Programming Xbox games with Scala - scala

I asked this on the XNA forums but I guess since most people there would specialize in C# I didn't get much help with this
I have some code for a game written in Scala. I compile everything into Java Bytecode at the moment but the Scala compiler has a .Net version. With that in mind, and because modular design is good practice in general, I've written a Graphics interface and right now I use a OpenGLGraphics class implementing this interface which contains every line of OpenGL code in my program. In my perfect world I would be able to swap my OpenGLGraphics class out for an XNAGraphics class and run my game on an Xbox with no further porting, well, maybe some modifying, but I imagine it's not this simple.
I've done some googling and I've failed to find an example of anyone trying this. I do have experience with XNA programming and the first problem that comes to mind is that there is no scala plugin for Visual Studio and XNA programming seems to be very Visual Studio centric, can I at least get visual studio to compile non C# code in an XNA project or setup an XNA project and content pipeline without Visual Studio?

You can configure arbitrary pre- and post-build events in the IDE by creating a C# project, right-clicking the project to open up the properties pages and selecting "Build Events". There should be a "Pre-build event command line" and "Post-build event command line" where you specify arbitrary commands to run as part of the build. However, possibly a better option would be to create MSBuild build files by hand and using the Exec task to run arbitrary commands.
There is some discussion about Scala integration into VS here which also discusses custom MSBuild tasks.

as long as you can point the compiler to the correct version of the XNA assemblies, and it produces a proper CLR assembly, then your best bet would be to refactor all of your game code into a .dll/assembly. Then just make a regular XNA project as normal, reference your scala assembly, and just reference the code from the scala assembly to start up the XNA game.
to be sure, it would take some refactoring, but it sounds like you've already done most of the work by having an abstracted renderer and all that

Related

Can F# be used with Unity (game engine)?

I'm getting into Unity, and wondering if I can use F# instead of C#, simply because I prefer the syntax. I'm guessing not, since the environment it runs on is very different, but maybe there's something that will cross-compile code or something else I'm not thinking of.
I can't help but get the impression that the other answers were written by people who do not really know what they are talking about.
This is what you need to do to use F# in a Unity project:
Create an F# project that compiles into a dll. Have it build into the assets folder of a Unity project.
Add references to UnityEngine.dll and/or UnityEditor.dll. Change the reference properties so the dlls aren't copied to the build folder.
Of course you can't create new F# classes from within the Unity editor this way, but you can assign the ones you wrote in F#.
Currently you need to enable the (experimental) support for .NET-version 4.5. Alternatively you can download an older version of the FSharp.Core.dll that supports .NET 3.5. (see here).
I can't guarantee that you won't run into trouble because of compatibility issues with the FSharp.Core.dll, but that's just a guess since I haven't tested it myself.
I had success doing this sometime back by following this Github project: https://github.com/eriksvedang/FSharp-Unity, which I believe is roughly the same as Lars Kokemohr's answer above. I haven't tested it in more recent versions of Unity/Mono however.
Yes you can use F# as first class language as C# in unity.
Here is an article about it link
an excellent blog for One who want to use F# in unity
if you want to use F# as second class which I recommend.
let me show how to do it.
Usually what I do is to create Game Domain in F# in .net standard
2.0 library project build it.
Make unity API Compatibility level .net standard 2.0 then
Import library project dll in asset/plugins in Unity
Here is an explanation on how to do it automatically after each build : link
You will get this error, here is the solution
Having said that I recommend not to do any serious work in unity with F# because you won't be able to cross compile to other platforms.
Unity uses IL2cpp and it don't work with F#.
In simple words unity don't support F# and if you are having issues like bugs in Il2cpp unity will not fix it because they don't support F#
There is no easy way to do this but if you REALLY want to make it happen I believe you could use something like fs2cs:
https://github.com/hsharpsoftware/fs2cs
In theory you could write a script that calls fs2cs on all of your Unity C# files. Integrating this with Unity itself would be the more challenging part, but in theory you can trigger fs2cs transpilation on save of your file and Unity can use the transpiled C# file.
Only Boo, C#, and UnityScript are officially supported!

Is it possible to navigate to assemblies definitions inside Visual Studio Code

I'm using VS Code several days as MonoDevelop replacement in Unity3D on Mac OS. I installed mono via homebrew as suggested to let VS Code to parse system assemblies. Everything works almost great, but I can't navigate definitions that are not part of my code. For example I can't go to definition of System.String or UnityEngine.Vector3 to see methods signatures. MonoDevelop has Assembly browser but I miss it in VS Code. Does anybody know if VS Code has such feature? Maybe I need to setup something for that?
PS: I've posted feature request. If you're interested in this feature vote for it, please.
https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/293070-visual-studio-code/suggestions/14698887-implement-net-assembly-browser
It seems VS Code now can do that with the new extension ms-vscode for C# support. Previously it was recommended to use Legacy C# Support for Unity3D. I don't know exactly if this recommendation is still valid, but I tried to uninstall legacy and to install normal one. After some background work OmniSharp parsed my files and now it can open classes from assemblies! Look at this picture, it has open AnimationCurve class as [metadata]!
I'm trying it with Unity3D 5.5.0b2 beta now, so I'm not sure if this will work with production release of Unity3D. By the way I also removed VSCode plugin from dotBunny out of project as Unity3D 5.5 supports Visual Studio Code self.

