Summary

Although joysticks don't quite share the widespread acceptance on PCs that keyboards and mice do, they are the quintessential user input device for games. There aren't too many serious gamers out there who don't have a joystick. However, you don't have to be serious about games to enjoy the benefits of playing games with a joystick. For this reason and more, it's a good idea to try and support joysticks in games that make sense to use a joystick as input. This hour gave you the nuts and bolts of Windows joystick handling, and even showed you how to build it into the ever evolving game engine. You also saw how easy it is to add joystick support to an existing program.

Mark your calendar because Hour 8, "Example Game: Brainiac," represents a significant milestone in your game programming career ”you develop your first complete game. In other words, I've now deemed you knowledgeable enough about game development to turn you loose on a complete game project. Okay, I don't exactly turn you loose, but you work through the design and development of a complete game, nonetheless.