john said:
So if I wanted to do some game programming with C++ and openGL/directx do I
need to know MFC /VCL . Can I just know C++ and bypass these extras
If you have to ask how to write games, you are not ready to.
Game programming is very hard. Normal programs are 2-dimensional, and only
use limited animation. Games are 3D and animated, so they are a couple
orders of magnitude more complex than business applications.
MFC is flat, and will give you nothing towards games.
To deal with their complexity, game projects come in several layers - the
art formats, the rendering layer, the gameplay engine, and the scripting
layer. Each of these could be in a different language, each uses different
libraries, and each uses different support tools.
Your best bet is to buy a game, such as Quake or Warcraft, that comes with a
"level editor". That means the game shop productized and sold the tools
which their gameplay designers used to architect the game's floorplan,
monsters, and triggers. Paying a little to enter gaming at the top will be
more fun than starting with raw C++ and OpenGL and entering at the bottom.
Your second best bet is to download an open source game engine, from
http://sf.net . Go with whatever language and library you can manage to
install and use to get such a project working. After that, learning the
language and libraries will be relatively easy.