Hey Guys.
I have been learning C++ from the book "Beginning C++ through game programming. 3rd Edition" and i have got through most of the book (I just have some advanced class and dynamic memory stuff left) and there was a section in my book talking about efficient code and the author said that game developers often just write working code and then run a 3rd party program that monitors what parts of code are using the most CPU, RAM, networking, etc and then just edit the parts of code using the most.
So basically what I want to know is where I can find these (preferably free). I am using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 professional (from Dreamspark).
p.s. After I finish my book I am going to start graphics in DirectX and I was wondering if i should use a DirectX 9 book, a DirectX 10 book or a DirectX 11 book. I would go for 11 but my some of my friends (who will play-test the games) have XP and so are limited to 9. Just from a compatibility point of view will learning from the DirectX 11 book enable the games i make from the tutorials inside to be DirectX 9 compatible.
Thanks all.
3rd party code monitoring
The tools are called code profilers. AMD makes CodeAnalyst http://developer.amd.com/Pages/default.aspx I don't know any other free ones. Using it won't always be as simple as just editing the code, you'll need to what's going on to make effective use of a profiler. MSVC is going to run your code through it's optimizer which is going to make changes, so some things aren't going come out of compilation process as one might expect. For example, it may try to unroll small loops.
If you want something a bit more accessible try out "Very Sleepy". It requires no setting up of projects, and provides results in a simple manner. Simply attach it to a running process (choose which threads as well), and click go, then stop after a while (30 seconds should be plenty enough time), and see the results. Obviously this only profiles your CPU activity. If you want to profile GPU activity then nVidia and AMD both provide tools for doing this, and on Win7 you have access to a large array of hardware performance counters.
AQtime is a well known one, not free but there's a free light version.
I don't personally like much the smarbear website but it do the job.
http://www.automatedqa.com/
I don't personally like much the smarbear website but it do the job.
http://www.automatedqa.com/
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