Chad J wrote:
On 01/07/2012 08:47 PM, Manu wrote:
On 8 January 2012 03:40, Nick Sabalausky <a@a.a> wrote:
"Froglegs" <lug...@gmail.com <mailto:lug...@gmail.com>> wrote
in message
news:lwcqnrvamqlnjjlxz...@dfeed.kimsufi.thecybershadow.net...
>
> can reload scripts while program is executing. Neither D
nor C++ work
> here.
>
Why not a dll? Those can be compiled/loaded/reloaded at
runtime. And
since
it's just scripts, it wouldn't take long to compile at all,
at least
in D
(maybe not so much in C++).
It's common for designers to edit scripts, and they don't
usually have
coding environments on their machines.
Meh, just link/package a D compiler into/with the game and
recompile/reload a file whenever it changes. It would probably
help if
DMD ditched its non-redistributable license stuff, but there's
also
LDC/GDC (LDC is probably the most promising for this kind of
thing).
My thoughts exactly. A D compiler/linker should be able to be
packaged with an game engine editor rather easily, and if I'm not
mistaken LDC has the potential to offer JIT/AOT compiling.
Manu wrote:
I'm generally shovelling large, strictly controlled buffers
which need
proper placement/alignment, pool allocation, or allocation from
temporal
ring buffers and that sort of thing. I don't typically find
C/C++
intolerable, or even particularly unpleasant for engine level
code as it
is, it's the higher level code I'm keen to escape.
As I understand it, most low level game engine code deals with
reusable memory pools to reduce memory thrashing with large
amounts of dynamically allocated/deallocated objects (correct me
if I'm wrong). C/C++ is great for this because in C memory is
memory, whereas in C#/Java memory is objects. Which makes general
purpose memory pools difficult to manage. I know there are
engines like the Delta Engine which, to my knowledge, is written
entirely in C# (minus a few minor bits).
I'm currently porting over our Reign SDK
(code.google.com/p/reign-sdk) which is a modest set of libraries
attempting to wrap DirectX, OpenGL, and other 3D media libraries
into a universal interface. I've plans on enhancing, d-atizing,
and expanding these libraries into a more full featured game
engine one day. I've got some interesting ideas on how
pre-written code packages could be easily designer-style
assembled in-editor and compiled into efficient native logic
blocks "on the fly". Only D's fast native compile times and
easy-to-grasp syntax would really allow for what I'm thinking.
Given your experience in this area, I would appreciate any
insight you could offer about the potential pros/cons for writing
low level game engine components in D. Would you say D is a
effective tool to write a general purpose memory pool, or would
something like that be better written in C? Or.. is it common to
have an array of specialized object pools? I'd imagine such an
engine would sacrifice flexibility and eat up more memory, but
most likely easier to implement.
