c++ visualization

Question

Is there a C++ programming language knowledge to check the little tool where the introduction of C++ code would be nice to get something on the screen, similar to the "Processing" http://www.processing.org only with C++ language? I know the "Cinder" http://libcinder.org, but perhaps there should be a lot of code to write something to the screen? I just want to continue to learn C++ and tested by the knowledge I have, but I still can not write a complete program. Game Maker would be very appropriate, but the GML is a different language than C++

Answer 1

I can't really tell if you're asking for a simple windowing/graphics API or an API to assist in the procedural generation of images / "creative coding." C++ doesn't have either as part of its standard library.

If its the first thing, GLUT and its ilk allow you to get a window up and running for using OpenGL relatively quickly and is useful for quick-and-dirty prototyping. SFML is the modern de-facto successor to the popular SDL library... and there's this one I just stumbled across while doing some quick research for this question.

For the second case, I'm not aware of many. In addition to Cinder, there's openFrameworks and (maybe) this haXe thing.

Answer 2

i guess you can also use winBGIm it's very simple (only if you are trying to work with MinGW) and you can also find it's port here http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~main/bgi/visual/ and if you want to work with specificaly with cisual studio 2010 i think the best way is to use windows GDI it's also as you can see an easy to learn visual tool (this program directly draw on the screen you can also add some code to create a window first!):

/* *********************************************
* A simple gdi program
* ***********************************************/

#include <Windows.h>

void GdiOut(HDC hdc);

int WINAPI WinMain(
  HINSTANCE hInstance,
  HINSTANCE hPrevInstance,
  LPSTR lpCmdLine,
  int nCmdShow
  )
{
 HDC hdc = GetDC(NULL);
 GdiOut(hdc);
 ReleaseDC(NULL, hdc);

 return 0;
}

/* Show how to use the basic GDI functions */
void GdiOut(HDC hdc)
{
 HPEN hPen, hPenOld;
 HBRUSH hBrush, hBrushOld;

 //Initial colors
 BYTE bRed = 0;
 BYTE bGreen = 0;
 BYTE bBlue = 0;

 //Pen color
 COLORREF cPen = RGB(bRed, bGreen, bBlue);
 //Set the brush color based on the pen color. It is purple partial to blue.
 COLORREF cBrush = RGB(233,GetGValue(cPen), 255);
 //Create the pen.
 hPen = CreatePen(PS_SOLID, 10, cPen);
 //Create the brush.
 hBrush = CreateSolidBrush(cBrush);
 //Select the pen and brush. Just like set the drawing arguments.
 hPenOld = (HPEN)SelectObject(hdc, hPen);
 hBrushOld = (HBRUSH)SelectObject(hdc, hBrush);

 //Draw a triangle
 MoveToEx(hdc, 30, 10, NULL);
 LineTo(hdc, 10, 50);
 LineTo(hdc, 50, 50);
 LineTo(hdc, 30, 10);
 //Use the old pen
 SelectObject(hdc,hPenOld);
 //Draw and fill an ellipse
 Ellipse(hdc, 10, 60, 110, 160);

 //Release the resources
 DeleteObject(hPen);
 SelectObject(hdc, hBrushOld);
 DeleteObject(hBrush);

}