Text: "Game Testing All in One" by Charles Schultz

• General Hacker Stuff
• Course-Related Links
• Game Development
• Open Source Gaming
• Tools
• Essays on Programming and the Profession
• Organizations/Projects
• General Resources 
• Online References
• Just for Fun
• Course Notes

General Hacker Stuff

IBM DeveloperWorks - A great resource for developers, with articles, tutorials and links to software.

Object-Orientation Tips - A neat page with a ton of information about OOP

Guru of the Week - a regular series of C++ programming problems created and written by Herb Sutter.

O'Reilly.Net - An excellent source of programming tips/tricks/articles for just about every platform you can think of.

Dr. Dobbs - If you're planning on being a professional software developer, this is a magazine you need to know about - plenty of great articles and tutorials.  (I recommend subscribing, but you can get a lot of the content from their Web site if you prefer.)  In continuous publication since 1976, this is possibly the most long-lived computer publication ever.

Top-Coder.com - If you're interested in showing your stuff, here's a place where programmers get together and compete in coding contests online.

Course-Related Links

C++ Links - A lot of resources

The Object-Oriented Page - Another ton of links, not specific to C++ but about OOP

More C++ Links - A good page with tons of good links

Objective Viewpoint - An online magazine put out by the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) with a lot of good articles on OOP.

Game Development

Irrlicht - A free, open-source realtime 3D engine. Fully cross-platform, written in C++ and available for .NET.

Free Game Programming Libraries and Code - Just what it says.

DevMaster.net - Online source for game development

GameDev.net - Another online resource for game developers.

The Game AI Page - A good reference for building smarts into your games.

Cross-Platform Game Development for C++ Developers - A good overview of cross-platform game engines, many of which are free.

Open Source Gaming

(One of the best ways to learn how to code is by reading someone else's code. This section is meant as a resource for a wide variety of games that have source code freely available.)

Cube - A basic First Person Shooter game, similar to Quake 3. What makes this useful is that the code is freely available so you can learn how to code a game like this yourself and even adapt the code for your own use.

Open Source Gaming - A nifty site devoted to open source games for multiple platforms in various languages.

Open Directory: Games - A page of links to open source games and game development projects.

Home of the Underdogs - Yet another collection of links to open source gaming projects.

Tools

CuteWriter A free PDF convertor for Windows.  It lets you create PDF files from any Windows application that can print.  Very useful for  creating cross-platform documents.

Dia - a free, cross-platform technical drawing tool.  (This site only supplies the Windows version.)

OpenOffice.org- The OpenOffice.org project is producing a free, open-source competitor to Microsoft Office.  OpenOffice.org can read and write Microsoft Office files and has database and drawing tools as well.  Bonus features: built-in export to PDF and the ability to export presentation files to Flash format.

Essays on Programming and the Profession

The Pragmatic Programmer - Homepage of the book of the same name, this site also contains excerpts from the book as well as essays from the authors on the profession. Highly recommended.

The Tao of Programming - A well-done, tongue-in-cheek look at computer programming in terms of Eastern mysticism.

Problem-Solving Strategies - Not specifically about programming, but a good set of rules-of-thumb for dealing with technical problems.

Organizations/Projects

General Resources

SoftPro Books - This is an excellent source for computer and networking books. You can order online or go to one of their local stores. (They have one at Yosemite and Arapahoe in Englewood and another in Boulder.) You can usually get 10-20% off the list price and if you join their 'frequent shoppers' club (it's free) you can get additional savings. 

Online References

Google - One of the best search engines out there for the technically inclined. 

igrep - advertised as the first search engine for technical people.

Just for Fun

Ubersoft - A funny comic strip about a mythical software/OS vendor located somewhere in the Pacific Northwest....

User Friendly - Yet another comic strip that looks at the funny side of computing.

Computer Stupidities - This site collects actual dialogues between real users and real tech support folk. The range of misunderstandings and confusion is frequently hilarious.

Peter's Evil Overlord List - Thinking about a career as an Evil Overlord? Think you have what it takes to be the next Darth Vader? Check out this site for a collection of SuperVillain Do's and Don'ts including 'My ventilation shafts will be too small to crawl through'.

The Voice Actor Page - Want to know who does the voice of Larry 3000 on Time Squad?  Find the answer to this and many more questions about the men and women who do the talking for your favorite cartoon characters.  Search alphabetically by show title or actor name.  (By the way, Larry is voiced by none other than Mark Hamill.) 

Stupid Plot Tricks - Expanding on the Evil Overlord lists, this contains lists of rules for henchman, good guys/gals, bad guys/gals and even sidekicks.  Very funny read.

Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics - This site examines many popular movies to see if the action is in line with real physical laws.  An interesting, entertaining and even educational read.

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