Just a few minor fixes for today. The error count is now down to 15,785.

This may only be a temporary solution until I find a better way, but for now we just number skills and spells in the constructor based on a reference count (static int _numSpells), essentially like this:

Spell()
{
SpellNumber = _numSpells;
++_numSpells;
}

This insures that nobody will get a duplicate and is a simple way to do things. More importantly it was quick to implement and didn’t break anything.

We’re now down to 16,156 errors.

Small change in numbers: We’re now at 17,270 errors.

One of the problems I have to solve is to find a clean way to create global references to specific spells and skills without them actually being globals (which are ugly and disgusting and a horrible thing to put in code).

For example, in C, we used something like skill_bash which was just an integer referring to the skill number for bash. At runtime, when all the skills were initialized, the value of skill_bash would be set. It didn’t really matter what order skills were created in, because skill_bash would always point to the bash skill, whether it be number 35 or 350. The problem with this method is that is uses a global variable. It’s something that can be done in C#, but what, really, is the point of having a value containing the bash skill if you someday decide to take the bash skill out of the game. Then you have a bunch of useless code lying around doing nothing.

Not that bash will be removed from the game — this is something more likely to be an issue with spells.

I’ll have to look into reflection, delegates, etc. to see if there is some sort of common-sense way to handle this. I also have to keep in mind that someday I may want to convert the skill and spell tables to files that load at runtime and can be tweaked and adjusted without recompiling the entire codebase.

Since skills are so heavily involved in the game engine, it will be nearly impossible to decouple them completely.

The error count is now down below 20,000. Quite a bit, in fact. We’re now at 17,719. This puts us at about 4500 for the day.

A large portion of the vanquished errors were just array initialization fixes — converting from C-style to C#-style, which is quite different. I can’t give a definite date, but I suspect this phase of the conversion/rewrite will finish in mid-August.

One thing commonly seen in C and C++ code is use of the NOT operator to check whether a struct or class pointer is set to NULL. For instance:

class value = NULL;
if( !value )
{
printf( “value is null” );
}

In C# code this results in an error because the compiler has no idea what “NOT” means on a class.  To be able to use this syntax in C# you have to override the ! operator, which is something I’ve never had occasion to do, AND that there are no easy-to-find code examples of. Luckily it’s just like overloading any operator in C#:

public static bool operator !( ClassType ct )
{
if( ct == null )
return true;
return false;
}

It works and it saves me the trouble of changing around 700 lines of code. We’re now down to 20,392 errors.

Soooo… here’s my list of excuses:

1. I started a new job Monday (writing home automation software used to control lights, stereos, alarm systems, etc.)

2. I got married over the weekend.

3. I’m just plain tired right now.

So, not much progress in the past few days. The bug count is sitting at 22,677 right now. At that rate it would take about 396 days to finish. It won’t take that long.

We’re down to 22,906 errors now. The errors are getting a little harder to smash, but we’re crushing them into tiny little bits nonetheless.

Now we’re down to 30,975. Nothing interesting is happening, but we’re making progress.

Most of these errors are related to one of four things:

1) References to functions moved into classes have to be changed.
2) Pointer-based functions and comparisons that need to be rewritten to be reference-based.
3) Public vs. private data.
4) Different handling of arrays in C#.

The majority are #2, with a large quantity of each of the others. When you have 30,000+ bugs to fix, everyone gets their share.

The compiler tells me:

“You have just passed the halfway point in the journey toward your next codebase.”

Errors are now quite a bit less thant the halfway mark (which would be 37,571).

We now have 35, 542 errors to resolve. We’re making pretty good progress so far.

We’re down to 39,610 errors now. Even though that’s a stunningly huge amount, it’s still progress.

My brain’s starting to hurt, I should probably work on a different project for a few days.

We’re down to 44,773 errors. That’s 12,486 fixed for today.

Visual Studio 2005 has become noticeably more responsive. It’s still a little slow and clunky, but each error corrected is a slight speed increase.

17,883 errors squashed.

I doubt I will break that record anytime soon. I deserve a cookie. Too bad I don’t have any.

Yesterday I mentioned that I had 75,142 second-pass compile errors in the codebase. That’s a lot no matter how you describe it.

Aside from spending a couple hours reading Heinlein’s Revolt in 2100, all I’ve really done today is hammer away at the code trying to reduce that number. This has been a little slow because Visual Studio 2005 slows down A LOT when it has to store tens of thousands of error messages in memory and check every change you make to code against those errors to see whether it can remove them from the error list.

I really like intellisense and realtime error checking, but not when it pretty much causes the IDE to grind to a halt. As the number of errors decreases, VS is gradually becoming more responsive, but it’s still too much of a mess to be a very pleasant editing experience.

So, the number of errors is now 58,264. That’s still a ton, but I’ve now set a new personal record of fixing 16,878 compile errors in a single day. My previous record was about 8500, basically due to some weird recursive STL/templating issues with a C++ app I was writing a year or two ago.

Even better, the day’s still not completely over yet, so I could probably add a few more to that total.

Seriously.

I cleared up all the first-pass compiler errors (the remaining 1,447). It was tedious, but not too terrible. That means that the compiler made it to the second pass.

It churned away for a while, and then gave me a “build failed message”, which I expected. It then proceeded to show me every last little error that it could find.

There were seventy five thousand one hundred and forty-two errors.

After displaying that many errors, Visual Studio 2005 promptly crashed in a horrible flaming fireball of death.

There are only 116,000 lines of code in the whole codebase. That means two-thirds of the code is broken. Nice, eh? I wonder how long it will take me to fix 75k errors…

That’s a good thing. Down from 7,899 errors. Everything that could be fixed via search-and-replace (about 5,000 errors) has been, and the rest (about 1,400) have been edited by hand. There’s still a lot more work to do in stage 2, but the number of compile errors is steadily decreasing. Soon we will have a C# version.

Stage 1 is done.

Q: What is stage one?

A: Hammering the code into C# syntax so that Visual Studio gives no complaint before trying to compile to code.

Q: What’s that involve?

A: Placing all of the functions into classes, eliminating all global variables, converting #define statements into variables (in the case of constants) or class methods (in the case of macros), changing all char[x] variable declarations to strings, rephrasing all array declaration and initialization, and removing stray const keywords.

Q: How many changes did you have to make?

A: I had to change about 4,000 lines of code, mostly by hand. I love search-and-replace, but it couldn’t do much here.

Q: Did you completely break the heck out of anything in the process.

A: ABSOLUTELY! I know for a fact that I will have to completely rewrite mob tracking (which has always been one of the things I intended to do anyhow). Some of the changes to correct syntax also just pushed the errors later in the process — they won’t show up in a syntax check and will instead show up in a compile.

Q: What are the other 4 stages of this conversion?

2 = Compiling without errors. This is a huge step. After just running the first initial build, there were 7,899 compile errors. A large percentage of these will be pointer errors because I didn’t change any pointer-based code (“Pointers and fixed size buffers may only be used in an unsafe context.”)

3 = Building an executable. This may be moderately complex, but since C# pushes so much of the work onto the syntax checker and compiler, chances are that if it compiles without errors then the program will build and run.

4 = Booting without immediate crashes. This will involve firing up the debugger and making sure that all of the changes didn’t have any unintended consequences. They will, errors are unavoidable in a rewrite of this magnitude. Hopefully debugging will be fairly quick.

5 = Logging a character in and walking around without crashes. Most of the code lies dormant until a player is logged in. This includes things like network code, combat routines, hit/mana/move regen, informational screens, skills, etc.

Completing all of this will get us ready to put up an alpha port of the game so that we can actively start building content.