What IDE is everyone here using and which one do you recommend?

[Mars_999]

Hello all, I am back on the MAC side again thank GOD!! I see that Codewarrior 8 is out and was wondering how it stacks up against PB 2.0? I will only be developing for OSX and using SDL. I most likely will have to learn Obj C so I can code in Cocoa someday but not right now. I use C++ as my language of choice. I was wondering also if anyone here knows if Codewarrior 8 or PB 2.0 takes advantage of SMP processing? It sure would be nice to buy a Dual Ghz to compile code faster. I don't mind paying for the IDE but if Codewarrior isn't that much better than PB than I will pass. Thanks everyone.

[kainsin]

I'm using Project Builder ( April Tools ) and CodeWarrior Pro 6. They both seem like fine IDEs and compile pretty fast on my machines. I like the April tools a lot because of the extra window preferences they added in, it's easier to let some files open up in their own window...like Help files. My only issue right now is that I can't seem to figure out how to get CodeWarrior to compile things into the Mac OS X bundle format. I'm still fooling around with it, but if anyone knows any reference material on how to do this then please let me know.

As far as SMP goes, I usually run my laptop in Mac OS X and my desktop in Mac OS 9 ( since Mac OS X doesn't have software base station support yet ) and CodeWarrior on my desktop ( G4 DP 500MHz ) does seem to compile quite faster than the same code in Project Builder on my laptop ( Titanium G4 667MHz ) so I think that the multi-processors may have something to do with it...that or it's just CodeWarrior.

[davecom]

I'm also using both Project Builder and CodeWarrior at the moment. If you want to do OS 9 carbon development that also runs under OS X, CodeWarrior is the only way to go.

[inio]

Originally posted by davecom
If you want to do OS 9 carbon development that also runs under OS X, CodeWarrior is the only way to go.

Only sane way to go. I'm pretty sure MPW can compile a carbon app though.

[monteboyd]

Originally posted by inio


Only sane way to go. I'm pretty sure MPW can compile a carbon app though.

You're right, it can :) Works just fine for me. Even running MPW in Classic from OSX is pretty painless.

[davecom]

I meant OS X native since that what it seemed the original poster wanted.

[Mars_999]

Does anyone here know for sure wheter or not PB or Codewarrior can use dual CPU's to speed up complile times? Also is Codewarrior's compiler better at optimizing code than PB? What I would like to know is if you were to take Q3 code lets say and compile it on both IDE's which would create a game that would run faster on the same hardware, if thats possible? =)

[inio]

Originally posted by Mars_999
Does anyone here know for sure wheter or not PB or Codewarrior can use dual CPU's to speed up complile times?

neither GCC nor CW use multi-threading directly to accellerate compiles. Both only get the advantage of the OS running on the other processor. CW's compiler is significantly faster to start with however.

Also is Codewarrior's compiler better at optimizing code than PB?

Probably true. The PPC compiler in GCC was very immature last time I checked. Also, Mach-O programs have a 12 (?) cycle overhead per function, becayse Mach-O uses PC-relative addressing, giving a CFM app compiled in CW a slight advange.

What I would like to know is if you were to take Q3 code lets say and compile it on both IDE's which would create a game that would run faster on the same hardware, if thats possible? =)

2. I doubt Q3 would compile in PB without changes of some sort

1. the CW build would almost certainly be faster.

[ChrisD]

Mars.

1. CW has a fster compiler...
GCC's PPC support is crap... also reflected in how slow OS-X is.

Now GCC 3.0 in beta now in the april dev tools beta is supposed to include major
PPC optimizations... this will be reflected in jaguar.

Will these be as fast as CW... I doubt it seeing that metrowerks has a more(?) experience at
making PPC compilers and ******** now owns metrowerks and also makes PPC chips.

2. I just got CW 8.
It is the first fully usable version on OS-X...
Well At least I have not found any bugs.
It also has pop up menu auto completion which kicks ass.
That is promised for some future version on PB also.

At least AFAIK the MSL STL is not broken like the one shipping with OS-X is...
being that at least the string class and possibly more classes are NOT thread safe even
when thread safe compiling is enabled.

3. Mars you can buy CW academic for like $120 this will give you both CW 8 for OS-9/OS-X and Win32.
CW also now works with apples cocoa and IB.

4. Learning cocoa/Objective C is really not important at all for making games on mac os.
It also runs slower then C/C++ so as to have limited use in making game engines.

