resource construction WAS: [GD-General] longjmp for C++

[Corrinne Y. <cor...@sp...>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Javier Arevalo [mailto:ja...@py...] 
Sent: Friday, January 11, 2002 2:22 AM
To: cor...@sp...; Gam...@li...
Subject: Re: [GD-General] longjmp for C++

performs a resource allocation upon construction or initialization, is
also
responsible for releasing said resource upon destruction / shutdown.

discipline and identify ownership of resources, whether they be
individual
memory blocks, entire heaps or D3D textures.

-- I would highly suggest against having resources as small and low
level as individual D3D texture (which already has its construction and
deletion) to be responsible for its construction and initialization.

-- Things as large as level should be able to construct and destroy
itself. But things as small as textures, you would in effect be making
them a 1-layer wrapper. This is highly inefficient.

-- The interesting thing about "levels" is that there are in fact 2
methods that are distinct: "construction" and "restoration."

-- Not only should level be able to construct / destroy as you had
suggested. But it should be capable of releasing (device dependent
resources) as much as possible, but not so "destroyed" that it cannot
"restore" (but not a full construct) with the start of a new device
state.

-- As with many things in programming, there is moderation to all. And
too fine a granularity in class automated construction and deletion
("point", "polygon") adds unnecessary overhead to 3D engines.

-- Restarting levels is very simple, very easy. It really isn't as
complicated as most of the suggestions here so far.
 
-- This is indeed straying very far from whether there is a class-safe
equivalent of longjmp for C++ classes. :)

-- I really think there is very little (possibly none) to add to the
pretty simple subject of restarting a level; so I would leave the rest
of this "new" topic up to the rest of you who still would like to
discuss it.

-- Let me know when this winds back to longjmp. :)