In our presentation, Doug Binks and I talk about the headaches AAA studios find down the line with scripting languages. During the conference, it brought a smile to my face on several occasions to hear other speakers mention that they just used pure C++, or had dropped their scripting language, or in the case of one FPS developer, ask why on earth anyone would use one anyway? This may sound alien to you – hot-reloadable scripts seem like a no-brainer for the rapid iteration they allow. However, the bigger the project, the more headaches they seem to entail – the API maintenance, lack of good debugging tools on a multi-million line project, lack of multithreading support and the performance problems.

In the RCC++ project, we show how you can get that same hot-reloading functionality from pure C++. We don’t use any interpreter. An enabled project can compile as normal to a single DLL, but it watches it’s own source code, and as you make changes to it in Visual Studio, it recompiles itself a file at a time into tiny DLLs. By linking these in at runtime – and making use of serialisation – it can bring in your changes in just a few seconds. All the state of the running game can be preserved, while you bring in whole new features to your live C++ application.

We had a few more things to show. When you can make small rapid changes so easily, it’s important you don’t bring the house down with your first null pointer. In RCC++ we allow you to debug crashes in Visual Studio as normal – but then to catch them and carry on running. Your app keeps on running even if the game objects have to stop, until you fix the code – and it all sets off again.

As you play around with it, you start to realise all the simple tricks you can use this approach for. We show how you can create a C++ interactive console that lets you interact with your C++ objects – without having to add reflection code or a complex API. And how you might not need all those XML parsers or GUI tools any more, if you can just edit the source freely. As an independent developer without a tools department, these bang-for-buck solutions really appeal!

So there’s the summary. But if you’d like to hear more: check out the teaser video below, the Runtime-Compiled C++ blog, or fetch the MIT-licensed source code and play with it yourself.

First Steps from RuntimeCompiledC++ on Vimeo.

I’ve been asked to lend a hand with the Paris Games AI Conference, sitting on the advisory board and reviewing submissions. It’s been fascinating – so many good proposals and a reason to sit down and read a whole bunch of research papers.

It’s an exciting time to touch base with Frankfurt and a good opportunity to catch up with everyone, see how they’re faring and how development is going.

[This work saw the light of day with the 3.3 release of the CryEngine SDK]

For an in-depth treatment and technical details you can read the original article “Code Coverage: Informing the QA Process” in Games Programming Gems 8 or watch a discussion with Alex Champandard in a masterclass video available at AiGameDev.com. You can also check out the C++ source for an example implementation mcover.

If I’ve been quiet recently it’s because I’ve been busy! For the last few months I was based in London for a short full-time contract with Microsoft, in their Xbox Live studios in Soho.

This little studio in the heart of London is best known for its live-streaming and video-on-demand applications running on your Xbox console, produced with content partners such as BSkyB and Canal+

I began by bootstrapping a new video application for the French market – recently announced by Steve Ballmer.

As that team ramped up I moved onto the Sky Player team, working on some really key features. The app has received quite a bit of coverage such as here and here and I’m looking forward to posting more on this soon.

It’s been a really great experience working with this highly professional team. Some of the highlights included:

• experience with Kinect
• rigorous use of unit testing
• networking and web services
• using Lua in anger, in a sophisticated application framework

…as well as coordinating with the development teams in Redmond and getting some valuable insight into how the big boys ship products. Plus they were a real pleasure to work with!

As it happens, I’m not the only person from the AI community the studio has attracted – Gwaredd Mountain recently joined, presenter of the fascinating talk “Psychology Profiling in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories” at the Paris AI conference.

Here’s a little info on their game.

LICHDOM HIGH LEVEL OUTLINE
You play as “Roth”, the most powerful mage ever to exist, armed with untold magic abilities the world has never witnessed before. Returning to kingship once again after 1300 years, Roth must choose between ruling with perfect order in the light or plunging the world into darkness through destructive chaos.

CORE GAMEPLAY
Redefining what it means to be a single-character story driven RPG, Lichdom will feature fresh new ideas in a genre steeped in tradition. The use of magic is the one and only weapon while empowering the player to feel as if they are controlling the greatest mage who has ever existed. Make a choice to utilize that power by following a path of corrupted destruction where no one is safe and the world will tremble before Roth’s feet – or – skillfully plan your attack to root out the unjust while preserving the innocent, as the world bows to Roth’s righteous kingship.

I think the most beautiful example for me was discussion of a special case of crowd simulation: in a cinematic from Assassin’s Creed, a group of some hundreds of cardinals part for the assassin, stepping back to make way. We discussed the problem and found a relatively simple approach based on a network of springs and compressible spheres, with a simple stepping animation. However, as we watched the video again, someone pointed out that the most striking thing in the scene was the dipping of cardinals’ very broad hats – animate the hats correctly and no-one would notice the rest. We laughed – but it was true.

This anecdote isn’t far from the one of the core messages in the workshop: our goals in the realism of games are loftier and loftier, increasingly reaching to emotionally involve the player through real believability – but the keys to achieving this – eye, head and shoulder positioning, timing – depend on context, but are usually quite simple. And usually overlooked.

Ken and Bruce offered contrasting approaches to animation techniques – Bruce broadly conventional, Ken doing everything from the ground up with relatively simple procedural techniques – but both focussed on supporting acute observations on what people notice. By the by, they will both tell you: for a free masterclass on that, just watch the latest Disney or Pixar.