Programming Tool: Visual Studio 2008
Microsoft, http://msdn.microsoft.com
By: Noel Llopis
Visual Studio is, without a doubt, the most-used programming tool in the games industry. Used for development of Xbox and Windows games, creation of Windows tools in C#, web development, and sometimes even just as a powerful editor, Visual Studio is the go-to tool for most programmers.
But Visual Studio has had a rocky history with game developers. From the solid Visual C++ 6.0, to the best-forgotten Visual Studio .Net (2002), it has had its highs and lows. The recent Visual Studio 2005 was the best of the series and it was an absolute pleasure to work with. The bar was set very high for a follow-up.
Is Visual Studio 2008 a worthy successor? Definitely. Microsoft wisely followed the formula of not fixing what ain't broken, and made 2008 an incremental improvement over 2005, along with a few, big new features.
On the C++ side of things, the improvements are very subtle. It looks so much the same that you might forget you're using a new version. You need to look under the hood to find some of the new features: better multiprocessor build support, managed incremental builds, and improved multithreading debugging support among others. My only wish is that Visual Studio 2008 supported the C99 standard, but alas, that's not to be.
Programmers are in for a real treat with the new features on the C# side. Visual Studio 2008 introduces C# 3.0 with all the goodies: Automatic properties, initializers, anonymous types, and lambda expressions.
It also comes with support for Language-Integrated Query (LINQ), the new API to perform SQL-like queries and operations on different sets of data. And if all that is not enough, 2008 also includes a visual design tool for Windows Presentation Foundation GUI tools, which should make most tools programmers feel like Santa just came to town.
Microsoft deserves props for continuing in the tradition of previous versions, and offering a set of Express editions that can be downloaded for free. These editions have slightly limited functionality, but they're a great way to allow students and the online community to create games with the Visual Studio.
For professional developers in large teams, a big issue with any new version is how painful the upgrade is going to be, and how much down time it is going to cause. Again, only good news in that front: The upgrade was seamless, and I was up and running in no time.
Both 2008 and 2005 can live side by side, and you have the option to import your settings from earlier versions. It even brought over Add-Ins from 2005 and they worked flawlessly under 2008.
Visual Studio 2008 manages to maintain the quality and robustness of 2005, while introducing some significant features for tools programmers. It should be in every programmer's workstation and is a most deserving winner of the 2008 Front Line Awards.
Programming Tool Finalists
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Seapine Software TestTrack Pro 2008.2
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Perforce 2008.1
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Microsoft XNA Game Studio 2.0
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CollabNet Subversion 1.5
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Like: Where is OpenAL? Seriously, OpenAL kick ass (btw: some Unreal Engines use OpenAL)
And, Torque won as the Engine? Have you ever used Torque? It suck! I used SEVERAL opensource engines and they all beat Torque easily, if Torque won why could not Cube 2 win?
I don't bekueve free or opensource was ignored. Subversion is in there as one of the finalists, and rightly so. But this is a survey targetted towards professional game development so should be viewed in that context. For example, whilst both GIMP and Blender are fantastic achievements for free & OSS, the vast majority of the GD Community feels that Photoshop and Max are the way to go, and are willing to pay for the added benefits that those tools bring.
Regarding Torque sucking - when was the last time you used it? Reading the evangelism on the engine from PocketWatch, it would appear to have evolved fairly significantly over the past couple of years, so maybe some/all of the shortcomings you found have been overcome.
Regarding Torque winning. what you have to bear in mind is that the winners in each category are not necessarily the best performing, the easiest to use, the cheapest, but they *are* the one that recieved the most votes from the public. This may well be in part due to an effective lobbying campaign by GarageGames to it's license holders, but surely if they were that unhappy with it, they wouldn't have voted for it?
FYI, I have participated in evaluating 4 out of 5 of the engines nominated for my employers, and have personally held licenses to most of the Torque products for many years now, but ultimately ended up voting for Unity on account of the huge strides they've made in the past 2 years in usability and stability.