Small EOY update...
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@digle said in Small EOY update...:
Is there a reason about this short period of time between releases since 4.35 ?
Remember 4.33 took several years to be debugged
New debugging tools ? Change of the software architecture ?I’m not a BMS dev so folks can correct me if I’m wrong. Just looking from the outside, I saw a few new tools, and things happen since 2020… beyond the inside-baseball stuff Seifer outlined.
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the move to x64 only, and end of life for Win7 (and soon Win8) reduces the test-matrix by a lot
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I think in mid 2021 (sometime early/mid 4.35 era), the dev team started using AppVerifier [1] to catch mem leaks, double-free bugs, and heap buffer-overruns … uncaught SEH exceptions, etc. and other related tricks eg. /GZ or /RTC compiler flag, for debug-builds, to catch stack buffer-overruns.
One can imagine there was probably a huge logjam of noise in those initial reports… imagine 20 years of accumulated bugs (and starting out with a lot, lol)! But through heroic efforts of Seifer and other devs, once the random noise of dozens (hundreds? thousands?) of nondeterministic CTD bugs is squashed… at some point you begin to cross an inflection point, enjoying increased velocity in all other aspects of development and testing.
[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/devtest/application-verifier- maybe increased use of smart-pointers? I haven’t seen the code, so this is entirely heresay, but it sounds to me like some of the coding style/guidelines have matured from “1998 game-dev C++” to … well at least “2008 C++”, lol. maybe just for newer code, at least?
Definitely the hardest part of C/C++ development is enforcing clear lifecycle-ownership of memory and other resources (network connections, file handles, COM objects, etc)… C++ smart-pointers, combined with RAII [2] mindset, is the best “tool” I know of to tackle that.
[2] https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/raii- Divide and conquer: increased reliance on external, community-driven features like Alt Launcher, WDP and TacView etc, helps keep BMS priorities focused on the core sim engine.
Those things were there before 4.35, but it seems like a clear change in strategy to embrace them, as loosely coupled dependencies. (eg. the default ACMI format no longer compat with the builtin playback feature.)
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All this talk of improvements and efficiency and improving BMS at a faster rate, well…
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@Atlas said in Small EOY update...:
All this talk of improvements and efficiency and improving BMS at a faster rate, well…
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@airtex2019 said in Small EOY update...:
[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/devtest/application-verifier
- maybe increased use of smart-pointers? I haven’t seen the code, so this is entirely heresay, but it sounds to me like some of the coding style/guidelines have matured from “1998 game-dev C++” to … well at least “2008 C++”, lol. maybe just for newer code, at least?
Definitely the hardest part of C/C++ development is enforcing clear lifecycle-ownership of memory and other resources (network connections, file handles, COM objects, etc)… C++ smart-pointers, combined with RAII [2] mindset, is the best “tool” I know of to tackle that.
Yes, this is doing magic for our code.
our old code (this example is not the exact code we have though…just describing you an idea):system = new System();
is now like:
system = std::make_unique<SystemF16>();
this is another hint teasing 4.37 feature for you who knows c++ guess what we have now.
(oh but please don’t spoil even if you “notice” ) -
@chihirobelmo damn Chihi, all you think is f16… Why not an f15?
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@Seifer Because BMS “has been” F-16 sim
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@chihirobelmo took a crash Google course on c++ just to reveal the hint, accidently created Falcon 5. Sorry will be busy for the next month playing this new creation.
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@Seifer said in Small EOY update...:
@JOKER_duke said in Small EOY update...:
Good news, thanks for the information and for the hard work of all BMS devs!
I am a campaign editor/creator, what about the camaign engine? Do you have any plans to upgrade the dynamic campaign engine?
There are a couple of bugfixes related to campaign engine, mostly related to AWACS flight generation not working because of the flight going over enemy territory. This affects ITO mostly.
I also started working on generating some campaign data to make some analysis possible: people are reporting ground units stopping after a few days.
So for this next release, no, not much. For the future, I hope so, because campaign is falcon precious gem.
Hi there, dear Seifer, it’s me again.
Sorry in case for bothering you. I am a mission creator (mostly, always planning to become a campaign maker after the new 4.37 released, though).If I assume correctly the sense of all of yours above, could those apply, even if partially, to new custom TEs too?
Thanks a lot for your attention, and with best regards.
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Hi there!
Thanks a lot. Great you’re moving on dev-wise. I know how hard it is to migrate a mature process / codebase to any kind of new tool / process / framework whatever.
You’re doing a great job!
Take your time! -
@chihirobelmo forget the code, I think many of us are excited to see that you’re a member of the dev team now!
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Implemented a unique avionic only for F16? I could not think of what that will be.
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Mods, can we please ban @chihirobelmo and @Seifer and possibly others for being such teases? I don’t even need any medication now, much less whatever it is that @VIPER-0 is peddling
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@Jackal hi Jackal, not bothering at all.
No the changes I made were related to campaign engine only (where it tries to generate AWACS flights). IIRC, TE does not have this problem.
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@chihirobelmo This would be the most groundbreaking new feature if it means what I think it means… even the original devs couldn’t decouple the avionics and ended up scrapping their planned A-10 expansion…
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We all appreciate what we have and anything more is just spoils to the community.
Thank you BMS team!
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@ajthenoob said in Small EOY update...:
@chihirobelmo This would be the most groundbreaking new feature if it means what I think it means… even the original devs couldn’t decouple the avionics and ended up scrapping their planned A-10 expansion…
Because you really think Bms devs are not much better than original devs ? Seriously ?
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@Mav-jp said in Small EOY update...:
@ajthenoob said in Small EOY update...:
@chihirobelmo This would be the most groundbreaking new feature if it means what I think it means… even the original devs couldn’t decouple the avionics and ended up scrapping their planned A-10 expansion…
Because you really think Bms devs are not much better than original devs ? Seriously ?
Man-jp sounds like chihirobelmo’s assumption is correct.
I expect each aircraft do not depend on F-16 avionic anymore with next release version. That will be amazing change for us! -
Just not to hype things too much: 4.37 will have EARLY EARLY EARLY ACCESS version of our first non-F-16 plane with a dedicated pit/avionics/flight model. It can be 3x times earlier than that of the other sim especially pit is under development with some gauges, lamps not working and only a few buttons are clickable for now…no dedicated HOTAS yet. but we can update them for U1, U2…and then 4.38. And we can start on other A/Cs too as we could separate some Avionics logic wisely… it’s just the very beginning of our other journey.
Wait for trailers.
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@chihirobelmo I can only speculate
just saying this is fantastic news, unreal the work behind bms!
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@chihirobelmo said in Small EOY update...:
Just not to hype things too much: 4.37 will have EARLY EARLY EARLY ACCESS version of our first non-F-16 plane with a dedicated pit/avionics/flight model. It can be 3x times earlier than that of the other sim especially pit is under development with some gauges, lamps not working and only a few buttons are clickable for now…no dedicated HOTAS yet. but we can update them for U1, U2…and then 4.38. And we can start on other A/Cs too as we could separate some Avionics logic wisely… it’s just the very beginning of our other journey.
Wait for trailers.
Just to clarify
We have plenty other planes with dedicated fully clickable cockpits and flight models : mirage series , av8, f18 ……
The only thing missing is the ability to have dedicated avionics and systems , this is WIP