Seth Gorden

My new favorite coding trick is as follows:

#ifdef _DEBUG
assert( something );
#endif

In terms of error-checking, there are couple interesting things about this code. Firstly, as can be seen, this code is only compiled in Debug mode. This results in faster performing code in Release mode, since we’re removing some of it. But the more curious part is that there are no error conditions here to trap, really.

When in debug mode, the program execution stops here, and forces you to address the problem such that it does not occur. (more…)

Software is a strange business, be it games or otherwise.

I was reading a recent Gamasutra interview with Square Enix president and CEO Yoichi Wada. They speak on the subject of mergers and acquisitions that the company has been through. Yoichi Wada believes that he is creating a larger family of creative minds, expanding resources, and giving the company a chance to continue growing. On the surface, I can see the idea of this plan. And, assuredly, based on the company wealth, you can’t argue that he’s completely mistaken.

However, he also asserts that Japan is behind (more…)

I’ve been having a number of refactoring conversations with my friend and colleague, Rob. The scene graph had become a mess, and integrating with third party physics, 3D sound, and other systems was beginning to expose redundancies in our code.

After a lot of discussion and some influence from the recent surge of articles on Data-Oriented Design, we found some interesting ways to re-think the scene.  One of last week’s big examples had to due with transforms. As a standard, many objects are thought of as having world and local transform data. This way the spacial hierarchy suggested by your node relationships is respected when it’s time to draw.  This just makes sense….

(more…)