Author: David

I’m considering switching to C11

I’m considering switching to C11

Posted on by David
Programming image
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

All C code I write in the books is currently to the C99 standard. All the compilers involved (Visual C++ on Windows and Clang on Ubuntu) support C99 but C11 support seems restricted to GCC and Clang.

Microsoft has traditionally supported C++ but their C support seems a bit grudging; realistically they don’t prioritise it which I can understand.

Given though that I’m not going to republish my first e-book for a while (I’d like to add a WebAssembly chapter or two first), I’m going to investigate whether it’s worth switching to C11 for the 2nd book. From what I’ve read all it needs is a flag to tll it to compile to C11 standards. This is for Clang.

-std=c11

But the other question is what will I gain by doing this and I can’t actually see there’s that much benefit.. I don’t need Unicode, I don’t think alignment will really make much difference. You can read about the C11 changes on WikiChip.

So I’ve made the decision. I’ll stick with C99 for now. But for an alternative view, I recommend Danny Kalev’s 2012 article on C11.

 

Other ways to time code

Other ways to time code

Posted on by David
Stop Watch photo from Pixabay
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

As well as the hr_time code that I used in discussion of sdldemo SDL itself provides some other ways to time. If you are happy with millisecond level accuracy of timing, just call this function which returns an unsigned 32-bit (i.e. 0- 4 billion) giving the number of milliseconds since the SDL library was initialised.

SDL_GetTicks()

The link goes to the Wiki page on libsdl.org  for SDL_GetTicks().

As always, call it twice, once to get the start value and once to get the stop then subtract start from stop to get the elapsed time in milliseconds..

For some operations this can be easier to use. A frame is 16.666666 milliseconds so if your code runs in less than 16 milliseconds, it’s not going to cause problems. In my original Windows code, it ran is a fraction of a millisecond. Compiled C code really is fast and helped because the GPU is doing most of the donkey work!

There’s also a higher accuracy timer. This I guess is just a wrapper round the system call I call in hr_time.

Uint64 SDL_GetPerformanceCounter(void)
Which I haven’t used yet but which I guess returns a processor clock count. To measure time you need to call it twice (start and stop values as before) then divide by the frequency value returned from a call to

Uint64 SDL_GetPerformanceFrequency(void)

My computer returns a clock frequency of 3,500,000,000 clocks per second but the actual value is irrelevant just divide ((stop – start)/ frequency) to get the elapsed time in seconds.

Added Empire 9 to the C Games repository

Added Empire 9 to the C Games repository

Posted on by David

Splash screen from the Empire gameBack in 2012/2013 I was writing the C/C++/C# column for About.com and I was doing games tutorials with SDL. This is an Empire type game, much like the Z80 game I mentioned in yesterday’s post except coded in C and with hexagons instead of squares.

It is not complete but includes a working map generator and a simple GUI that I devised based on a very crude OOP type of coding using function pointers and macros.

I’ve put it on the C Games repository and In the empire9src.zip (in the aboutempire.zip)  file you’ll see sdlgui.h and c. These implement it and (years ahead of Flutter and Dart!) it redraws the GUI at 60 fps.  The controls are built in a linked list of sdlcontrols.  This is a sdlbase which is the base for all controls.

#define sdlbase enum controltype ctype;\
int x,y,width,height,color,clickable;\
SDL_Color textcolor;\
void (*pRender)(struct sdlcontrol * self);\
void (*pFree)(struct sdlcontrol * self);\
void (*pClick)(struct sdlcontrol * self);\
void (*pPreClick)(struct sdlcontrol * self);\
struct sdlcontrol * nextcontrol

The four void (*..) are the function pointers. The pRender function draws the controls, pFree frees it up.. pClick handles clicks and PreClick provides extra functionality.

struct sdlcontrol { sdlbase; };
typedef struct sdlcontrol * psdlcontrol;
typedef char * pchar;

struct sdlbutton {
  sdlbase;
  pchar labeltext;
  int isDown;
  int countDown;
};

struct sdllabel {
  sdlbase;
  pchar labeltext;
};

Those are the definitions for sdlbutton and sdllabel and all controls have sdlbase (Everything in the big macro) and additional info.

