Game Programming Primer - Page 4

On November 22 2012 19:44 4tre55 wrote:
Just bought "Code" because of your guide an it's an amazing book, thanks a lot for the recomandation.

On November 23 2012 05:30 kollin wrote:
Out of interest, Cecil, what compiler do you use for coding? Having trouble finding the 'right' one :/

On November 23 2012 05:34 CecilSunkure wrote:

I like gcc/g++ and VS 2010. I'd recommend VS Express 2010.

On November 23 2012 05:30 kollin wrote:
Out of interest, Cecil, what compiler do you use for coding? Having trouble finding the 'right' one :/

On November 23 2012 04:09 CecilSunkure wrote:

Very awesome! I loved that book, read it twice.

On November 26 2012 03:39 Lorizean wrote:


Haha, I bought it too and it is pretty amazing indeed.

About the compilers: you will want to use gcc (g++) on gnu/linux. For Windows you have a choice between the microsoft compiler included in visual studio or MingW (a gcc port for windows).
Or you can use the Intel compiler (parallel xe) on both platforms.
Microsoft and Intel cost money though, but you can get free access as a student or for non-commercial use.

As for IDE i quite liked codeblocks (linux+windows, option to come coupled with mingW/gcc) or you can use visual studio for the microsoft/intel compilers.
Personally I use vim with g++ on linux and I can say that learning to use vim was very worth it, but it takes time to get used to it. So if you just want to code some small c++ program its probably not worth your while to learn it.

On November 28 2012 03:43 Random() wrote:
While this is a great article, I think you are overemphasizing the "internals" of game programming. Those parts that work with the hardware and all the low-level implementation details are, of course, quite important, but in all honesty they have little to do with your actual game.

When you look at it this way, then game development (as in implementing the actual gameplay mechanics) is very often done in a higher-level language. People use all sorts of languages (Python, Lua, Java, C#, ...) to abstract themselves away from the engine internals and the horrors of C++, and that is a very good thing. Writing good C++ programs is extremely difficult, and even the state-of-the-art engines written by the most talented programmers in the world are ridden with bugs. C++ programs written by average programmers are a minefield.

So unless you are determined to be a very technical sort of developer, working on the engine, I don't agree that you HAVE to use C++ for game development, in fact I would argue that you should try to avoid it at all if that is possible within your workflow.

Also, you write "there are a few different simple guidelines that one can follow to ensure their code isn’t running sub-optimally" as if running sub-optimal code is something to be ashamed of. Saying such things, especially to new programmers, is a recipe for disaster. Premature optimization is the root of all evil, and for whatever reason many people really seem to like spending their effort "optimizing" absolutely unimportant stuff which they don't even know to be the bottleneck, while at the same time their program is not working correctly overall.

On November 28 2012 05:29 CecilSunkure wrote:
As for optimization, I only talked about delayed construction and said not to pass-by-value. These are the sort of things I learned my first semester working in C. They aren't really something you can get lost in while programming in a bad way as you'll be learning fundamentals essential to programming in general.

On November 29 2012 01:56 spinesheath wrote:

Not using pass by value to improve speed is a trap too. Sometimes you want to pass by value, sometimes you don't.
See: http://cpp-next.com/archive/2009/08/want-speed-pass-by-value/


Generally you never even want to think of optimization until after you ran a detailed performance analysis. Before that point all your efforts should be spent on producing simple, readable, understandable, reusable, testable and maintainable code.