Game Programming Primer - Page 2

PassiveAce

United States18076 Posts

November 17 2012 17:35 GMT

#21

many things in C and C++ are hidden away from the developer and in turn makes them slower. Having slow code isn’t acceptable for high performance real-time applications such as games.

Hey Cecil, is this a typo also? the sentence seems contradictory in relation to the rest of the paragraph. This sentence comes from the "goals of the article" section at the top.

once again, this guide is truly incredible, thanks for taking the time to writing it : )))

CecilSunkure

United States2829 Posts

November 17 2012 17:42 GMT

#22

On November 18 2012 02:35 PassiveAce wrote:

Show nested quote +

Haha yes definitely a typo, thanks for pointing it out. Should say something like "many things in interpreted and other high level languages", not C and C++.

Gorlin

United States2753 Posts

November 17 2012 17:50 GMT

#23

Sweet, thanks a ton for this!

akarin

Ireland42 Posts

November 17 2012 19:43 GMT

#24

This looks so sweet! I'm really looking forward to reading this later, I have just scanned through it. As a nooby CS student (we covered arrays last week ^^) I am wondering is java used (much) in programming games?

Thanks for writing this Cecil!

jca2

France52 Posts

November 17 2012 19:56 GMT

#25

Very good article. I dont know if i missed it but I didnt see anything about "interfaces" which in C++ are based on abstract classes. It's a very powerfull mechanism that allows a binary to interact with another binary without any implementation knowledge, just a few abstract classes defined in .h files. Which in turn allows for real Component oriented design (infrastructures like COM, CORBA, ActiveX, etc).

NeWeNiyaLord

Norway2474 Posts

November 17 2012 20:35 GMT

#26

As an aspiring Developer I really appreaciate the effort you've done into this post. When I get time to study it I surely will! Thx Cecil!

DodgySmalls

Canada158 Posts

November 17 2012 22:06 GMT

#27

I'll bookmark this and use it along side other references to try to get a "fresh" perspective when I have a problem.

Pretty awesome amount of content in this, given that it's relatively short and covers so many topics.

edit:
I guess I'd also like to ask what are everyone's thoughts on java? I've seen some examples of how inefficient java can be in comparison to some c code, and it is true that you are denied quite a lot of low level access (pointers anyone?

)

I feel like it's a decent medium for a hobbyist, like myself, but I really don't have any argument for why I enjoy coding in Java over c++.

ibutoss

Australia341 Posts

November 17 2012 22:45 GMT

#28

I like this article. It is well written and even if I'm not that interested in writing a game I found it a useful refresh on many of the concepts I studied at uni but haven't really been exposed to since.

Thanks for writing it! I enjoyed reading it.

Cyx.

Canada806 Posts

November 17 2012 22:46 GMT

#29

As someone else who's in a software engineering program hoping to go into game programming, this is really awesome! A lot of the stuff I work in on my second-year courses is exactly the kind of stuff you're talking about which is really helpful.

One thing though - in your section about game engine architecture you use the Source engine as an example of an engine specific to first-person shooters, when in reality Dota 2 (and every other Valve game since HL2 I think) is built on the Source engine. I'm a bit of a Valve fanboy =P

Bombadil819

United States45 Posts

November 17 2012 23:25 GMT

#30

Nice article. Also worth mentioning Panda3D and Torque3D as other options for prebuilt game engines. Especially now that T3D is MIT licensed and on Github.

CecilSunkure

United States2829 Posts

November 17 2012 23:49 GMT

#31

On November 18 2012 04:43 akarin wrote:
This looks so sweet! I'm really looking forward to reading this later, I have just scanned through it. As a nooby CS student (we covered arrays last week ^^) I am wondering is java used (much) in programming games?

Thanks for writing this Cecil!

Sorry, Java isn't used really at all (as far as I know) professionally. I'm always hearing about how people are being interviewed for full-time positions around here (cough cough Microsoft) and are always declined; they don't really know what's going on. I'm sure there's a lot of Java jobs out there, but the kind I'm aiming at are not.

On November 18 2012 07:06 DodgySmalls wrote:
I'll bookmark this and use it along side other references to try to get a "fresh" perspective when I have a problem.

Pretty awesome amount of content in this, given that it's relatively short and covers so many topics.

edit:
I guess I'd also like to ask what are everyone's thoughts on java? I've seen some examples of how inefficient java can be in comparison to some c code, and it is true that you are denied quite a lot of low level access (pointers anyone?

)

I feel like it's a decent medium for a hobbyist, like myself, but I really don't have any argument for why I enjoy coding in Java over c++.

I don't use Java, but what all my superiors tell me is that it isn't nearly enough to cut it whenever you have a product that requires heavy optimization.

See for reference: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html

cowsrule

United States80 Posts

November 18 2012 00:25 GMT

#32

Nice article! Glad to see people documenting their learning progress and sharing their expreience with others.

Sidenote: '#pragma once' is awesome not those crazy header guards

On November 18 2012 08:49 CecilSunkure wrote:

Show nested quote +

Learning java is great, just don't stop there. Once you learn one language (which you CAN use to make games, just possibly not super-awesome AAA titles), it becomes easier to learn a second language.

