I apologize in advance for my overall "noobness." This is my first question on stack overflow, and I am quite new to Qt, and game editor programming as well. That said, I do feel that my programming skill is not too far behind.
I've been looking for a question like this for two days, both on and off this website, and haven't found a single one. That could be because I don't know the right words to describe what I'm looking for simply.
I am beginning to build a simple game editor and engine with Qt. Please do not give the response of "Do you really want to make a game editor/engine" or "don't". I have my reasons why I am sure this is what I want to create. My question has to do with the "export to executable" or "build" feature that editors have. I've been trying to wrap my head around it, but I don't know how I would even begin to make that work. For all I know it could be one line of code, or ten-thousand.
Can someone please just point me in the right direction for what kind of programming I would need to do to make that work? If it's difficult and involves concepts I don't already know, that is actually kind of a good thing, because it means more learning for me. I just need some direction.
Thank you!
Alone "If it's difficult and involves concepts I don't already know" is enough to close this question. As if we know what you know and don't know...
Game editors are in general separated from the actual game building process that creates an executable as the final product. This is due to the overall complexity of putting all parts of the production chain into a single piece of software.
That said you can "connect" an editor to the building tools that you have to use in order to produce an executable. There are examples for this like the Unity SDK (including Unity Engine, Unity Editor etc.).
A huge exception to this general practice is Adventure Game Studio, which went open-source since not that long ago. I do believe that AGS is using .NET and C# in particular. It is almost all-in-one package including a built-in tool for generating executables from its custom language and adding the engine to it. It seems that this is what you are looking for though the complexity of such piece of software might be intimidating. If it's too much you can of course simply try to seamlessly add external building tools to your editor. Qt Creator is a nice example for this as well as probably 99% of all IDEs out there - editor simply provides the interface to interact with the building tools which are not part of it.
Last but not least you have to consider the maintenance that will be required in the future. Integrating the building infrastructure in your editor might seem like a good idea at first however what happens when you want to replace relatively large chunks of code in either your editor or this same building infrastructure, or even in both? My suggestion is to create the editor and just add an interfacing mechanism to existing building tools, which can easily be changed without ruining your editor's code or the one that represents your set of building tools.
In practice game editors do not build games to executable, they merely package game scripts and resources into a format the already implemented game executable can read. The game executable is not created by the game editor, it is implemented conventionally.
That being said, you might want to compile game scripts to native - in that case you must bundle the used compiled with the game, and invoke it from a child process to compile the script code to a shared library plugin, which you can dynamically load and use in the game engine. There is no magic here, whether it is a game or any other application, it is the same basic stuff.
In short, the game editor does not build executables - compilers do. Not unless you want, in addition to a game engine, also create your own C++ compiler too ;)
Related
The QT dev kit comes with some good examples of how to code features via trivial apps, but nothing comes close to showing how to structure a complex program in QT. What, if anything, should be global, etc? Pitfalls in designing your classes that would turn out to need a lot of eventual refactoring?
I'm sure there are plenty of open source KDE apps that would serve nicely, so I guess my question is what't the minimal amount of source code I'd need to download and set up in order to work with, say, Dolphin as a sample app? If the answer is 'all of KDE', then I guess this isn't practical (unless downloading and building all of KDE from source is easy enough to make that practical).
Any suggestions? Personally, I'm looking to build a browser-like app, but much simpler. So for an example to follow, something that handles sockets and multiple tabbed viewports would be nice.
Thanks,
Rob
The main advice regarding Qt itself is I would give is to try to spend as much effort as possible in learning to use Qt's Model View Delegate functionality. It can be a lot of work to wrap your head around, but once you get there, you can do very powerful things with it. Another relatively tricky topic you will want to invest learning resources in is memory management and how Qt facilitates (and doesn't facilitate) it.
