practical system development€¦ · oct 28, 2008 johan peitz, [email protected]...

Oct 28, 2008 Johan Peitz, [email protected] Interactive

Practical System Development(more or less)

Johan PeitzTechnical Director

Muskedunder Interactive

Also!Real life experiece!


Introduction

• Who is Johan Peitz?

• What is Muskedunder?

• Today’s Topics


Who is Johan Peitz?

• Background in computer science– Chalmers, 2004

• Free Lunch Design– independent game developer, Icy Tower

• Nokia Games Group– games for digital TV

• Saab Technologies– promotional games

• Interactive Institute– game design research, prototyping pervasive games

• Muskedunder Interactive– Flash game developer– Co-owner and Technical Director


What is Muskedunder?

• Premium Flash Content Developer

• 100% privately held

• Advergames for global brands– McDonald's, Pepsi, Paramount Pictures, Doritos, etc.

• Side venues include casual games, web development


Today’s Topics

• Development Tools

• Libraries

• Performance & Optimization

• Documentation

• Content Creation Tools

• Short Ogre 3D prime

• Flash Demonstrations

12/17/07 Simulation Engines 2007, Markus Larsson 9

Tools

Compilers C++

Debuggers Find bugs

Profilers Analyze performance

Source code management Storage and version control

UML-editors Software design and code generation

IDEs MSVC, Eclipse, Netbeans, Code:Blocks, and so on...


Compilers

Popular compilers for C++ Microsoft Visual C++ GNU C++ compiler Intel C++ compiler

GNU C++ compiler Free Open Source Available on multiple platforms Support for many languages

C, C++, ObC, Fortran, Java, Ada, etc.


Compilers

Microsoft Visual C++ Integrated in Microsoft Visual Studio Will be used in this course

Installed on lab computers Downloadable through Academic Alliance

http://my.chl.chalmers.se/wiki/view/chl/MicrosoftAcademy/


Build tools

Integrated in Visual Studio Alternatives

Make CMake Jam SCons Ant (Java) Maven (Java)


Concurrent version systems (CVS)

Access to files regardless of where you are Unreserved checkout Available on pretty much any platform

Available on the group accounts you will receive Used by many projects worldwide

Use CVS for your group projects! (Or something similar)


CVS

Traceability and safety All changes are saved

Decentralization Multiple developers can work on the same code

Code from multiple developers is automatically unified

No atomic commits in CVS


CVS

Client/Server Central storage Multiple local checkouts Workflow

Update / Checkout (Solve conflicts) Change code Commit

centralrepository

internet


CVS

Already installed on most Unix/Linux systems Command line version WinCVS TortoiseCVS Plugins for most IDEs Alternatives

Subversion Sourcesafe Mercurial


Flash & Action Script 3

• Flash is old, but still immature

• Animation tool

• Regular programming language

• Powerful authoring tool


Compilers

• Flex Builder– Built in build tools

• Flash IDE

• Various freeware projects


Version Control

• Subversion– Ease of use for non programmers

– TortoiseSVN

– Regular commits

– Easy to deploy

• Daily backups


Libraries

Do not reinvent the wheel! Reuse code as much as

possible In the group project, you

are not expected to write all code yourself. You are allowed to use external libraries.


OpenGL

Industry standard for 2D and 3D graphics Started 1992 by OpenGL Architecture Review

Board (now OpenGL Working Group) Latest version (Nov 2007) is 2.1

3.0 is on the way


OpenGL

OpenGL is multiplatform “Glue”-layers for window handling

GLX on Unix/Linux WGL on Windows

Programmable shaders with GLSL


DirectX/Direct3D

Started in 1995 by Microsoft Collection of APIs for a lot of

different multimedia. Feature rich and good performance Fast to adapt new technologies Good standard libraries Arguably more cumbersome than OpenGL Programmable shaders with HLSL


XNA

Write once, run on (almost) any Microsoft platform.

Common language runtime .NET based VM

Very accessible for new developers XNA Game Studio Express

Windows & XBOX 360 C# Free


OpenAL

Open Source library for audio Relatively new, but has grown

rapidly Multiplatform Primarily used on stationary computers

Windows, Mac, Linux Used in:

Battlefield 2, Unreal Tournament, Quake 4, etc.


