Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 14.1
__Defense
in action.
C#
Microsoft developed
C#
(pronounced
C sharp
) in order to have a language that
was similar to C++ or Java, but enabled rapid development of Windows applica-
tions on the .NET framework. Like Java, C# is not compiled directly into native
code, but into a byte code that can then run on a virtual machine. At first, there
was only a virtual machine that could run on PCs, but now there are open-source
implementations of the C# virtual machine on many different platforms.
Though there initially were many similarities between C# and Java, over time the
languages have diverged pretty dramatically. But because it is syntactically very
much related to both C++ and Java, the language is still relatively easy to pick
up for someone experienced in either of these languages. Over time, C# has be-
come the language of choice for rapidly developing GUI apps for Windows. Be-
cause of this and other reasons, C# is a very popular choice for game development
tools—engines such as the newer versions of Frostbite (used for the
Battlefield
series) use C# heavily in their toolchain.
Most of the language constructs in C# should be immediately familiar to a C++
programmer, but a couple of aspects are worth mentioning. First of all, there (usu-
