Guy Rabiller

I know Josh wont drop Lua anytime soon, but for those who are interrested in some alternatives, I encourage you to take a look at the Squirrel scripting. It's based on the Lua stack code but has a jscript/c/c++ syntax ( personaly I'm more at home with it ) and support native classes and has reference counting ( you can choose to not use a GC ). Binding to C++ seems easier albeit I've only used it with C. People using Squirrel ( including its author of course ) claim it's better suited than Lua for large and heavy code bases ( more efficient in this case ). Squirrel Language Albeit this language is not very well known it is stable and supported and is also used in commercial applications and games. I invite you to take a look at it. Guy.

For games I can think about another use : Imagine a space ( or whatever ) online game where each player has his own area where he can build things ( space station, or facilities on a planet ground, etc.. ). When a player arrive in the 'area' of another player, there must be a way to load the custom assets of the area player ( because perhaps this player has built things with third-parties 'add-ons' and assets that are not ont the other player hard-drive - can't be preloaded ). If the game must freeze while loading all the other player assets, then it would not be a pleasant experience. This is an exemple of situations with *collaborative* games or applications. If you go beyond games you can think of 3d applications where peoples are connected together, either in a P2P way or a Client/Server way. If someone is adding an asset into the 'universe' or the 'scene', it would be a shame to see the application freezing on every networked computer just to load the new asset. Guy.

Well, you don't need to 'sell' me C++ I know C++ and I've used it a lot for some developments by the past, but at the end I guess it just goes down to a question of personal tastes. Also perhaps at some point I prefere to concentrate on the project itself rather than the intricacies of the used language(s). In C++ if you want to be efficient, you must use templates, either directly or indirectly. You have the standard library but also heavy libraries too ( boost, etc.. ). Then the standard is evolving, new features, etc. The thing is that the time you spend to learn, understand, test, make decisions about the right approach(es), libraries, etc.. is not spent on the actual development. I am at a point where by using C and the simple OOC idea, I can concentrate on the actual development rather than on the language itself. I don't know why but when it comes to high level object oriented approaches I tend to shift to scripting languages, especialy Squirrel ( or even some RAD dev tools, I've used RealBasic, PureBasic in some production environments where dev time was a big issue ) ( BlitzMax only for prototyping with LE ) and when it comes down to more low level stuff I prefer C. Perhaps I'm too old to change my habits But again, don't get me wrong, I'm not telling one is better than the other one.

Lol, I just realised the enormous textfiled well visible in the site header "Search.. Forums".. Sometimes when it's too obvious, you can't see.. Guy.

Hi Josh, Albeit I'm not targeting game applications, even in the context of game applications this seems pretty obvious to me : - How can you load a 'level' and displaying some kind of graphic animation to the user at the same time without background loading ? Does the application has to 'freeze' while loading the model/level/etc.. ? - How can you implement infinite universes without a way to stream/load models on the fly in the background ? Or whenever a new model is loaded then the game would freeze while the player is waiting ? Or are there some other mechanisms already available to do this I'm not aware of ? Guy.

Hello TheoLogic, Well, it's mostly for historical and personal reasons actualy, not because C is better than.. or whatever. I've developped along the years lot of things, libraries etc.. and I don't want to waste time porting everything to C++ now. That said, the C I use is an Object Oriented C (OOC), - based on an old paper from Axel-Tobias Schreiner ( I don't use a pre-processor though ) - wich use Flexible Array Members (FAM) a lot ( and FAM are not supported by C++ ), plus some custom modifications/additions, so I have classes, inheritance, interfaces, objects encapsulation, etc.. and even, to some degree, templates. I don't have overloading though. This OOC has a few interresting features, for instance object construction from the stack is done manualy ( _ctor( obj ); ) wich means if I don't need an object due to some conditions, the object is not constructed at all. Using this OOC is a little more work than using plain C++ for sure, but I'm ok with it. The thing is that to use C++ efficiently, IMHO, you must use templates. And using templates is not an easy task, especialy when debugging. So for now I'm pretty happy and confortable with this OOC and I don't see the benefit, at least for now, for me to sitch to C++. In fact I rely on scripting too ( Squirrel ) so once the low level / hardcore functionalities are implemented in OOC I can switch to a higher level of abstraction using this OO scripting language ( with native classes, etc. ). This works pretty well so far and I'm pretty happy with this combination. Hehe, good answer Lumooja Well, our projects and applications mostly target recent graphic cards, so there is no point for us to support old cards and old OS. Current OS are 64bit, I see no point to support 32bit anymore. Plus we are mostly targetting professionnals ( we are not in the game industry ) and in this context and in the context of our applications, memory usage can be important. Scenes using 8Gb or more are not uncommon. Plus, clearly, we are not targetting mobile platforms and so on, so I see no reason at all to support 32bit application anymore, at least for us Guy.

I see, I'll wait for v3 then :-] Thanks. Guy.

Indeed, thanks. I've been able to get my answers. Guy.

Ah, I see. Thanks for the information Josh. Well, I'm just using BlitzMax for prototyping anyway, so no big deal. The final application will be in C and hopefully in 64 bit ( hence my other question regarding 64 bit version of the engine in the main Programming forum ). Guy.

Hi, I can see there is a sub-forum related to the sources of the Leadwerks engine, and some users are marked as 'Leadwerks source developpers' so I guess there is a way to have access to the engine sources ? I don't see any mention of this in the product page. What does it take to have access to the sources ? Guy.

Hello, Sorry if this is an already answered question but I can't find a way to search the forum and I'm new to Leadwerks engine ( I don't see a 'search' button, is there a way ? ). Does a 64bit version of the Leadwerks engine exist or is planned ? From the downloaded SDK it appears there is only a 32 bit version. Guy.

Hello, For rapid prototyping I'm currently using BlitzMax ( and the great BLIde ) with the Leadwerks engine modules. It seems I can't compile with the Multithreaded option turned on. I understand the Leadwerks engine is not thread safe but I would like to be able to use threads for tasks unrelated to the engine. Is this a known issue ? Is there a workaround to this, an update or something I'm not aware of ? Thanks in advance for your help. Guy.

Ah! That's it! Wonderfull news, thanks Rick, you made my day Guy.

Yes that's what I've realized :-] Nonetheless, the download ended up by showing the message "Installation Failed" wich is pretty scary But everything seems to be working so far. Guy.

Did you checked the logs ? I did'nt realized there was an issue at first, before looking at the log. I did it on P drive :-] with admin priviledges. I did it twice, same result. Guy.