I'm new to modding and have lots of ideas for things, and some of them need OpenGL to make, but I have no experience with OpenGL at all. Is it possible--or, I should say practical--to just look through the game's code itself to learn how everything works and look up things as I go or should I just stop and take a full course on OpenGL first to have a full grasp on it and then think about it in the context of Minecraft? It seems very complex and I don't want to be spending more effort than it's worth. Some people have told me OpenGL is too complex to just jump into and learn from an already existing game, and others have said that the way Minecraft uses it is nothing like raw OpenGL and that learning it wouldn't help much. What do the people here think who know how to use it?

Minecraft won't help you at all. All rendering is piped through several helper classes that then interact with OpenGL through another layer of indirection (LWJL) and some direct manipulation.

So should I just wait until I understand base OpenGL first then so I can dissect how they do it? What's the best route to learn this stuff so I can use it in the game, if you have any suggestions?

Edited January 14, 20205 yr by 2hu

I wouldn't use Minecraft at any stage of learning anything.

3 minutes ago, Draco18s said:

I wouldn't use Minecraft at any stage of learning anything.

I guess that solves that then. That's unfortunate, though it's not really surprising. Thanks for your help. I'll wait until I have a much better grasp of OpenGL and programming before I start modding.