Android development is java, so there are at least some games written in java. I believe the ever-popular Runescape is also written in java. Most AAA titles for the PC are written in C++ however.

thedeadhaji

39489 Posts

November 18 2012 00:35 GMT

#33

On November 18 2012 02:42 CecilSunkure wrote:

Show nested quote +

Haha yes definitely a typo, thanks for pointing it out. Should say something like "many things in interpreted and other high level languages", not C and C++.

C hides a lot of stuff away from the developer compared to assembly!

(just this week, we actually had to implement something in Assembly since C was too slow, lol -- this was for an embedded systems environment tho)

Bombadil819

United States45 Posts

November 18 2012 00:45 GMT

#34

On November 18 2012 08:49 CecilSunkure wrote:

Show nested quote +

Java sees HEAVY use in certain industry, and is capable of being highly performant when the code is written by someone who knows what they're doing. That doesn't mean it's a good intro language, or that it's the right tool for every job. Or that the language design is particularly elegant. But Java-bashing is a popular hobby for not terribly good reasons.

Greem

730 Posts

November 18 2012 01:31 GMT

#35

On my to read list ! thx a lot for a such a good work!

RayzorFlash

Canada253 Posts

November 18 2012 06:24 GMT

#36

Bookmarked and saved! The Quick Refresher stuff is SO IMPORTANT and so amazingly well put together. A lot of the fundamentals in there is what people in the industry REALLY look for when hiring and during interviews. This is an amazing review sheet to use before an interview. Thanks a lot!!! :D

jobebob

30 Posts

November 18 2012 06:59 GMT

#37

Wow, so much info. This is a good overview of many important concepts in programming.

You should add some info about using revision control systems. These systems are the foundation to managing a project between a group of people, and every programmer needs to learn how to use them.

Git is pretty famous and a really nice system. Github is massive.

Valve uses a system called perforce, which is basically a rev system for more than just code. We used it to store textures, vertex files and all the other things the artists make.

Some more design patterns would be cool too. I find the "Strategy" pattern is really well suited for making a simple game.

Nightsz

Canada398 Posts

November 18 2012 07:39 GMT

#38

i will read this one day >.>

BLinD-RawR

ALLEYCAT BLUES51072 Posts

November 18 2012 11:10 GMT

#39

holy hell yes, This is so useful for me I will read,reread this a lot as I progress on my own.

uZr

20 Posts

November 18 2012 12:00 GMT

#40

That's some insane amount of work you put in there, congrats !

However some things are just bugging me.

Arrays cannot be passed around from one location to another directly. If attempted, the name of an array will be converted to a pointer to the first element in the array. This incurs a loss of information, as a pointer stores information about location and type, whereas an array stores location of first element, type of the elements and number of elements. This “feature” of C and C++ can actually be viewed as a “language bug”.

What do you mean by "name of an array will be converted to a pointer" ? Strictly speaking those two things are just the same: pointers. the name[idx] syntax is just some syntaxical sugar over doing *(name+idx). Furthermore the "size of the array" is never stored anywhere in C. You can write it explicitly when allocating on the stack, but it will eventually get lost when compiled, and the compiler won't give you any warning if you access out of bounds entries.
Here's an example:


#include <stdio.h>
 
 int main()
 {
     int array[] = {1,2,3,4,5};
 
     printf("array[3] = %d | *(array+3) = %d\n",
             array[3], *(array+3));
 
     return 0;
 }

Running


test % gcc test.c -o test
test % ./test

then outputs


array[3] = 4 | *(array+3) = 4

When asking gcc to output it as assembly (gcc -S -m32 test.c) we get (some parts have been cut) :


_main:
     pushl   %ebp
     movl    %esp, %ebp
     pushl   %esi
     subl    $52, %esp
     call    L1$pb
 L1$pb:
     popl    %eax
     movl    _C.0.1863-L1$pb(%eax), %ecx
     movl    %ecx, -32(%ebp)
     movl    (_C.0.1863-L1$pb)+4(%eax), %ecx
     movl    %ecx, -28(%ebp)
     movl    (_C.0.1863-L1$pb)+8(%eax), %ecx
     movl    %ecx, -24(%ebp)
     movl    (_C.0.1863-L1$pb)+12(%eax), %ecx
     movl    %ecx, -20(%ebp)
     movl    (_C.0.1863-L1$pb)+16(%eax), %ecx
     movl    %ecx, -16(%ebp)
     movl    -20(%ebp), %ecx
     movl    -20(%ebp), %edx
     movl    %esp, %esi
     movl    %ecx, 8(%esi)
     movl    %edx, 4(%esi)
     leal    L_.str-L1$pb(%eax), %eax
     movl    %eax, (%esi)
     call    _printf
     movl    $0, -12(%ebp)
     movl    -12(%ebp), %eax
     movl    %eax, -8(%ebp)
     movl    -8(%ebp), %eax
     addl    $52, %esp
     popl    %esi
     popl    %ebp
     ret

Notice how our array entries get accessed:


     movl    -20(%ebp), %ecx
     movl    -20(%ebp), %edx

. (then get pushed on the stack later on etc).
As you can see there, both times it is accessed in the same way.

Arrays are just there to lighten up the syntax.

For example, you could want to iterate over a null-terminated char array this way:


void iterate_and_do_nothing(char *str)
{
    int i;
    while (str[i]) {
        ++i;
    }
}

That's valid, yet on this one the interrest of using an array-type approach is limited ...

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