One of the most confusing things to me was though that when your model is very complex, you might not want to have your core model class be a Qt model at all. Instead, I nowadays see Qt models as something that primarily provide data to views. If your model is very complex, you might want to use your actual, more complex model as a data source for the Qt model class (an QAbstractItemModel derivative), which in turn attaches to the UI view.
Also, Qt documentation is your friend. Qt is a wide framework and contains LOTS of useful functionality. I love the data structures in their ease of use, for example: QHash, QList, etc.
Project scaffolding features for beginners, for different project types in Qt Creator might indeed be useful. For now, the Qt Examples actually are quite good ones, and contain lots of good practices. You just need to pick and choose what you need.
I have been developing our Qt desktop app family for five years now. Our directory structure is quite unorthodox - the main thing is that we have lib/ under which we have grouped different related functionality in subdirectories. The thinking goes, if something is in lib, it is general-purpose and atomic enough to be used in several of the actual desktop applications in our software family.
Your question seems more general level than Qt. It is difficult to tell if you are looking for a more general level computer science education. Globals in general should be avoided, sure. OTOH, we do have a constants.h and other immutable configuration data that is global-like, since it is needed in many places. This adds state though, so it can have unpredictable consequences if you don't do it carefully.
You could look for directory structures in places like this, though I don't really follow this advice myself. http://hiltmon.com/blog/2013/07/03/a-simple-c-plus-plus-project-structure/
Unless you are planning to contribute directly to KDE, I would advice against learning KDE way of doing things. Not necessarily because they are doing things badly, but because it is a world of its own - the best practice for KDE development might not be the best practice for a stand-alone Qt app. (Disclaimer: I, as a UI developer, don't actually like KDE, so I do not know the project very well - aside from the fact that it indeed seems a bit monolithic to the outsider.)
So I wonder if something like Qupzilla would fit the bill for you? (Found via qt-apps.)
HTH.
I am currently considering writing a small game. It is essentially a map where you can zoom out and in, and in certain places click on info boxes where, at some point, I hope to integrate minigames. Granted, game might be overstating it. Think of it as an interactive map. The theme is how mathematics can be applied in peoples every day life to raise awareness on the usefullness of mathematics.
The question is how I as fast as possible can make a reasonable prototype. If I recieve enough positive response on this I might try to code "the real thing" and use the prototype to obtain funding.
However, I am at a crossroad. I want something to work rather fast and have some C++ experience coding optimization problems, mainly in c-style. I am not convienced, though, that coding it in C++ is the fast way to obtain a prototype. Though I have some experience coding in C++, but have no experience in coding any sort of GUI.
As I see it there is a number of possibilites:
C++, possibly using some library, such as boost or ???.
Start out purely webbased, using e.g. HTML 5 and java.
Python
C#/.NET
Others, such as?
I have to admit I have little experience with anything besides C++ and the STL.
So my question to this wonderful forum is basically, is there a language that provides a significant advantage? Also, any additional insight or comments is more than welcome!
Python is a simpler language than C++, and for prototyping it will help you focus on the task at hand. You can use Pygame, a game library built on the excellent cross-platform SDL library. It provides 2D graphics, input, and audio mixing features. SDL is mainly a C library (and thus compatible with C++), and there are a number of very useful libraries that integrate with it:
SDL_image for loading images in various formats
SDL_ttf for rendering text using TrueType fonts
SDL_mixer for audio mixing
SDL_net for networking
SDL_gfx for graphics drawing primitives
So if you prototype in Python using Pygame, there is a reasonable chance you’ll be able to port what you make over to C++ with minimal hassle, if and when you choose to do so.
Possible options:
Go with what you know the best. Anything else will require a learning curve, which may be weeks to months long. If you're willing to take that road in order to make your prototype, then there are some really great tools available.
BlitzBasic is a good way to go, and is basically designed to be for games
I've done little games in Java using Slick2D - but you'll need good grounding in object-oriented coding to work effectively in Java. If you've got that from C++, then you can see a tech demo I built in Slick2D called Pedestrians. It's open source, and has demo videos here.