Can I write software using Unreal Engine 4 without compiling Unreal Engine 4 from source?

I just watched a video on YouTube: Introduction to UE4 on GitHub
Basically explaining how to get the Unreal Engine 4 source code from GitHub and how to build it in VS2013.
Now I understand the need for this if people want to make modifications to the engine itself, but if I want to use the engine as is and just program games with it, do I need to do all this?
I'm building it right now (75 minutes and counting), because I watched a UE4 programming tutorial and noticed that I was missing a few things that the programmer in the tutorial had (thought maybe because I didn't compile the Engine). I figured I needed to build the Engine because another UE4 programming tutorial said "I assume you have already downloaded the engine source from GitHub and compiled it in VS2013", nobody says why, nobody clearly states whether or not this is required to make a game in C++ using Unreal Engine 4.
No you dont need the whole engine. There is a difference between the code which builds the editor and the code which builds your game. If you only want to program your game you should create a new "code project" and modify the code you're getting after creating the new project.

Multiplatform MSBuild project file

I'm currently working on a project which source code should be as portable as possible; that is, the project (in C#, but it is not very relevant) represent an application that should be executed on Android (with Mono-Android), on iPhone (with MonoTouch) and WinMobile (with official Compact Framework). Without going into details, the corresponding MSBuild solution consists of an independent-platform library (from a source code point of view, at least) which declare various interfaces and classes that represent an abstraction of each feature that is not common to the various platform (i.e. the UI). In addition, there are a corresponding library that specialize (for each platform) the "base library"; the effective application executable is a program that uses the abstraction and the common standard libraries.
Developing on WinMobile and Android is not really a problem: Mono-Android add-in can be installed on VS 2010, so both platforms can be handled with MS VS.
Initially the solution was created in VS, so the initial configuration and the related projects (Android and WinMobile) are automatically generated.
After that I've imported the solution in MonoDevelop under Mac (the only platform that is officially supported by MonoTouch), and I've created the project for the iPhone library; switching the configuration to generate the assemblies (iPhoneSimulator) the "base library" was not possible to compile due to a missing project type configuration; specifically, the GUID used by MonoTouch for <ProjectTypeGuids> is {E613F3A2-FE9C-494F-B74E-F63BCB86FEA6}; adding this GUID I can now compile "base library" in MonoDevelop.
The problem arises when I try to re-import the solution in VS: since there's no Windows version of MonoTouch, VS cannot find the add-in for the specified project type, and the project doesn't load.
Looking to the specifications of MSBuild project file, it seems that there are tons of options that cannot be set or modified within the project/solution editor in VS; however the format is quite complicated and now I'm asking your help!
Is there a way to specify in the project file that a project type is present only if a particular configuration is selected independently to which is the environment I'm using?
The general approach is something like this; a condition that progressivly builds your property, referencing any value the property already may have:
<ProjectTypeGuids
Condition="'$(BuildingInsideVisualStudio)' != 'true'"
>;{E613F3A2-FE9C-494F-B74E-F63BCB86FEA6}"</ProjectTypeGuids>
<ProjectTypeGuids>{OTHER-GUIDS-HERE}$(ProjectTypeGuids)</ProjectTypeGuids>
This will detect the VS condition (when building) and omit the unkonwn guid. I'm not sure however if it will work when the project is opened, this property might only apply to building. There may be a similar "sentinal" property for building on Mono, and you can reverse the condition.
I solved an unrelated, but very similar issue of cross-platform development by excluding the files that presented themselves as cranky when going between Linux and Windows. I have my project under source control and utilized that to keep things working cooperatively.
http://www.aydabtudev.com/2011/05/what-goes-into-source-control-android.html
It's not a 1-to-1 for your issue, but it might give you clues/ideas on how to solve your problem.

Find out why Xcode has decided to link to a particular library

I'm using the Unity 3D engine to build an iPhone app, and when I go to generate my Xcode project for compilation, it includes a few fairly large libraries: Mono.Security.dll.s, System.dll.s, System.Core.dll.s, etc.
I don't know if this question is really an Xcode question or a Unity question, but I'm trying to figure out why each of those libraries is being linked - which functions / classes are being referenced - ideally so that I can rewrite my code to remove as many of the dependencies as possible. Does anybody know a way to find this information out?
Are you using any external assemblies? If so you should get the source code for them and check what they are including. Sometimes it's possible to disable stuff in external assemblies to remove unneeded dependencies.
Go into the "project settings->player" menu in Unity and make sure that stripping level is set as high as possible. Stripping will attempt to swap System.Core with mscorlib, which doesn't include stuff like Linq.
A way to find out why a particular assembly is being included is to open up the references section of your MonoDevelop solution, and double-click on an assembly. This will open the assembly browser and you'll be able to get an idea of the namespaces that depend on a particular assembly.
This DLL stuff is added to project by Unity3D, Xcode has nothing to do with this. What version of Unity3D do you use? Try to tweak Optimization options in project settings (Inspector), especially 'Stripping'.