[OneSadCookie]

4. Learning cocoa/Objective C is really not important at all for making games on mac os.
It also runs slower then C/C++ so as to have limited use in making game engines.

But writing in Cocoa is significantly more productive than writing in Carbon, so you write the 10% of your code that takes 90% of the CPU time in straight C, and the remaining 90% of the code in half the time it would have taken you otherwise. So what if it takes 12% of the time instead of 10%? You've also got a whole lot of extra time to squeeze a bit more performance out of the rest of the code, if you're really worried ;)

[ChrisD]

Originally posted by OneSadCookie


But writing in Cocoa is significantly more productive than writing in Carbon, so you write the 10% of your code that takes 90% of the CPU time in straight C, and the remaining 90% of the code in half the time it would have taken you otherwise. So what if it takes 12% of the time instead of 10%? You've also got a whole lot of extra time to squeeze a bit more performance out of the rest of the code, if you're really worried ;)

Do you have any examples of what you would use cocoa for in a game engine?
Like where you think you would save time?

[OneSadCookie]

Cocoa provides a lot of high-level things like collection classes, serialization, text handling, networking, UI (if appropriate).

Objective C provides a lot of utility in terms of flexibility and dynamism that a static language like C or C++ has trouble emulating. This is useful for scripting, object factories / registration, &c.

For most games, those aren't performance-critical areas. The bottleneck is in the graphics -- whether that be blitting or passing stuff to OpenGL -- or the physics, or the AI. The slight extra overhead of a few (tens, perhaps even hundreds of) Objective C method calls per frame is not likely to be noticeable.

[Douglas O'Brien]

I use Code Warrior 2.1. I don't think it does a very good job of compilation because I ran some code that took 15 seconds on my 600mhz G3 iBook. And on a freinds 1ghz P3 laptop using Microsoft Visual C 6.0, it only took 3 seconds. I was expecting maybe 11-13 seconds.

I also have THINK C 6.0 and I'm trying to get it to work to see if its any faster. However, it doesn't automatically add files with the "include" command. You have to choose add file or something and it wont let me select "stdio.h" and similar files.

I have THINK C 5.0 also and I'll see if I can get it to work.

[ChrisD]

Originally posted by Douglas O'Brien
[B]I use Code Warrior 2.1.

2.1 pro?

When we are up to 8.1 pro???


WOW....
Are you running 2.1 under classic or OS-9?


I don't think it does a very good job of compilation because I ran some code that took 15 seconds on my 600mhz G3 iBook. And on a friends 1ghz P3 laptop using Microsoft Visual C 6.0, it only took 3 seconds. I was expecting maybe 11-13 seconds.


That makes no sense at all...

Heres why.

1. You are comparing intel code generation to PPC code generation.

2. You have not told us anything about what kind of optimization or
compile settings you have turned on etc...


I also have THINK C 6.0 and I'm trying to get it to work to see if its any faster. However, it doesn't automatically add files with the "include" command. You have to choose add file or something and it wont let me select "stdio.h" and similar files.

I have THINK C 5.0 also and I'll see if I can get it to work.


Think C is long dead... use CW...
All apple code is in CW and or PB format now a days.

[Douglas O'Brien]

I use Code Warrior 2.1. However something I compiled that took 15 seconds on my 600 G3 iBook only took 3 seconds on a freinds 1ghz P3 laptop. I was expecting 11-13 seconds.

I also have THINK C 6 and I tried to run the code in it, but it doesn't automatically include files with the "#include" statement, you have to add them manually as well, and it won't let me add things like "stdio.h" and such.

I also have THINK C 5 and I will see if I can get it working.

[ylaporte]

Originally posted by ChrisD


Do you have any examples of what you would use cocoa for in a game engine?
Like where you think you would save time?

Cocoa (and obj-c) is extremely usefull when making game editors, I saved a great amount of time using it when I was building my map editor.

It is also good to build configuration/preference screens and the like in my case. I stop using it the minute I go fullscreen, from that moment I switch to C++ except for the few remaining uses of Cocoa at that moment (mostly events) which are in a objective-C++ file that is properly insulated by the header files so I don't have to use Obective-C++ for the rest of my project (The Obj-C++ compiler is reaaaaaalllllllly sssssssssssllllllllloooooooooowwwwwwwwwww)