FMOD

Library for sound Multiplatform

PC, all consoles, etc. Support for most audio formats Free for non-commercial use


Open SG

Open Source API for scenegraphs

Realtime applications Mostly for VR

However, the design is interesting for game engines


ODE

Open Source physics engine Multiplatform Mostly used in hobby productions but also a

few commercial Stalker, Call of Juarez, Bloodrayne 2


Newton

Free physics engine Not open source but free to use Used in the Swedish

independent game Penumbra.


PhysX

Industry standard physics engine

Nowadays, the binary SDK is free

Connects to physics hardware

Used in lots of next-gen titles Unreal 3 engine, Mass Effect,

GRAW, etc.


Havok

The other industry standard physics engine Not free or publicly accessible Has packages for physics driven character

behaviors and animation in addition to the physics engine.

Used in major titles Half-life 2, Halo 3, etc.


CEGUI

Open Source GUI system Object oriented architecture

with interfaces and events Integrated into Ogre3D LGPL, so free to use


Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC)

Graphical interface for Windows Based largely on inheritance and polymorphism Large amount of classes and arguably hard to

work with Succeeded by Windows Forms in .NET

A lot easier to work with Slightly less feature rich than MFC


GTK+

Multiplatform GUI toolkit Used primarily in Linux/Unix environments

Nowadays available in Windows as well Initially developed for The Gimp which is an

Open Source image editor

Alternatives to GTK are Qt and Motif


Open TNL

Torque Network Layer Originally a part of the Torque engine Open Source version of TNL and is intended for

non-commercial use


Boost

General C++ library Contains lots of useful stuff

Smart pointers Regex Threading Etc...

Practically a part of standard C++


Flash Features

• Most functionality built in– 2D graphics (not hardware accelerated)

– Basic sound playback

– Inverse Kinematic animation (FP10)

– Network support

– Webservices


Third Party Libraries

• Box 2D– Rigid body physics

• Papervision– 3D graphics

• Active community– Loads of utilities


Break

• Any questions before that?

• Any formalities from Staffan?

Off you go then.


Performance and optimization

Optimization techniques and measuring performance could be a course of its own

Optimize with extreme prejudice Optimization is a time-consuming task Put your effort into optimizing the critical parts of the

code and leave the rest to the compiler



High-level and inner loops Optimizing functions that are called just a few times

is meaningless. Optimize inner loops Optimize high-level functionality. Switching

algorithms can boost performance a lot more than low-level optimizations

Use a profiler Identifies bottlenecks Often, bottlenecks are not where you would expect

them to be



Beware of virtual functions Calling virtual functions in C++ requires looking up

function pointers in the virtual function table of a class

Do not use in inner loops Use assembly only when absolutely necessary

Assembly is rarely portable Try tweaking your compiler first

Read Zen of Code Optimization by Michael Abrash for tips


Performance & Optimization

• Graphics optimizing– Bitmaps vs Vector art

– anchor points

– Demo later!

• Code optimizing– Flash is slow as it is, concentrate on high level algorithms.

– Maintainable code over slightly faster code.

– Focus on reusability


Documentation

Your role is as a software engineer Engineers write documentation

Reports Documentation for code and implementations

Extra important for a reusable simulation engine

Badly documented projects will automatically fail this course!


Documenting a simulation engine

A simulation engine should be documented in at least the following ways

Requirements Functional and non-functional requirements on the engine or the

extensions made to it. Functional requirements are the features that the engine is actually capable of, whereas non-functional ones describe its properties.

Analysis The conceptual model of your game engine, including the high-level

concepts and their associations. Design

Class and interaction diagrams. Implementation

Api reference (source code documentation).


Doxygen

Documentation system C/C++, Java, etc.

Inspired by Javadoc Generates both HTML and offline manuals

/** * This is a documentation string. * * @param i first parameter * @param j second parameter * @return description of return value. */int foo(int i, int j);


Documentation

• Architecture documentation – UML

• Class diagrams• Interaction diagrams when needed

• Code documentation– AS3doc, like javadoc– Code generation

• Challenges– Small projects = less need for extensive documentation– Reused projects = more need for extensive documentation


Content Creation Tools

Code is our thing, but not necessarily everyone else's

Simulation engines, and the projects they are used with, require extremely functional content pipelines


