C++ Compilers

[Young Teck 06]

I need some help, what would everybody out there recommend for a C++ Compiler. I am thinking about paying $110 for Visual C++ "Standard". Does anybody know if this software is great and what are the best features of it. Other recommendations are also welcome.

[Narue]

>Does anybody know if this software is great
It works fine for my purposes.

>what are the best features of it
It works fine for my purposes. ;)

>Other recommendations are also welcome.
Borland C++ 5.5 and Dev-C++ are both free and good quality.

[vegaseat]

You might want to look into Visual C++ Express. The beta version of this "student edition" is still free at:
http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/visualc/

[Young Teck 06]

Thanks for all the help

[kakilang]

http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html

here is the website u can download compiler
go find dev C++ 4.9.9.0 compiler and download it
i find this compiler is very useful for beginner

[Young Teck 06]

I'll check into it, thanks.

[Young Teck 06]

Alright, back with the results. I am currently working on the Visual C++ 2005 Express Beta right now, its nice so thanks for the link. Hope to buy the whole thing for Christmas.

[Young Teck 06]

Does anybody know if Microsoft Visual Studio is for C++ program building and VBScript building and a combo of all of that.

What is Visual Studio for?

[jwenting]

Visual Studio includes not only VC++ but also C#, J# and Visual BASIC.
VBScript is included in MS Office, maybe in Visual Studio as well (it's pretty generic in MS products as a macro language).

Depending on the version of VS you purchase it may also include things like Interdev, Visual Source Safe, MSSQL Server (development license) and other tools.

Check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/ for details.

There IS a difference between the C++ compilers in the standard and Pro (included with VS) products. The compiler in VC++ Standard is not an optimising compiler meaning that optimisation options aren't available.
This is no problem for learning and small applications (unless performance critical) but for larger and performance critical applications you will want the optimising compiler from the full VS at least for your final (deployment) build.

[Young Teck 06]

So really, Visual Studio is a combination of them all right?

I am using the Visual C++ Express 2005 BETA, and its a bit hard and takes a lot of memory charge, anybody else tried it yet with this? Its great, but moves slow.

[jwenting]

yes, visual studio is all the languages packaged together with some extras.

might be because it's a beta. I use Visual Studio .NET 2002 here and it's pretty fast apart from sometimes taking a while to load a project (which I suspect is my virusscanner holding things up rather than VS itself).

[Young Teck 06]

I want to get Visual C++ .NET Standard 2003, think its at all going to be any good. I need to know because I am going to get a beginners book and the Visual C++ foir writing programs. After I get enough, I'd like to join with about 2 or 3 other people to start putting together a program for others to use. I had a few ideas such as an RSS Aggregator or a Stock Market LIVE Ticker, or maybe even a Live Chat (May need a PHP and MySQL person for this to help also.)

Thats some of my ideas I want to do when I get enough into the level. Think you'd be interested?

All I know is that after this I want to learn Game Programming, which I believe is VBScript. When I get enough language in C++, I am going to build a few programs and sell them and then simply use the money from that for Visual Studio .NET OR start building computers freelanced and sell them.

Is it a good idea?

[jwenting]

Games aren't written in VBScript. Most of them these days are writting in C++ with a scattering of other languages taking the scraps (Delphi, Java, being the largest of those).

Of the C++ compilers used VC++ has by far the largest market share.

VBScript may be used by some game designers as an internal scripting language for some things but it won't be the core of the game (at most something like scripting the behaviour of NPCs and for that Python is probably more common).

[Young Teck 06]

Hmmmmm, makes logical sense. I cannot remember, I was reading a book in the local Barnes and Noble, don't you also have to use DirectX too for most of your core gaming works. The scripting and coding is just for the simple fact that you use it for things like limits and whatever else. Painfully true right there.

[jwenting]

DirectX is what's used in most Windows games nowadays, though OpenGL is also an option.

If I were you I'd spend a lot of time learning C++ properly before dabbling in DX coding as DX is a mess (I know, I've looked into it).
It's a mix of C++ and C using a lot of COM components with the typical weird Microsoft naming conventions.

[JC7]

There IS a difference between the C++ compilers in the standard and Pro (included with VS) products. The compiler in VC++ Standard is not an optimising compiler meaning that optimisation options aren't available.
This is no problem for learning and small applications (unless performance critical) but for larger and performance critical applications you will want the optimising compiler from the full VS at least for your final (deployment) build.

MS is now offering a free download, 'Visual C++ Toolkit', which upgrades the compiler in VC++ standard to the optimizing compiler. You can get it from the MSDN site.

[Young Teck 06]

Well, the Bloodshed C++ compiler doesnt work, any more helpful hints?

[vegaseat]

If you want to do game programming, you need all the help you can get. DirectX is somewhat difficult, but there are what you might call preprocessors, wrappers etc. that make life easier.

One of those is BCXDX written by eminent DX guru Emil Halim. He has written numerous DX extensions to BCX basic. This allows one to write directX programs with just a few lines that are then translated to C code (in my opinion C is just a subset of C++). This code can then be compiled with a number of C compilers, even with the free VC++ toolkit.

Below is a small sample code:

' Emil Halim's BCXDX extensions to BCX are used to animate a bitmap sprite.  
' The image is also reversed and offset so two images walk against each other.
' Windows Graphical User Interface (GUI) program using pixel resolution.

GUI "Ddraw",PIXELS
 
$include "..\..\include\All.inc"
 
GLOBAL Form1  AS HWND
GLOBAL Ddraw  AS HWND
 
sub FORMLOAD
  Form1 = BCX_FORM("Sprites Animation", 0, 0, 240 ,180)
  Ddraw = BCX_Ddraw( Form1, 5, 5, 225, 150)
  CENTER(Form1)
  SHOW(Form1)
 
  GLOBAL spAnim_Sonc as ANIMSPRITE ptr
  spAnim_Sonc = BCX_LoadAnimSprite("Sonwalk.bmp", 54, 54)
  BCX_SpriteColorKey((SPRITE*)spAnim_Sonc, 0)
 
  GLOBAL spAnim_Sonc_opposite as ANIMSPRITE ptr
  spAnim_Sonc_opposite = BCX_CopyOfAnimSprite(spAnim_Sonc)
  BCX_SpriteColorKey((SPRITE*)spAnim_Sonc_opposite, 0)
  BCX_HFlipSprite((SPRITE*)spAnim_Sonc_opposite)
  BCX_PlayAnimSpriteBackward(spAnim_Sonc_opposite)
 
  BCX_PlayAnim(Render,15000,24) ' play 15 seconds of Anim & 24 FPS
END SUB
 
BEGIN EVENTS
 if CBMSG =  WM_CLOSE  then
    BCX_FreeDdraw()
    PostQuitMessage(0)
 END if
END EVENTS
 
FUNCTION Render(hwnd AS HWND,uMsg AS UINT ,idEvent AS UINT_PTR,dwTime AS DWORD) AS void CALLBACK
  BCX_ClearBKBuf(0) 
  BCX_DrawAnimSprite(20,50,spAnim_Sonc)
  BCX_DrawAnimSprite(80,50,spAnim_Sonc_opposite)
  BCX_FlipBuffer(Ddraw)
END FUNCTION

If you had to write this program in C++ it would be over 20 pages long. The executable and the sprite bitmap is attached in the zip file. Just test drive the sample and observe its small size executable. It was compiled with PellesC. BCX, BCXDX and PellesC are all free on the net.

See: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bcxdxc/