- Runtime
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Silent Expectations : The Command Line
Author
Well that was a weird title. :)
Anyway, it wasn't long ago when I suddenly realised I've been doing all this programming in my spare time as I make my way though college and I don't really have anything physical to show for all my hard work. So I finally pulled it together and took up the challenge of making a game engine.
Part way though this question struck me (the bastard) and I though I would put it to the GameDev community to see what your expectations of the command line are.
So here's the problem, you have a number of executables that make of the base of your game engine:
I'd expect some resolution and graphics settings, such as fixing the resolution to 640x48 and forcing to windowed and such.
Dave
Dave
All this stuff is probably in configuration files anyway - so why not just a single command line parameter to set an arbitrary config value?
If you have a config file I would make it so you can pass in any command line options to override the config file. If the parameters don't match a config option, simply ignore it.
A lot of the parameters are probably going to be related to the graphics device initialization.
A lot of the parameters are probably going to be related to the graphics device initialization.
To be honest, command line configuration is rather annoying for pretty much everyone but the developer. That being said, I find it's fairly convenient to have a fullscreen flag (I use "-f") to toggle fullscreen on and off for development purposes. It's nice being able to see your game how it's meant to be seen, but fullscreen is a pain to debug.
Author
Hey guys, thanks for your replies.
@Deyja: Yeah, configuration files seem like the way to go, I'm thinking of using XML for mine I just hope it doesn't make them too messy to navigate in simple text editors.
I guess in most cases the app should be able to pull most of the information at runtime if there are no arguments or configuration file. e.g. Using current screen resolution and bit depth by default, and searching directories for media paths and such.
@Deyja: Yeah, configuration files seem like the way to go, I'm thinking of using XML for mine I just hope it doesn't make them too messy to navigate in simple text editors.
I guess in most cases the app should be able to pull most of the information at runtime if there are no arguments or configuration file. e.g. Using current screen resolution and bit depth by default, and searching directories for media paths and such.
I agree about configuration. On top of that, the runtime should have the ability to pass in a filename of a savegame (if you have them) which will load that save as quickly as possible. This lets you associate savegame files with your game, so that players can find them and open them from Explorer or whatever. An analogous option for the editor is pretty much a given as well.
The only other option that I personally find useful is some kind of "skip unnecessary crap" mode for development - cuts past intro movies, eliminates menus that aren't needed, etc. The usefulness of that depends highly on your game/tools, though.
All of the stuff you've listed sounds like GUI (or at least highly interactive) stuff, so the command line really isn't the most useful way to use those things. Convertor tools, log analyzers/scrubbers, etc. tend to have far more interesting command line support.
Aside from that... best I can suggest is to look hard at any capabilities you have in each program (or want to have), and if they don't make sense as config-file options, slap them onto the command line.
The only other option that I personally find useful is some kind of "skip unnecessary crap" mode for development - cuts past intro movies, eliminates menus that aren't needed, etc. The usefulness of that depends highly on your game/tools, though.
All of the stuff you've listed sounds like GUI (or at least highly interactive) stuff, so the command line really isn't the most useful way to use those things. Convertor tools, log analyzers/scrubbers, etc. tend to have far more interesting command line support.
Aside from that... best I can suggest is to look hard at any capabilities you have in each program (or want to have), and if they don't make sense as config-file options, slap them onto the command line.
Quote:Original post by CorpseProject_Admin
using XML
Probably more trouble than it's worth. I made an XML based CMS and from that experience I have learned the following.
1) XML's only real advantage is portability, due to its popularitiy its guaranteed to be a "readable" format. That does not mean that it will make sense to the reader, but hey, you can view in internet explorer... Although I agree that XML editors are a good thing. Regardless, you probably don't need anything to read your config file other than your game and the software you make for it.
2) XML requires a complex parser and lots of support code. Regardless of how "self describing" it is claimed to be, it still will not have any use in your software until you program a meaning for it into every tool that needs it.
3) The alternatives to XML are almost always superior. In my case (for the CMS) MySQL would have been better, unfortunately I had no SQL options. For your case a simple text file is probably a superior choice. I've heard of using XML for a logger format but a simple text file can do all of the same things without the bulk.
4) If XML makes sense anywhere it is in internet communication. When you need communcation between two servers using different technology made by different companies then XML's portability is an advantage. Unfortuantely, even there you still need a standardized format (SOAP, WSDL, RSS, Atom) despite it's alleged "self describing" nature.
As a config file format in text you could have something as simple as, a variable name, a colon, a value (text/int/float), and an endl. That would be incredibly easy to parse, especially if you restrict variable names to not having spaces, tabs, or colons. That way you can ignore white space, and once you hit the colon you know that the value is the next thing that needs to be read.
I could write a parser for that in minutes, but that is only one suggestion. Using a text file of your design is likely to be easier and more efficient than using XML. Leave XML for internet traffic.
Quote:Original post by T1Oracle
1) XML's only real advantage is portability, due to its popularitiy its guaranteed to be a "readable" format. That does not mean that it will make sense to the reader, but hey, you can view in internet explorer... Although I agree that XML editors are a good thing. Regardless, you probably don't need anything to read your config file other than your game and the software you make for it.
