The next generation?

I just saw a video about the new Unreal Engine 4.
The video was about a technical artist showing what you can do with the
UED (Unreal Editor) 4.

Everything in the video looks very promising, but what caught me the most is what happens at the end of the video (at about 9:40). The guy showing the engine opens Visual Studio from within the UED and changes some c++ code (in the video he's manipulating the player's jump height).

When he returns to the game a little message appears saying "Compiling C++ Code...".
After a few seconds a new message appears saying "C++ Code successfully compiled".

After that he was jumping twice as high as before.
This is IMO one of the most astonishing things I've ever seen. In that way you could use C++ as a scripting language...A very powerful one.

I have absolutely no idea how they've implemented that, but that feature is just amazing and I'm eager to find out how that works ;).

Visual Studio 2011 Beta

I just downloaded the Visual Studio 2011 Beta.

I wonder how much they changed except the design. (I'm not a big fan of the new metro layout)

However, I look forward to some of the new C++11 features that have been implemented in VS11.

EDIT: Am I the only one having speed problems with VS2011? Yesterday I started a little project in VS2011 and when I wanted to debug it, it took like 2 minutes until the program even started. I wonder if any one else is having problems like that?

More C++11 features implemented in VS 11

Some features of C++11 that where missing in VS10 are now available in VS11. (e.g threads)

For a full overview check here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/hh852594.aspx

Most annoying error ever. (Visual Studio Watch Window)

Hi folks.

I just "fixed" the most annoying and strangest error I've faced so far.

I wanted to watch a GameObject object in Visual Studios Watch Window, to see if some attributes were set properly. The strange thing was, that the Watch window constantly showed me very strange result.

I had a function that was like that:

 //...Code  
 gameObject->setSize(32,32);  
 //..Code  
 GameObject::setSize(int w,int h){  
      this->size = Size(w,h);  
 }  

After the above function the watcher would show me something like
gameObject->size        Size -> w: 10000434     h: 10283848 (obviously totally wrong results)

It took me like 3 hours and a good bunch of nerves 'til I figured out that the header files of my engine were outdated in the project folder. I'm not sure how that exactly led to the above error but after I updated the engine header files in the project folder everything went properly again.


SO IF YOU'RE FACING STRANGE RESULTS IN THE WATCH WINDOW OF VISUAL STUDIO, MAKE SURE YOU UPDATE YOUR HEADER FILES OF 3RD PARTY LIBRARIES / FRAMEWORKS BEFORE YOU START WASTING 3 HOURS OF YOUR PRECIOUS LIFE!


Sincerely, the most annoyed person in the world.

New splitscreen approach.

As posted here, I implemented a splitscreen mode for the engine.
The implementation is sort of dirty as all graphics are getting recreated per camera.

For instance: you want to draw a graphic with 4 player split screen.The graphic will then get created 3 times (1 graphic for each camera). That ensures that every camera has its own graphic with which it can do what ever it wants (like zoom, rotation, etc.)

As you can imagine, that is quite expensive and for many graphics on screen pretty memory consuming.
That seemed like a wasteful but working implementation until now.

It's just theoretical, but I'm pretty sure it is possible to reimplement it so that every graphic will only get drawn only for one camera per tick. If there's more than one camera, the graphic will get drawn for the next camera the next frame.

It'll go like this (C style pseudocode):

 void draw(IGraphic graphics*[]){  
      if(CURRENT_CAMERA < AMOUNT_CAMERA){   
           CURRENT_CAMERA = 1;               // Start from first camera  
      }  
      for(int i = 0;i < AMOUNT_GRAPHICS;i++){ //go through all graphics.  
           m_cameras[CURRENT_CAMERA]->draw(graphics[i]); //draw graphics into buffer of the current camera  
      }  
      CURRENT_CAMERA++; //Increment to camera counter and leave the draw function.  
 }  

So if the game uses 3 cameras it'll look like this:

Frame 1 : Draw graphics for camera 1
Frame 2 : Draw graphics for camera 2
Frame 3 : Draw graphics for camera 3

Frame 4 : Draw graphics for camera 1
Frame 5 : Draw graphics for camera 2
Frame 6 : Draw graphics for camera 3
....

I don't know if this implementation will cause a big delay, but I guess it's for me to find out ;)

Edit:
This approach will obviously split the FPS in half.
e.g. 60FPS / 2 Cameras = 30 FPS per camera.

That means that the game needs to run with ~120 FPS to look smooth with 4 cameras....
Shouldn't be a problem with a 2D game.

Use typedef to make your code easier to read.

I want to talk about the C++ keyword "typedef" in this post and how it can make your life easier.

I assume that you often work with hard to read template classes (like 90% of the STL).
Consider this code given the above assumption:

 void foo(){  
   std::list<Class> myList;  
   //...  
   for(std::list<Class>::iterator iter = myList.begin();iter !+ myList.end()iter++){  
    //..  
   }  
  std::tr1::smart_ptr<Class> myInstance(new Class());  
 }  

This type of code layout can get very confusing very fast.
If you just add 3 typedef's at the beginning of this code, you'll make the code much easier to read.

 typedef std::list<Class> MyClassList;  
 typedef std::list<Class>::iterator MyClassIterator;  
 typedef std::tr1::shared_ptr<Class> MyClassPtr;  

Using these typedefs, I'll show you what that code sample above will look like:

 void foo(){  
   MyClassList myList;  
   //...  
   for(MyClassIterator iter = myList.begin();iter !+ myList.end()iter++){  
    //..  
   }  
  MyClassPtr myInstance(new Class());  
 }  

That's much better, isn't it?

Yet another book

Today yet another book I've ordered, the CryENGINE Cookbook, got delivered.
I've ordered that book because we need to develop a game, in which the player must solve physical tasks,in one of my courses at the university.

I choosed the CryENGINE because I already got in touch with it during one of our courses.

If I have something worth showing, I'll post about it.