handmade hero day 23 in zig | Zig Programming Language | Page 1

analog mica Oct 7, 2024, 6:10 PM

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Has anyone tried doing handmade hero in zig? I am particularly interested in day 23 where Casey talks about looped live editing, which is to store the state of the program and all events and play it back in a loop

fallen garden Oct 7, 2024, 6:14 PM

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I'm currently doing it, at day 28

analog mica Oct 7, 2024, 6:22 PM

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Can you share your code? How did you do day 23

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I am currently watching it and not sure what is virtual alloc and if it is simillar to page_allocator that we have in zig

opaque crown Oct 7, 2024, 6:48 PM

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VirtualAlloc is a windows api function https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/memoryapi/nf-memoryapi-virtualalloc. it's used to manage virtual memory space. zig doesn't have cross-platform abstractions for managing virtual memory, so you will need to use OS-specific APIs.

page_allocator in zig is an allocator that requests a page of virtual memory for every allocation.

analog mica Oct 7, 2024, 6:50 PM

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there are other issues that I am struggling with but particually with virtual alloc I don't know if it is important to the implementation the Casey wrote. He did emphasize it so it must play a role but what exactly I don't know

opaque crown Oct 7, 2024, 6:52 PM

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I don't know what he's using it for, so I can't say if it's important or not

fallen garden Oct 7, 2024, 7:29 PM

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hmm i dont remember exactly what part it was but I also use https://github.com/marlersoft/zigwin32 to call win32 api

GitHub

GitHub - marlersoft/zigwin32: Zig bindings for Win32 generated by h...

Zig bindings for Win32 generated by https://github.com/marlersoft/zigwin32gen - marlersoft/zigwin32

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so you can call the same functions that casey uses

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I can then call VirtualAlloc like this

    @ptrFromInt(base_address),
    total_storage_size,
    .{ .COMMIT = 1, .RESERVE = 1 },
    .{ .PAGE_READWRITE = 1 },
) orelse fatalLastError("VirtualAlloc");```

analog mica Oct 7, 2024, 7:35 PM

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Oh nice, haven't seen it before. I was just thinking of trying mmap to recreate it

fallen garden Oct 7, 2024, 7:36 PM

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yes very useful to follow what casey does 🙂

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you can then import it like so const win32 = @import("win32").everything; and do win32."any win32 function and/or constants here"

analog mica Oct 7, 2024, 7:38 PM

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Thank you for the advice

fallen garden Oct 7, 2024, 7:38 PM

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if you need help to setup the build.zig I can show what I did to make it work

analog mica Oct 7, 2024, 7:40 PM

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I want to try by myself to get into the water but thanks 😃

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Do you plan to finish all of handmade hero in zig?

fallen garden Oct 7, 2024, 7:41 PM

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I know theres alot of episodes ahead but yes. Or least far enough where I feel confident building my own game/engine

analog mica Oct 7, 2024, 7:42 PM

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goodluck, I am just planning to go over the basics and a few general episode of tidbits

#handmade hero day 23 in zig