I'd disagree, the XML files that are being used in my current project are far more descriptive. For example:
<configuration>
<profile name="profile1">
...
<videomode width="1024" height="768" redbits="8" greenbits="8" bluebits="8" alphabits="8"/>
</profile>
<profile name="profile2">
...
</profile>
</configuration>
<playlist name="myPlaylist">
<song name="Song Title" filename="song1.ogg"/>
<song name="Song2 Title" filename="song2.ogg"/>
</playlist>
...
Makes a whole lot more sense than:
profile1|...|1024|768|8|8|8|8|12|myPlaylist|Song Title|song1.ogg|Song2 Title|song2.ogg etc.
Not just to others who are using it, but me too. That said, XML isn't the greatest in all situations. But it does clarify what each value actually means [to someone who understands how the system basically works]. And it lets you arbitrarily add new stuff without needing to update the parser.
Quote:
2) XML requires a complex parser and lots of support code. Regardless of how "self describing" it is claimed to be, it still will not have any use in your software until you program a meaning for it into every tool that needs it.
Yes, but see TinyXml, throw on a function which can extract a result from the node <x><y><z a="result">, and a couple of other simple wrapper functions and you're more or less set.
Quote:
3) The alternatives to XML are almost always superior. In my case (for the CMS) MySQL would have been better, unfortunately I had no SQL options. For your case a simple text file is probably a superior choice. I've heard of using XML for a logger format but a simple text file can do all of the same things without the bulk.
But then you miss out on all of the goodness that you can get from XSLT or whatever it's called. Hell, there's an article here on gamedev about using XML for logging, and the advantages that it outlines are pretty comprehensive.
Quote:
4) If XML makes sense anywhere it is in internet communication. When you need communcation between two servers using different technology made by different companies then XML's portability is an advantage. Unfortuantely, even there you still need a standardized format (SOAP, WSDL, RSS, Atom) despite it's alleged "self describing" nature.
True that, but for an engine, you define your own format that's simple to use. And you document it. Exactly what you'd be doing otherwise, except you can set rules and validate the contents of an XML document easier.
Quote:
As a config file format in text you could have something as simple as, a variable name, a colon, a value (text/int/float), and an endl. That would be incredibly easy to parse, especially if you restrict variable names to not having spaces, tabs, or colons. That way you can ignore white space, and once you hit the colon you know that the value is the next thing that needs to be read.
I could write a parser for that in minutes, but that is only one suggestion. Using a text file of your design is likely to be easier and more efficient than using XML. Leave XML for internet traffic.
See TinyXml. XML means that you don't have to actually write a parser for every individual file format, it's structure is well defined [a heirachy of nodes ending with /node], and there are tools out there to display, edit, and extract data from them.
While I agree that sometimes XML isn't the solution, in 99% of non-realtime cases, it is. Any time that you want someone with only general understanding of your system to be able to edit your parameters, XML is the way to go.
At least, that's how I see things
--CJM
XML is a sticky beast. Personally, I think there's a fairly easy rule you can use to decide when it's a good option: I call it the "stock ticker rule." Compare your data to a stock ticker; you can pull individual stock symbols and their price information out of the middle of the stream and nobody gets confused. You can just whack away at the list and pick arbitrary lists of stocks and it'll still be sensible. If your data fits this pattern, XML is not the right tool.
If no part of your data is more complex than single lines of text, don't use XML. This includes stuff like config files (use .INI format or something) and most logging. In these cases, you can more or less grab a single line out of context and it'll still contain a reasonable amount of information - you might lose some section info (for .INI style configs) or some incidental meta-info (like a sequence of events in a log) but you don't totally mangle the meaning of a line by yoinking it out of the middle of the file.
By contrast, any hierarchical, recursive, or just plain complex data is great for XML. As noted, parsing XML really honestly isn't hard if you use the right libraries (like you should). XML is also incredibly descriptive for any kind of complex data - especially nested or recursive data. And, with the use of XML schemas and XSLT, you have a data format which is both self-validating and self-displaying, which (when combined with decent XML editor tools - anyone editing XML in Notepad has missed the point) is a very potent combination.
Know your tools, and know when to apply them. I won't disagree that XML is overused sometimes, but it certainly has its place - and that place is significantly larger than shuffling backend data for SOAP systems [wink]
If no part of your data is more complex than single lines of text, don't use XML. This includes stuff like config files (use .INI format or something) and most logging. In these cases, you can more or less grab a single line out of context and it'll still contain a reasonable amount of information - you might lose some section info (for .INI style configs) or some incidental meta-info (like a sequence of events in a log) but you don't totally mangle the meaning of a line by yoinking it out of the middle of the file.
By contrast, any hierarchical, recursive, or just plain complex data is great for XML. As noted, parsing XML really honestly isn't hard if you use the right libraries (like you should). XML is also incredibly descriptive for any kind of complex data - especially nested or recursive data. And, with the use of XML schemas and XSLT, you have a data format which is both self-validating and self-displaying, which (when combined with decent XML editor tools - anyone editing XML in Notepad has missed the point) is a very potent combination.
Know your tools, and know when to apply them. I won't disagree that XML is overused sometimes, but it certainly has its place - and that place is significantly larger than shuffling backend data for SOAP systems [wink]
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