This is the code that rendered a label.

void RenderLabel(psdlcontrol self) {
  int result,x,y;
  char buff[60];
  struct sdllabel * label= (struct sdllabel *)self;
  SDL_Rect rect = {(Sint16)self->x,(Sint16)self->y,(Uint16)self->width,(Uint16)self->height};
  x= self->x;
  y=self->y;

result=SDL_FillRect( screen, &rect, self->color );
  sprintf(buff,"%s",label->labeltext);
  ttf_print(x+2,y+2,buff,self->textcolor);
}

So every frame, the program would render all controls to the off-screen buffer by walking the linked list of controls and calling the pRender pointer for each. For buttons this would include a simple animation to show the button being clicked down and then released etc.

If you’ve ever wondered how a GUI is implemented take a look at the code. The sdlgui.c is less than 600 lines but manages to do panels, buttons, labels, checkbox, listbox and images.

Why I like C for creating games

Why I like C for creating games

Posted on by David

Dark Empire ZX Spectrum gamePart of the reason is SDL which is a wonderful library and whose potential I have barely touched. I used to be an 8-bit games developer back in the 1980s, writing games for CBM-64, ZX Spectrum, MSX and Amstrad CPC-464.

I wrote those games in Z80 and 6502 assembly language. Thee were no libraries, no frameworks, no debuggers (lots of print statements) and when I first started, I wrote the games on the machines themselves.  If you got a crash, the computer would hang or reset and everything had to be reloaded from tape usually.

True story, I started by learning 6502 and when I came to learn Z80 I did it by writing a 6502 cross-assembler in Z80.  6502 is a very simple CPU with just 69 instructions. I was given the Z80 source for a text editor (Zen) and built the 6502 assembler into it.

Things gradually improved, we got development machines so we just needed a small loader on the target machine that downloaded the machine code from the development machine. That speeded up development enormously.

C is a very simple language and SDL can shift pixels very rapidly. I wouldn’t necessarily choose C for 3D games but for 2D arcade games, I think C is nearly perfect. With SDL, once you learn how to initialise it, load graphics (from disk to GPU), blit shapes and flip the screen you are 90% of the way there.

That image was one of the games I wrote in 1987, an Empire “Conquer the shrouded world” game where you are playing against a computer player. There’s six minutes of gameplay on youtube.

Update on the sdldemo

Update on the sdldemo

Posted on by David

I’ve redone the hr_time,h and c files and am much happier with them now and also updated the code on github.  Apparently the reason for having <linux/time.h> as well as <time.h> and including both is because the <time.h> is set in stone and any additions have to be done as an extra include file. This is what hr_time.h looks like now.

#ifndef _timeh
#define _timeh 1
#include <linux/time.h>
#include 

struct _times {
  struct timespec start;
  struct timespec stop;
};

typedef struct _times stopWatch;

void startTimer(stopWatch *timer);
void stopTimer(stopWatch *timer);
double diff(stopWatch *timer);

#endif

 

I do like Visual Studio Code

I do like Visual Studio Code

Posted on by David

Visual Studio Code MarketplaceWhen I wrote the Windows version of the book I used Visual Studio and it was quite excellent. But Visual Studio Code (VSC), the free cross-platform IDE is also very impressive.

Not only does it let you create your own extensions but you can even include debugging and visual debugging like Visual Studio.

I installed Clang and it’s associated debugger lldb. It is pretty powerful, The only thing that is a bit difficult with VSC is the learning curve for configuring builds, etc. With the Microsoft C/C++ extension there are four JSON files that must be configured for compiling, debugging etc.

The picture is from the website for the Visual Studio code marketplace. There are currently over 16,000 extensions most if not all (I haven’t checked them all!) are free and support virtually every popular programming language and probably one or two I haven’t heard of.

That Clang C compilation

That Clang C compilation

Posted on by David

I spent about five hours trying to get the timing code to compile before I got it compiling and working. Now I’m used to the concept of include guards in C. Those are the #ifndef that you see like this:

#ifndef _timeh
  #include <linux/time.h>
  #define _timeh 1
#endif

But in the hr_time.c file these include guards are on steroids. Not only did I need to include <time.h>, I also had to include <linux/time.h> but with a couple of extra #defines in there. It doesn’t seem right and wasn’t needed with the Windows version.  I’d welcome any comments on this.

#ifndef _timeh
  #include <linux/time.h>
  #define __timespec_defined 1 
  #define __itimerspec_defined 1
  #include <time.h>
  #define _timeh 1
#endif

The sdldemo program with timing whown in the window caption.Without these, I’d get compile errors like __timespec redefined errors.

