A set of browser based tools for game development.
Right now it primarily consists of tools useful for monitoring and profiling a game. Internet connection is not required and it works with Chrome, Firefox and Opera.
Open app/index.html in your browser to access the browser based client.
Alternatively you can visit http://gamedevwebtools.github.io.
To provide a sample data generating server for the browser client, compile and run the application located in the folder server/sample (Visual Studio project is included in vsproject folder, and CMakeLists.txt is provided for linux and/or custom builds).
Console: shows the application's log, provides a way to send custom messages to the application.
Time graph: can show show the raw and filtered frame delta time values.
Memory usage: displays the memory usage of each allocator/subsystem.
Task and thread profiler: displays the timings for the CPU based tasks with relation to the thread they run on. Uses the left mouse button to pan and the right mouse button to zoom in and out.
Timing results: useful for displaying specific profiling results.
Keyboard button: sends the browser keyboard input events to your application.
You can use extension packages to extend gamedevwebtools and to provide custom tools for your own needs.
An extension package is a zip file containing all its relevant source files. You can install an extension package by going into the Options tab and and selecting Add new -> Choose file.
For more details about the extension package format and development see docs/extending.md
Gamedev web tools uses Websockets to send binary messages with JSON headers between the application and the web clients. The communication occurs in the following manner:
1) A message header is encoded as a JSON object, and a propery 'type' is added to it to represent the type of this message. If a message intends to carry any additional binary data (some game assets for example), then a property 'dataSize' is added to the object to represent the size of the binary data included with this message. The message header object can only have number, boolean and string properties, it doesn't allow any embedded arrays (Will be changed in the future to allow sending values of type float4 and the like) or objects.
2) The length of the message header is then added to the message. It may not exceed 65535 bytes, and it is encoded with two bytes as [ length % 256 , length / 256 ].
3) Then the JSON message header is added to the message.
4) After that, any additional binary data is added to the message.
5) Finally, the message or messages are send over the websockets layer as a websockets binary message.
A list of currently used message types and expected properties can be seen in the file docs/messages.md
You'll need to integrate gamedevwebtools server into your application/engine to take advantage of its functionality.
A server written in C++ is provided with gamedevwebtools. It currenly works on Windows and Linux, but it should theoretically (as long as the sockets work) work on Android and Mac/iOS platforms.
The server consists of just one C++ code file with no external dependencies, and you can add it directly to your project/makefile. It includes all the networking and JSON related code. It provides support for multithreading and custom allocators. Some of the features from C++ 11 are utiliized, so make sure you add the possibly required compiler switch to your makefile. The documentation for the classes and methods is included inside gamedevwebtools.h.
A sample application which integrates with the server is located in the folder server/sample.
- Memory watch/edit tool.
- Streaming of backbuffer directly to the browser (realtime?)
- Input simulation tools - simulate touch screens, joysticks and accelerometers.
- Integration with some debugging tools to enable in browser debugging.
- Extensions for the browser client to allow custom messages and creation of domain-specific tools.
- Tools which will enable live modification of game assets - GLSL shaders, scripts, images, meshes, etc.
- OpenGLES mirroring for debugging purposes via WebGL.
- GPU debugging and profiling tools.
- Integration with various game engines/frameworks.
Contributors are welcome to this project.
Copyright (c) 2013 Alex Lorenz hypothermia.frost@gmail.com. All rights reserved.
Gamedevwebtools is licensed as 'AS IS', the full text of the license agreement can be read in the file 'LICENSE.txt'.
The browser client is built using jquery, jkey, zip.js and bootstrap. Some bootstrap provided Glyphicons are also utilized.