You might also ask your question on https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/ - a Q/A site dedicated to game programming
How can I package my Java application into an executable jar that cannot be decompiled (for example , by Jadclipse)?
You can't. If the JRE can run it, an application can de-compile it.
The best you can hope for is to make it very hard to read (replace all symbols with combinations of 'l' and '1' and 'O' and '0', put in lots of useless code and so on). You'd be surprised how unreadable you can make code, even with a relatively dumb translation tool.
This is called obfuscation and, while not perfect, it's sometimes adequate.
Remember, you can't stop the determined hacker any more than the determined burglar. What you're trying to do is make things very hard for the casual attacker. When presented with the symbols O001l1ll10O, O001llll10O, OO01l1ll10O, O0Ol11ll10O and O001l1ll1OO, and code that doesn't seem to do anything useful, most people will just give up.
First you can't avoid people reverse engineering your code. The JVM bytecode has to be plain to be executed and there are several programs to reverse engineer it (same applies to .NET CLR). You can only make it more and more difficult to raise the barrier (i.e. cost) to see and understand your code.
Usual way is to obfuscate the source with some tool. Classes, methods and fields are renamed throughout the codebase, even with invalid identifiers if you choose to, making the code next to impossible to comprehend. I had good results with JODE in the past. After obfuscating use a decompiler to see what your code looks like...
Next to obfuscation you can encrypt your class files (all but a small starter class) with some method and use a custom class loader to decrypt them. Unfortunately the class loader class can't be encrypted itself, so people might figure out the decryption algorithm by reading the decompiled code of your class loader. But the window to attack your code got smaller. Again this does not prevent people from seeing your code, just makes it harder for the casual attacker.
You could also try to convert the Java application to some windows EXE which would hide the clue that it's Java at all (to some degree) or really compile into machine code, depending on your need of JVM features. (I did not try this.)
GCJ is a free tool that can compile to either bytecode or native code. Keeping in mind, that does sort of defeat the purpose of Java.
A little late I know, but the answer is no.
Even if you write in C and compile to native code, there are dissasemblers / debuggers which will allow people to step through your code. Granted - debugging optimized code without symbolic information is a pain - but it can be done, I've had to do it on occasion.
There are steps that you can take to make this harder - e.g. on windows you can call the IsDebuggerPresent API in a loop to see if somebody is debugging your process, and if yes and it is a release build - terminate the process. Of course a sufficiently determined attacker could intercept your call to IsDebuggerPresent and always return false.
There are a whole variety of techniques that have cropped up - people who want to protect something and people who are out to crack it wide open, it is a veritable arms race! Once you go down this path - you will have to constantly keep updating/upgrading your defenses, there is no stopping.
This not my practical solution but , here i think good collection or resource and tutorials for making it happen to highest level of satisfaction.
A suggestion from this website (oracle community)
(clean way), Obfuscate your code, there are many open source and free
obfuscator tools, here is a simple list of them : [Open source
obfuscators list] .
These tools make your code unreadable( though still you can decompile
it) by changing names. this is the most common way to protect your
code.
2.(Not so clean way) If you have a specific target platform (like windows) or you can have different versions for different platforms,
you can write a sophisticated part of your algorithms in a low level
language like C (which is very hard to decompile and understand) and
use it as a native library in you java application. it is not clean,
because many of us use java for it's cross-platform abilities, and
this method fades that ability.
and this one below a step by step follow :
ProtectYourJavaCode
Enjoy!
Keep your solutions added we need this more.
I work in a Microsoft environment, so I can use my C# hammer on any nails I come across. That being said, what languages (compiled, interpreted, scripting, functional, any types!) complement knowing C#, and for what purposes? For example, I've moved a lot of script functionality away from compiled console apps and into Powershell scripts. If you're an MS developer, have you found a niche in your world for other languages like F#, IronRuby, IronPython, or something similar, and what niche do they fill?