I’ve uploaded the source files and Visual Studio Code JSON files for this in the file asteroids_ch25.zip in the new repository for the Learn C on Linux Ebook

So feel free to try it. The only difference between this and the version shown in an earlier post is the time (in the window caption) to draw all 100,000 rectangles,  You’ll need to install SDL2 if you want to compile and run the program.

The joys of Linux C Compilation

The joys of Linux C Compilation

Posted on by David

I’m slowly working my way through 30 odd examples of C code that I wrote for the first 20 chapters in my Ebook., And finding odd compile errors. Here’s an example.

I’ve rewritten my stopWatch object for high-precision timing. This is the header.

#include 

struct _stopWatch {
  struct timespec start; 
  struct timespec stop;
} stopWatch;

typedef struct _stopWatch stopWatch;

void startTimer(stopWatch *timer);
void stopTimer(stopWatch *timer);
double diff(stopWatch *timer);

It won’t compile, and keeps on complaining that timespec is an incomplete type. I saw one solution which was to redefine timespec like this:

struct timespec {
  time_t tv_sec; /* seconds */
  long tv_nsec; /* nanoseconds */
};

But that got Clang wound up about timespec redefined errors. I searched and searched and eventually found the answer. Instead of

#include <time>

Use this as well

#include <time> 
#include <linux/time.h>

Simple when you know how!

SDL on Linux

SDL on Linux

Posted on by David

In my forthcoming ebook, which is the Linux equivalent of the first one I use Visual Studio Code (VSC) as the IDE to develop along with the Microsoft C/C++ extension. I’m using the SDL2 library for fast graphics and Clang as the compiler.

Thankfully Microsoft have documented most of the process of using Clang with VSC, albeit on a Mac. I’m using Ubuntu but it’s mostly the same.

Before I could configure SDL I had to add it and I never realised about apt-cache on Ubuntu (and Debian). The command

apt- cache search libsdl2

Outputs this, showing what's available.

libsdl2-2.0-0 - Simple DirectMedia Layer
libsdl2-dev - Simple DirectMedia Layer development files
libsdl2-doc - Reference manual for libsdl2
libsdl2-gfx-1.0-0 - drawing and graphical effects extension for SDL2
libsdl2-gfx-dev - development files for SDL2_gfx
libsdl2-gfx-doc - documentation files for SDL2_gfx
libsdl2-image-2.0-0 - Image loading library for Simple DirectMedia Layer 2, libraries
libsdl2-image-dev - Image loading library for Simple DirectMedia Layer 2, development files
libsdl2-mixer-2.0-0 - Mixer library for Simple DirectMedia Layer 2, libraries
libsdl2-mixer-dev - Mixer library for Simple DirectMedia Layer 2, development files
libsdl2-net-2.0-0 - Network library for Simple DirectMedia Layer 2, libraries
libsdl2-net-dev - Network library for Simple DirectMedia Layer 2, development files
libsdl2-ttf-2.0-0 - TrueType Font library for Simple DirectMedia Layer 2, libraries
libsdl2-ttf-dev - TrueType Font library for Simple DirectMedia Layer 2, development files

So a quick

sudo apt-get install libsdl2-dev

Installed 73 MB of files including all the header files. I used the files app to search for SDL files and it found a folder SDL2 in /usr/include.

And all I needed in my program was

[perl]

#include <SDL2/SDL.h>

[/perl]

And I had to add “/usr/include/SDL2/” into the includePath section of c_cpp_properties.json and “-lSDL2” into the args section of tasks.json. These two JSON files are included in C/C++ projects in VSC.

At that point I could compile and run my first SDL program on Ubuntu. It throws 10,000 random sized coloured rectangles onto the screen

The first SDL demo program

 

The missing SGN function

The missing SGN function

Posted on by David

Both C and C++ lack a sgn (short for signum apparently!) function (unless C++ has added it in recent changes. It’s also available in Boost but this blog is not about C++ so who cares!

Sgn() for those who don’t know is a function that returns -1 if the passed in int value is negative, 1 if the value was positive or 0 otherwise. Even BASIC includes it but not C.

However it’s easy to add. Something like

int sgn(in x) {
  if (x=0) return 0;
    else
  if (x>0) return 1;
  else 
    return -1;
}

Of course if you are using longints or floats or doubles, you have to write those as well. However an alternative is to make it into a macro.

#define sgn(x) (x < 0) ? -1 : (x > 0)
int a = sgn(10);

The only downside if you make lots of calls to sgn() is that it will slightly bulk up your code compared to calling it as a function but it will run fractionally faster!