I'm about to get a book on C++ programming (quite excited) and on amazon, one of the pages scanned showed this:


1. I assumed that a text document was converted to (eventually) an .exe file, but the text doc was still needed. But I've been trying to find the actual codes for Plants Vs Zombies, BattleDex, and Peggle (the 3 games on my laptop) but can't find any of them, so is it maybe that the text doc is converted into the .exe file, which only uses itself?

2. I've never heard of most of these file types and I want to learn so what are these files?: .dll .bar .dat .log .pak .xml

The source code for a game is in many hundreds or even thousands of source code files. The code is compiled into an .exe that is distributed to the user. Most game developers won't just give you the source code, because then you could copy it and turn it into your own game and sell it.

If you are serious about looking at game source code, you should browse a list of "open source" games:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_op ... ideo_games

The open source community consists of people who believe in sharing source code and giving software away for free - software like Firefox, BitTorrent, Linux, and the software that powers this forum are open source.

You can probably get started by studying the source code in some open source games, following some online tutorials, and getting a student copy of Visual Studio Express.

Source codes of games should be pretty complicated. When looking at your question, I see you are just starting. You should start with something simpler .

With my programming class we did it this way with java applets at least:
started with simply showing a window, then added some buttons to e.g. change colour or something.
then a simple button and a text window
then tic-tac-toe
that should keep u busy some days