Software Engineering and OpenGL

OpenGL - is a graphics API that pretty much mirrors what Direct3D does for DirectX. So this month, is almost like a repeat of DirectX, but instead its completely focused on displaying stuff to the screen. In the class we will be required to write OpenGL shaders and basically know it inside and out. Due at the end of the class is a scene we have to create to demonstrate our knowledge of OpenGL, so with any luck, i will try and upload a video to YouTube when im completed with it, so i can show you guys what i can do.

In Software Engineering (SWE) - this class is mainly geared towards debugging. however the very first lab, we were required to write a memory manager using a doubly linked list and basically allocating a giant contiguous chunk of memory up front and passing out bits and pieces of it, to who needed it. In order to do this we had to override the new function and make our own. After this was all said and done, this could have made our game last month, run about 1,000 times faster, only because everything would have been contiguous and wouldnt take any time at all to access, or it wouldnt have taken time to create. The class we just finished, we had to write a .pak extractor. What is .pak? Well when games hit the shelf, they typically dont want the consumers having access to all of the games assets, so they put them inside of a encrypted file chuck...kinda like a zip file. So while in this file, in their program, they know exactly how to access where in memory the file they need is at.