World Editors

Large difference between outdoor and indoor environments

Outdoor environments are mostly based on heightmaps

Objects often placed on heightmap in 2½D


World Editors: Examples

Terragen Generates and renders fairly

impressive procedural terrain FreeWorld 3D

Terrain editor geared towards with game development with support for Ogre3D

CryEngine Sandbox The engine used in FarCry has

exceptional tools for working with outdoor scenes


Level editors

Geared towards indoor scenery Nowadays, thin line between level editors and outdoor

scene editors Commonly released along with the games they were built

for Similar to regular 3D modeling tools, but simplified A science of its own, check the web for lots and lots of

information


Level Editors: Examples

Hammer Used with the Source engine

(Half-life) Radiant

Editor for the Quake3 and now Doom3 engine

UnrealEd Official editor for the Unreal

engine


3D modeling

3D Studio Max Most popular

Maya Popular with animatos

Lightwave 3D Powerful but not as common

Softimage Modern and flexible but not as common

Blender Free and surprisingly able


Integrate 3D modeling software

Programmers are rarely 3D artists as well Need to translate data from 3D modeling

application to simulation engine Often, special tools need to be written in native

APIs Alternatively rely on standard export formats

FBX, Collada, Obj, 3ds, etc


Example: Maya API

Maya Embedded Lanuage, MEL API for C/C++ access Fairly usable (in contrast to the Max SDK)

• 3D graphical manipulators• geometry shapes• dynamic fields• particle emitters• node and plug locking• custom model views• user defined transformations• motion capture servers• manipulators• any other type of custom node

• MEL commands• file translators (e.g. exporters for game engines, or third party renderers)• drawing in OpenGL• inverse-kinematic solvers• shaders, lights, textures• hardware shaders• procedural animation• simulators (e.g. Maya Cloth was written entirely using the API)• user-defined deformations


Content Creation Tools

• Graphics– 2D graphics, textures

• Photoshop

– 3D models, UV-mapping• Maya + various plugins

• Low poly

– GUI, 2D game graphics• Flash Editor


Content Creation Tools, cont

• Other assets– In house built tools

– XML export


Ogre3D

http://www.ogre3d.org/


Ogre showcase


Ogre3D

Ogre is not a complete simulation engine It is primarily a renderer

I realise this approach means that as of today, it’s not as fastto develop a game with OGRE than it is with another all-in-oneengine. [...] My philosophy is to build a flexible graphics componentwhich can be used in the maximum number of situations, and to makeit easy to integrate with other components - not to build an enginethat can be used to make a small number of game variants. [...]You’ll find it a lot harder to extend an engine which is designed tohandle only a small subset of scene types, with strongly integratedfeatures designed from a certain perspective. [...]


Ogre3D is not...

Commercial It is freely available for use even in commercial projects

Closed source Ogre3D is Open Source with full access to all underlying source code

Finished Open Source applications are never finished and undergo constant

improvements. Ogre3D has reached v1.0 though and is reasonably stable.

Bug-Free Connected to the previous item

A complete simulation engine Only provides 3D functionality and rudimentary input

Completely documented Be prepared to get your hands dirty! I mean it!


Ogre3D contains

Windows, MacOS & Linux support Direct3D and OpenGL support Material and shader system with support for CG, HLSL and GLSL Texture and mesh loading Skeletal and morph animation Scene management with support for many different types of scenes Shadow rendering Compositor system for post processing effects Particle systems Resource management Lots of other stuff...


What completes the gaps?

Sound OpenAL, FMOD

Collision / Physics OpCode, Bullet, PhysX, ODE, Newton

AI OpenSteer, FFLL

Network OpenTNL, ZoidCom, RakNet

GUI CEGUI, Flash

Scripting Lua, Python, GameMonkey, Ruby


Get started with Ogre3D

Install a compiler of your choice (for this course, preferably Visual Studio)

Plenty of tutorials, demos, help texts at:

www.ogre3d.org

RTFM

http://www.ogre3d.org/


Where to get help

Do not hesitate to ask your project supervisor, but we will not be able to assist in every possible case

Visit these places• Official website http://www.ogre3d.org• Forums http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2/• Wiki http://www.ogre3d.org/wiki• IRC irc://freenode/ogre3d


Conclusion

• Simulation engines are complex– There is no right way to do it– Try to follow ’Best Practices’

• Analyze, Design, Test, Evaluate– Iterate, iterate, iterate

• If you get stuck, ask!– Internet is here to stay

• Don’t reinvent the wheel– Use libraries

• Don’t be afraid to try new things– Learning by doing

Ok, Let’s look at some Flash demos!


Thanks for listening!

Johan Peitz

[email protected]

www.muskedunder-i.com

And yes, we’re open to ”exjobb”! Not only Flash related, but preferably. Don’t hesitate to ask.

practical system development€¦ · oct 28, 2008 johan peitz, [email protected]...

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