Game Programming Lessons: The technology of computer gaming is undergoing a major conceptual shift: a shift to multi-threaded engines running on multi-core processors. Multi-core processors are powering the next generation of PCs and gaming consoles, and game developers want to target as many of these platforms as possible. Unfortunately, threaded execution and cross-platform support are non-trivial, and many developers find it difficult to get these features into their own code. This article will attempt to smooth this transition by exploring these two features in the context of a simple demo application.

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Introduction

By Brad Werth, Intel Corp.

The technology of computer gaming is undergoing a major conceptual shift: a shift to multi-threaded engines running on multi-core processors. Multi-core processors are powering the next generation of PCs and gaming consoles, and game developers want to target as many of these platforms as possible. Unfortunately, threaded execution and cross-platform support are non-trivial, and many developers find it difficult to get these features into their own code. This article will attempt to smooth this transition by exploring these two features in the context of a simple demo application. By building up understanding of these technologies in a ground-up fashion, game developers can increase their understanding and implement these important features in their own projects.

The demo application created for this article can be found here. The demo application has a Microsoft Visual Studio* 2005 solution file for building and running on Windows, and a makefile for building on Linux. When run, the demo application opens a window and draws an OpenGL scene (Figure 1). This demo application and the code that comprises it will be used for examples throughout this article.