Game Development and Compilers

[toomanystars]

Hi guys,

I remember a couple of months ago, I was watching Markus Persson (developer of Minecraft)on youtube coding on two monitors. On one, was the game running, and on the other he had code. I think it was Java.

The critical point was this, when he changed a piece of code, the game immediatly changed in real time. I think he was adjusting weapon damages or something.

I am using Visual Studio express 2010 and SDL API. Is there a way I can get the same result without having to recompile? That is, in my simple pong game, change the speed, and have the game immeditley respond?

Thanks,

Mike

[helios]

I imagine the easiest way would be to have a base engine in native code that can't be hot-swapped, and have an interpreted language on top of that, that can. Then the engine can monitor the script file and wait for a change to happen. When it happens, it momentarily halts the game, unloads the current script, and loads the new script. Care would have to be taken not to discard state when the script is unloaded.

[Angeljruiz]

Ive done that before but only with java... i forgot what its called but yeah you'd just save the .java file and itd automatically affect the game
Im sorry this doesnt really help you out much but i think its only possible with java

[o1vk4iN6]

Are you sure it wasn't video magic ? I think it would be better to have some sort of editor rather then being able to do that in the final product. For example, unreal, cry and source engines. It would also be better to have something like weapon damage shouldn't be hard coded. It should be in a data file where it could be modified in said editor then saved and view the changed in real time. I haven't heard of anything like that for Java and the way it is I doubt there is. The only time I've seen anything like that is for the new unreal engine and I doubt you want to make something that complex.

[toomanystars]

Thanks for the help guys. I thought maybe there would be a simple download or something like that.


Alright, back to my pong game.

Mike