Aspect Weaver

Percival wrote:

> I heard (well, read actually. I don't have first-hand exp) it depends on
> the company. Some are C++ only, while others use Lua as scripting.

Among my colleagues, all the designers know Lua, and various scripts and XML
formats. Only a few of the developers know Lua. I suspect many shops require
Lua awareness for their designer roles.

The bad news is few developers can support the Lua layer from the "inside",
due to "code ownership" and specialization. The good news is this forces me,
in my role as test engineer, to maintain liaisons in as many teams as
possible. I must screw with everything from ATWINMON to Maya, so either I
cultivate good relationships, or too few people get sick of my stupid
questions.

If, for example, I insist on writing an automated test that takes a
screenshot of a bomb exploding and frying an enemy, this affects level
designers ("give me a bomb and an enemy"), the rendering guys (screenshots),
the Lua guys (to expose the screenshot function), and the physics guys ("uh,
the bomb missed today").

It sounds like both game development and game testing have a lot of
cross-cutting and weaving! I ain't gonna try to tell them all to use AOP,
though... ;-)

--
Phlip
http://industrialxp.org/community/bi...UserInterfaces

> It sounds like both game development and game testing have a lot of
> cross-cutting and weaving! I ain't gonna try to tell them all to use AOP,
> though... ;-)

Yes from what I have read, aspects are ideal for testing because they
don't actually add to "core functionality". I think they phrase it as
"orthogonal".

I never even gave a thought about having to crosscut execution
environments... interesting. It's probably just not practical
whatsoever.

-b

Nathan Mates wrote:

> Please use caution when listening to comments from 'Phlip', as
> he's pushing his own ideology, and hasn't ever worked on a
> commercial game.

One might use caution when listening to anyone on this newsgroup
because many seem to be singly dedicated to defaming and decrying
other individuals that may be having success beyond their own.


-tom!

--
There's really no reason to send a copy of your
followup to my email address, so please don't.

Nathan Mates wrote:

> >I suspect the ideal is one should use C++ for efficiency, and scripts
> >such as XML and Lua for the things that change frequently.
>
> As I've said previously, I've personally (unlike Phlip) used Lua
> on a commercial title.

I'm so glad we have another expert on Phlip's resume. What makes
one so insecure that they need to repeat over and over some
belief that they have? Maybe it's that they don't know whether
that belief is true, so they repeat it over and over like an
incantation or prayer, and hope that if repeated sufficiently, it
won't be true?

> If anyone on my team suggested using XML, however, it'd be like
> the scene in _Airplane_ with a line forming to slap some sense
> into that person.

I'm glad you're a rational person interested in discussion. Me,
I prefer to slap people who jump to conclusions without anything
approaching reality getting in their way.

Regardless, imagine this scenario. You interview for a job, and
everything sounds great. You move across the country, and
discover that not only does this group use XML, they use it for
everything. Tool configuration, build setup, interchange
formats, etc.

What would you do? Quit?

> XML is bloat, personified. Ascii file formats do not belong on a
> console, PERIOD. Then again, (unlike Phlip), I've got actual
> experience in this area.

Consider that the decision was made by your boss, without your
consultation. Would you slap this person?

I find it hard to believe that you have zero ASCII files loaded
by even debug builds of your game. Alas, I've worked on a number
of console-only games myself, but what do I know?

-tom!

--
There's really no reason to send a copy of your
followup to my email address, so please don't.

Aspect weaving is for cross-cutting concerns.

Better for:
- logging
- cacheing
- concurrency
- security

Making the above cross-cutting concerns more modifiable for business
applications!

The code with AOP is supposed to be less complex and less intertwined!

In games, usually one doesn't worry about modifiability/flexibility,
so much!

--
Regards,
Casey

In article <gk9701duccv6i2uk37lhsvd1difekd2dkc@4ax.com>,
Tom Plunket <plunket@gmail.com> wrote:
>I find it hard to believe that you have zero ASCII files loaded
>by even debug builds of your game. Alas, I've worked on a number
>of console-only games myself, but what do I know?

Debug and release builds of our game use exactly the same data
files. What we devlop with is what we ship. You do things differently
than us. If you find that "hard to believe," (your words), then the
problem lies on your end.

Nathan Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates - personal webpage http://www.visi.com/~nathan/
# Programmer at Pandemic Studios -- http://www.pandemicstudios.com/
# NOT speaking for Pandemic Studios. "Care not what the neighbors
# think. What are the facts, and to how many decimal places?" -R.A. Heinlein

Tom Plunket wrote:

> Regardless, imagine this scenario. You interview for a job, and
> everything sounds great. You move across the country, and
> discover that not only does this group use XML, they use it for
> everything. Tool configuration, build setup, interchange
> formats, etc.
>
> What would you do? Quit?

Show me a technology that can't be abused, and I'l show you one that's
useless.

--
Phlip

Nathan Mates wrote:

> Debug and release builds of our game use exactly the same data
> files. What we devlop with is what we ship. You do things differently
> than us. If you find that "hard to believe," (your words), then the
> problem lies on your end.

Regardless of the format and encoding of such "data files", when they
are inside your console, they started somewhere - possibly in a
human-friendly encoding - outside your console.

The point: Human friendly things are easy to change, so don't put
details like the power of a gun into C++. Hence, use SOMETHING -
possibly Lua tables, possibly text with just a little bit of < and >
marks, for delimiters, possibly a File Format Du Jour - to edit those
data tables.

I don't think Tom implied anyone's debug or release data files were
different, but there we go with our reading comprehension skills
again...

--
Phlip

Casey Hawthorne wrote:

> Aspect weaving is for cross-cutting concerns.
>
> Better for:
> - logging
> - cacheing
> - concurrency
> - security
>
> Making the above cross-cutting concerns more modifiable for business
> applications!
>
> The code with AOP is supposed to be less complex and less intertwined!
>
> In games, usually one doesn't worry about modifiability/flexibility,
> so much!

Part of helping me learn the "Object Oriented" paradigm was, of course, the
verbiage. But another part was learning that each object has [an equivalent
of] a single pointer to a table of slots, one for each named method.
Overriding a class created objects with a pointer to a different table, with
some same and some different pointers to methods in the table.

So what's the mechanism inside AOP?

--
Phlip
http://industrialxp.org/community/bi...UserInterfaces

In article <gk9701duccv6i2uk37lhsvd1difekd2dkc@4ax.com>,
plunket@gmail.com says...
> Nathan Mates wrote:
> > XML is bloat, personified. Ascii file formats do not belong on a
> > console, PERIOD. Then again, (unlike Phlip), I've got actual
> > experience in this area.

I agree 100% with Nathan. XML is bloat personified and it
does not belong in a game pipeline.


> Consider that the decision was made by your boss, without your
> consultation. Would you slap this person?

Stupid comments like that should really be beyond even you
Tom, but no. I guess you like being the stereotypical american.
You know, the one that can't tell sarcasm from seriousness,
or, in this case, a figure of speach from a literal act.


--
Christer Ericson
http://realtimecollisiondetection.net/