C++ Code Generation using T4 Templates

Microsoft Visual Studio comes with a code generation tool which they call T4 Templates. It is somewhat integrated into Visual Studio but I have found the integration to be not that streamlined yet, and if your a C++ user its not there at all.

So in order to show you how to use T4 Templates in your projects I am just going to explain it usage solely via the command line using the TextTransform.exe program.

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A C++ library for communicating with Amazon S3

Amazon web services (AWS) has many SDKs available for interacting with its services.

But the one that they don’t support and have no SDK for is C++.

Because of the lack of an official SDK from Amazon many people have written their own C++ code for communicating with the REST api. I decided to have a quick look to see what was out there and compile a version that could be used commercially.
There is a lack (I couldn’t find any) of free to use source code examples, including project files, for use with Windows (my main development environment). I believe this is due to the complexity of having to compile and install so many libraries in order to get started (I believe OSX has some of these libraries installed by default).
So the platform that I am targeting initially is Win32 using Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition as the compilers. The results of all this will be a working Visual Studio solution that anyone can download and quickly get up and running using Amazon S3 under a windows development environment.
Note: If you can’t be bothered reading all this thrilling information on compilers and C++ and just want to get straight to work using a working Visual Studio solution that you can run away and
compile, then you can skip to the end of this article for a link. But just read the next bit first before you do.

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Selecting Your Next Game Engine

Before you can select your game engine you need to make a few choices. Who is your target audience? Is it PC, PS3, iPhones or anyone with a webbrowser? Then you will need to start looking for technology that you can use to develop for that platform. This may give you a number of different solutions to choose from, after which you then pick one that best suits your needs based on your skill set and requirements.

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Importing Quake Files And Previewing Levels Using Irrlicht

This tutorial will show you how to use the Irrlicht graphics engine to load quake levels into Cinema4D (including the mesh, materials and textures) and then export that back out again to the Irrlicht graphics engine to preview how your game level will look. You will learn about creating polygon objects, materials and textures in Cinema4D and how to access the data again for exporting.
Note: I have just realized that my code has been messed up a little bit by posting to the website. Some of the loops might not look correct due to the removal of less than and greater than brackets. I will fix this up at a later date, for now just refer to the code in the attachment at the end of this article.

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