Note: this question is directed at the Microsoft dev people since I can't run off and start installing LAMP stacks around my company, and therefore having to support it forever. :) However, feel free to mention any other languages that you found interesting to fulfill a certain task/role in your world apart from your main language.
Python/Perl/Ruby/PowerShell are great supplements to C#/VB.NET. If your boss hands you a text file and says insert it into the database once or twice, then any of Perl/Python/Ruby (I'm not sure about powershell but I imagine it is not that much more difficult) should be fine to parse it. Either way, for your main applications you will probably be stuck in C#. You can use one of the more dynamic languages to do code generation in C#.
Since you are in a Microsoft Environment, probably your best chance at getting your solution accepted is PowerShell. Next to that I'd say IronPython or something else that integrates with the CLR. But main issue is that for someone else to maintain what you do, they would have to know whatever language you are using. MS in the future has plans to use PowerShell a lot more, so it is probably easier to justify PowerShell then say Python/Perl/Ruby.
If you are just processing a text file for one time use. Or creating a one time code generator to generate all the code and then intend to maintain the generated code, then it doesn't matter. You are the one who will consume the results and if you save time using Perl then more power to you. But if you are doing something that will be used over and over again (like an active code generator where you change the templates and run the generator instead of maintaining the generated code) then other developers working on what you did will need to know the language you used. It is much harder to argue learning Perl/Ruby/Python in a Microsoft Shop. But PowerShell seems like the easier argument. I think the MS grand plan is that eventually applications will expose more functionality for power shell through commandlets. Assuming this happens then PowerShell is even more of a no-brainer because it will expose tons of scriptable functionality that you won't get any other way.
A nice scripting language is always a good tool to have on you belt. See Ruby, or Python.
I use python for prototyping, since there's almost no turn around time between edits and actually running the new version of the code. I may even end up using it for a real project - the more I use it, the more I like it.
It will take some getting used to as a C# programmer, though - the indentation-defines-structure system it uses is a little weird at first.
Since you are in a MS shop, I would suggest PowerShell as a decent scripting language to learn. It plays well with C#.
I'm a big fan of Ruby too.
I'd like to second or third python. Specifically, IronPython (ttp://www.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?ProjectName=IronPython) lets you learn python but also gives you access to the .net framework goodies.
It's quite nice for scripting-related tasks so it'll probably be useful for your day-to-day coding life, and also a nice way to muck around in an experimental coding/prototyping way.
While it's a bit of a fringe language, I'm compelled to mention Erlang. Erlang is an excellent language to have in your toolbox since it's unusual strengths tend to compliment other programming platforms. Erlang is very useful for building distributed, concurrent, fault-tolerant systems. It's used a lot in the instant-messaging and telephony world where there's a need for distributed, yet interconnected architectures.
Maybe play around with Boo and see what you think.
Boo at Codehaus.org
Boo at Wikipedia
If your using the .Net framework the language is really not important as the compiler and interpreter create the same IL code in any case.
If you step away from the .Net world, I am of the opinion that development tools and languages are a tool box. I strive to use the right tools for the job at hand, taking into consideration what the skill base of the other developers are and what direction a company is seeking of course (I'm a consultant).
I'm with jjnguy. Try one of the scripting languages. Plus as a bonus, when you learn Ruby/PythonPearl, etc...it's a gateway drug...err language to developing for other environments.
Trying out languages outside of your normal toolbox will give you new ways of approaching things in your current favorite language. Even if you don't use them for serious projects languages like Perl (for data mangling), Lisp (functional programming), and Javascript (prototype based programming) will teach you new ways to think about problems in your current language.
As a web developer by trade, you might look into the XSLT/XPath family as for certain types of XML processing they can be very powerful tools.
Granted, in C# 3.x Linq2Xml exposes some similar functionality inline.
XSLT, however, can be a powerful way to separate data from presentation in your apps.
