Game Dev C++ Vector
Jul 22, 2017 In this video I try to answer some questions I got why to use C for game development. I focus in this short video on:. Performance 00:30. Memory manage. Mar 18, 2013 In mathematics, a vector is a construct that represents both a direction as well as a magnitude. In game development it often can be used to describe a change in position, and can be added or subtracted to other vectors. You would usually find a vector object as part of some math or physics library. Jan 26, 2013 This is the first Math for Game Developers and it focuses on moving a character around using vectors and points. Behind on your algebra and trigonometry? Nov 09, 2011 Using Vector Mathematics, Dot Products Dot product is one of the properties of vectors that you can get when multiplying them. The dot product has many useful properties with vectors, in fact, the Dot Product and Cross Product are probably some of the most important properties of vectors in 3D math used in video games. Game Development. Love playing video games? Hone your coding skills while learning how to build them! Skill Paths provide a short roadmap to help you master a new job-ready skill. Create Video Games with Phaser It’s easy to get lost in the flow of a good game. But behind every power-up and boss battle.
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When you create a Windows 10 game, you have the opportunity to reach millions of players worldwide across phone, PC, and Xbox One. With Xbox on Windows, Xbox Live, cross-device multiplayer, an amazing gaming community, and powerful new features like the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and DirectX 12, Windows 10 games thrill players of all ages and genres. The new Universal Windows Platform (UWP) delivers compatibility for your game across Windows 10 devices with a common API for phone, PC, and Xbox One, along with tools and options to tailor your game to each device experience.
Game development is documented on the Windows Dev Center.
We've talked a fair bit about arrays during this C++ course, but there are some limitations to using the default array functionality. The most obvious limitation that you may have already ran into when creating applications which make use of arrays, is that arrays (at least without some workarounds) have a fixed size. This becomes problematic as some situations require arrays which change size, or at the very least require some sort of storage form or 'container' in which the length is not initially known. For these situations we can use things called vectors.
A vector is a container in the C++ Standard Library (a bunch of stuff which sort of comes 'bundled' with C++) which is essentially just an array that can grow and shrink in size. These things have been highly optimized and tried and tested for several years, and as such are generally considered a standard when creating C++ applications. It's worth remembering that all the containers which we're going to cover in the next few tutorials use the std::
namespace.
To sum up the main advantages and disadvantages of vectors in a sentence: They're array-based, dynamic, and have some very good error-checking built in, however can be slower than arrays. Generally speaking, you should use arrays where possible (when you don't need dynamic sizing or want to optimize completely for speed), however if you need a variable sized container (and want to write minimal code to make it possible), vectors are a great solution. As vectors aren't as primitive as arrays and are part of the standard library, they also have a bunch of nice member functions which make some tasks a lot easier -- we'll talk about these in a minute.
To work with vectors, we have to firstly #include <vector>
, and then we can use the vector
syntax to declare a vector (as usual, any. It's always good practice to know how to break things and what to expect when things do go wrong, and as such you should always be testing all of the rules and boundaries that I present to you.
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Most of the further vector functionality simply comes with knowing the other member functions which vector objects have. With a vector declared, elements can easily be added and removed to/from the end of the container by using the push_back
and pop_back
member functions respectively, take for example the following:
The last element in the vector can be handily grabbed using the .back
member function, and the first element with the .front
member function, vectors can be resized using the resize
member function, the size of a vector can be retrieved using the size
member function... the list goes on. If you want to know more of the member functions that can be used on vectors, I suggest the relevant cplusplus.com reference page.
Elements can even be inserted into the vector at any point in the vector by using the insert
member function with two parameters. Note, however, that the insert
member function is pretty damn inefficient memory-wise, and if you're going to be regularly inserting data into the vector, you may want to look for another container. Vectors are good at defining and accessing elements through the whole container, but they're especially good at working with the elements at the end of the vector (pushing, popping, and so forth). This is why a good knowledge of the different containers is useful, as some containers are more fit for certain jobs than others (and hence, in future tutorials we will be covering some different containers).
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If you want a bit of an insight into how vectors work (since they use arrays in the back-end), you can see that they actually just change array size at certain thresholds. The current size of the actual array behind the scenes (not the size of the vector) can be seen by using the capacity
member function - and as such you can see the points at which the vector switches to a bigger array by using a simple loop:
The above loop shows the array size (vector 'capacity') expanding as the array is filled. This should explain the basic system behind vectors, and should hopefully make comparison to other containers, which we'll learn about in the future, much easier. Iterating through arrays using 'for' loops like this (as we have previously - using an iterator variable), however, isn't generally the best method of iteration. When we #include <vector>
, we also get these great little things called vector iterators bundled along.
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Iterators are essentially slightly less intelligent pointers, and the idea is that you can set the iterator to point to the first element of your vector (or other component) and then use pointer arithmetic to iterate through the vector, having the iterator point to the current object at each iteration. Vector iterators are defined similarly to their normal vector counterparts, however with ::iterator
stuck on the end -- for example:
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From here functionality is much as previously described, with the .begin()
and .end()
vector methods returning references to the first and last elements respectively:
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Using these standard iterators has a whole bunch of advantages (convenience, safety, and so on), but one of the big immediately notable advantages in the case of vectors is that it allows you to use some of the vector member functions that require an iterator parameter. .erase
is a useful example of this which allows for the removal of an element in the vector via an iterator parameter of the element you want to remove.