Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
5.11D
EVELOPMENT
T
OOLS
A user interface programmer often has the opportunity to provide the development team
with useful tools that can greatly improve the development and debugging of features, mak-
ing the team more efficient. It's important to speak with other team members and identify
how we can use the user interface to make their work easier. The key thing to remember is
that the development and debugging features we implement must be straightforward and in-
tuitivetouse.Ifafeatureisdifficultorconvolutedtouse,itwillnotbeusedorworse,itwill
pollute the game code with development or debugging code that may have to be disabled or
removed once the game is shipped.
5.11.1 Development Console
The development console has been around for a very long time, it's a useful development
tool used to input commands directly from within the game. Some game engines are ad-
vancedenoughthatallowyoutowritegamescriptsdirectlywithinthedevelopmentconsole.
Here we will create a flexible console that will allow us to change the value of runtime vari-
ables,executepredeterminedcommands,itwillfeatureauto-completionanditwillmaintain
a history of the commands that have been entered. We will also allow the ability to send
messages to the console for the purpose of runtime logging and a smooth scrolling that will
allow us to review the contents of the console.
Rendering the console may be the simplest part of this system, as it will consists primarily
of text, a background and a cursor. We will add support for colored text as it will allow us to
distinguish at a glance notifications, warnings or errors.