I am very interested in F# and some of the other new languages in the CLR/DLR. The DLR languages might be a lot better for your UI, because they don't make you cast a lot of stupid things.
However, I think that it is important to keep in mind tha learning a new language, especially in a new area, like functional programming, is always a good way to re-train your mind so that you are exposed to new concepts and you can code better in your language of choice, even if you never use those new languages.
Check out Boo - it runs on top of the .NET stack, but its syntax is more like Python.
To learn a new language that complements C#, I'd go with C++. You can use it in a 'way better than p/invoke' style to get access to unmanaged code from your C# apps. You can then start using it to write the memory-constrained apps, and/or performance-critical bits in, if you find some of your .NET applications start hogging all the RAM and/or CPU or just generally aren't as fast as you'd like.
I was using a CASE called MAGIC for a system I'm developing, I've never used this kind of tool before and at first sight I liked, a month later I had a lot of the application generated, I felt very productive and ... I would say ... satisfied.
In some way a felt uncomfortable, cause, there is no code and everything I was used to, but in the other hand I could speed up my developing. The fact is that eventually I returned to use C# because I find it more flexible to develop, I can make unit testing, use CVS, I have access to more resources and basically I had "all the control". I felt that this tool didn't give me confidence and I thought that later in the project I could not manage it due to its forced established rules of development. And also a lot of things like sending emails, using my own controls, and other things had their complication, it seemed that at some point it was not going to be as easy as initially I thought and as initially the product claims. This reminds me a very nice article called "No Silver Bullet".
This CASE had its advantages but on the other hand it doesn't have resources you can consult and actually the license and certification are very expensive. For me another dissapointing thing is that because of its simplistic approach for development I felt scared on first hand cause of my unexperience on these kind of tools and second cause I thought that if I continued using it maybe it would have turned to be a complex monster that I could not manage later in the project.
I think it's good to use these kind of solutions to speed up things but I wonder, why aren't these programs as popular as VS.Net, J2EE, Ruby, Python, etc. if they claim to enhance productivity better than the tools I've pointed?
We use a CASE tool at my current company for code generation and we are trying to move away from it.
The benefits that it brings - a graphical representation of the code making components 'easier' to pick up for new developers - are outweighed by the disadvantges in my opinion.
Those main disadvantages are:
We cannot do automatic merges, making it close to impossible for parallel development on one component.
Developers get dependant on the tool and 'forget' how to handcode.
Just a couple questions for you:
How much productivity do you gain compared to the control that you use?
How testable and reliant is the code you create?
How well can you implement a new pattern into your design?
I can't imagine that there is a CASE out there that I could write a test first and then use a CASE to generate the code I need. I'd rather stick to resharper which can easily do my mundane tasks and retain full control of my code.
The project I'm on originally went w/ the Oracle Development Suite to put together a web application.
Over time (5+ years), customer requirements became more complex than originally anticipated, and the screens were not easily maintainable. So, the team informally decided to start doing custom (hand coded) screens in web PL/SQL, instead of generating them using the Oracle Development Suite CASE tools (Oracle Designer).
The Oracle Report Builder component of the Development Suite is still being used by the team, as it seems to "get the job done" in a timely fashion. In general, the developers using the Report Builder tool are not very comfortable coding.
In this case, it seems that the productivity aspect of such CASE tools is heavily dependent on customer requirements and developer skill sets/training/background.
Unfortunaly the Magic tool doesn't generates code and also it can't implement a design pattern. I don't have control over the code cause as i stated before it doesn't have code to modify. Te bottom line is that it can speed up productivity in some way but it has the impossibility to user CVS, patterns also and I can't control all the details.
I agree with gary when he says "it seems that the productivity aspect of such CASE tools is heavily dependent on customer requirements and developer skill sets/training/background" but also I can't agree more with Klelky;
Those main disadvantages are:
1. We cannot do automatic merges, making it close to impossible for parallel development on one component.
2.Developers get dependant on the tool and 'forget' how to handcode.
Thanks