58953348
OpenGL is extremely low level stuff. Or at least it's stuff that isn't going to create anything worthwhile if you do it alone.
tl;dr: it only makes sense if you have a whole team and never solo even on the most simplistic game in the world.
whatever you end up doing you will have 0 assets to do anything with it, without even going to the high level stuff.

>>58953348
If he doesn't already know another graphics API Vulkan will fucking tongue his butthole

It takes more code in Vulkan just to blit a flat color on the screen than my entire OpenGL renderer because of all the setting up you need to do, and that's without doing it "right" in Vulkan.

>>58953375
t.I have created a basic renderer years ago, it felt like I did 0.1% of the work a game would need. Jesus fucking christ, I didn't even go beyond basic lighting and basic translation. It was just an eye opener that when you go that low level, you can only be a tiny cog compared to the competition of the modern world

Perhaps you could make something simplistic like something for mobile maybe but still I don't believe it has future as a solo project.

>>58953348
Wrong

>>58953375
That's.... not true. C is "extremely low level stuff" and everything you say can be and is said about C with equal incorrectness. The fact is SOMEONE is out there does this stuff. I'VE done this stuff. Took a soft two weeks to get to a point where I was porting common model/animation formats to mine own into a shader that did all shading/animation that you expect as well as some custom touches.

I mean I don't want to encourage someone who just wants to "like make games" and doesn't have a decent background in Linear Algebra to get over their heads trying to worry about things that could be done (though with far less control) by any number of engines that already exist, but OpenGL is extremely learnable just like any other programming library.

>>58953509
Even if you're good at that shit, you're not gonna do anything on your own without artists. MAYBE, even if THAT is a stretch you could reach up to the point of game-logic.
Just saying if you go that low level you usually go for specialization and becoming part of a team.
I really don't see the point of doing that stuff on solo projects.

>>58953529
Artists? Well that's a total straw man argument; whether or not a man can build a city on his own has nothing to do with the discussion of whether or not OpenGL is a valuable skill to learn, but there are plenty of examples of Renaissance men doing everything themselves (Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya of Cave Story fame being a notable example). But more to the point the great chunk of indie games operate on a two-or-three party system with a single person doing all of the coding (and the others doing things like level design, art, and music). And while some of them do so by letting pre-made engines do all the heavy lifting, there are plenty of examples of people with skills in graphics coding writing these things from scratch.

Though it may seem like a great precipice that only the chosen few who spend their entire life learning this stuff are able to pass because of the relatively high tier (compared to most other transactional programming) of math involved, once you get past that it really isn't any different from any other subsystem. In fact by-volume graphical programming is by its very nature quite condensed.

>>58953680
it isn't the Renaissance anymore. There is simply no time. Maybe for something simplistic like a android game but even then I think the market is thin.

>>58951295
if you're as good as you think you are, learn vulkan and opengl.
https://vulkan-tutorial.com/

>>58953375
>Or at least it's stuff that isn't going to create anything worthwhile if you do it alone.
what are you talking about. You can make everything you want with opengl, especially if you add blender into the equation.

>>58953715
>it isn't the Renaissance anymore
The Enlightenment never stopped. You're obviously not smart enough or comitted enough or both to play at the higher levels.

>>58954488
Good luck with that. Coding on OpenGL AND FUCKING DOING THE ART. Good. Fucking .Luck. Tell us when you finish that World of Warcraft successor working alone, little bitch.

>>58954527
You are a stupid shit. Nobody told you here to not work. The argument is solely saying if you are a loner coder it's kinda pointless to go that low level.
OpenGL coding is for 99% of jobs a teamwork.

>>58954708
>little bitch.
>You are a stupid shit
What causes a person to be so angry? Feelings of inadequacy?

>>58954927
Stupid arguments.

>>58951295
Colleges teach openGL. But I doubt you'll learn as much as you want in a single semester.

If you want to learn graphics programming
https://www.shadertoy.com
is good to play around it. So much of using opengl is just laying the boilerplate correctly, there is skill to it but if you want to learn graphics part of the graphics programming, try shadertoy. Prototype something with it and then try do the same thingy you created just using opengl, it's a lot of work.

>>58951295

Make sure you learn the good parts :^)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CZ3K0I_08L6CuSHAxikB56WhPJPdj8yy9RqLexK4fgs/edit#gid=0

>>58951295

SDL is easy, almost trivial. If you ever want to make a quick raytracer or render a fractal use SDL.

OpenGL is harder. The hardest part of building a game/physics engine is the linear algebra involved. I suggest teaching yourself OpenGL and then learning about the linear algebra in school.

A reasonable first step: build yourself a debugging environment for your 3d engine. It should have a generic "noclip mode" camera and you should be able to set arbitrary 3d reference points that are totally self contained (verify they will not effect the thing you are going to build). use GLM because it's not worth making your own matrix math library

This will teach you the basics of OpenGL and be something you can use as a template for future OpenGL projects