Code snippets

This is a minor and useless update.
I've found a nice system for posting code snippets, his name is SyntaxHighlighter.

#include <iostream>

int main()
{
    std::cout << "Hello, World!" << std::endl;

    return 0;
}

Mesh file format

I've spent some time surfing the net, and on various forums, my goal was searching informations about the mesh file formats.

What is the best? The answer is one: create your own.
In this manner we have a 1:1 mapping between the format exported by the modeling software and the internal format of our engine, the perfect solution.
But, at the moment, I can't spend my time writing an exporter, so I've opted for an hybrid solution.
My engine is equipped with a propietary  format and there's also a wrapper class that manages the translation from a well known mesh format to mine propietary  format.

In my past projects I've used several different formats such as Wavefront OBJ, X, 3DS and many others, but wanting to try something new, I've opted for Autodesk FBX. People say that is a very good format, and Autodesk provides a very good and well documented SDK.
I know that this format is not for the in-game use, but I use it only for a practicality question. I use the SDK in order to recover the geometrical and material data of the mesh. In this manner, in future, I can easly write an exporter for any modeling software.
At the moment I'm implementing the wrapper class and I did some tests with the SDK, and I can confirm what people say.

Thawing completed

Finally, after about two years of silence, this blog resumes. In this time I've had some personal problems, but now I'm here, ready for restart.

The reason is only one, my passion for this topic.

Let's go to introduce some news:

The first regard the language. Because, guys, in this world (game development) there is only a language: English. Of course, the second language is C++.

The second news regards the topic of this blog, I'm back cause my goal is talk with you about game development and my current and future projects.

At present, I'm working on a simple graphics engine, made with DirectX11, but it will be oriented on a multi API approach (DirectX and OpenGL).

I'm also working and studying on others game engines!

That's all folks, see you soon...