Visual Studio is a popular and robust integrated development environment (IDE) created for game creators. Microsoft built it, providing a full suite of tools and features that streamline the game production process, making it a must-have tool for beginners and seasoned game development experts.
As a game developer, you require a stable and efficient environment to build, test, and optimize your games. Visual Studio includes many tools designed exclusively for game production, allowing you to realize your creative dreams. Visual Studio provides a suitable and adaptable medium to improve your workflow and productivity, whether you're creating games for PCs, consoles, mobile devices, or virtual reality platforms.
Visual Studio's strong support for many programming languages commonly used in game development is one of its primary assets. Visual Studio provides an intuitive coding environment with intelligent code completion, syntax highlighting, and debugging features, whether you prefer C++, C#, or a combination. Its robust code editor aids in creating clean, efficient code and detecting mistakes early in the development process.
Visual Studio integrates seamlessly with industry-leading gaming engines like Unity and Unreal Engine. These connections give you access to specialized tools and frameworks to improve your game development experience.
Visual Studio offers smooth collaboration and efficient development workflows within these popular game engines with real-time debugging, asset management, and integrated version control capabilities. So let's take a brief look at how to set it up.
Configuring Visual Studio for Game Development
Setting up Visual Studio for game development entails a few steps to guarantee you have all of the required components and configurations. Here's a step-by-step tutorial on getting Visual Studio ready for game development:
Step 1: The first step is to download the most recent version of Visual Studio from the official Microsoft website (https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/).
Step 2: Select the appropriate edition, such as Visual Studio Community, free for individual developers.
Step 3: Workload options will be offered to you during installation.
Step 4: Select the "Game development with C++" workload, which includes the game development tools and libraries.
Step 5: Choose any other optional components you may require based on your needs.
For example, seek Microsoft-provided extensions or tools if you work with Unity or Unreal Engine.
Step 6: Once the installation process is complete, launch Visual Studio.
Step 7: You may be prompted to configure your development environment.
Step 8: Accept the default settings or change them to your liking.
Step 9: Install the relevant Visual Studio plugins or extensions the engine developers offer if you use a specific game engine, such as Unity or Unreal Engine.
Step 10: These plugins improve the game engine's connection with Visual Studio by providing functionality such as code debugging and asset management.
Step 11: Create a new project in Visual Studio to begin designing a game.
Step 12: Select the suitable project template based on your game engine and target platform.
Step 13: Create a new Unity project and open it in Visual Studio, for example, if you're using Unity.
Step 14: Write your game code with Visual Studio's sophisticated code editor.
Step 15: To improve your coding experience, use tools like IntelliSense, code completion, and syntax highlighting.
Step 16: Use the debugging tools in Visual Studio to step through your code, set breakpoints, check variables, and diagnose problems.
Step 17: Open Visual Studio and create your game project once your code is complete.
Step 18: In the next step, the build process compiles your code and generates the executable files required.
Step 19: Thus, depending on your game engine, you can start the game straight from Visual Studio or through the editor of the game engine.
Step 20: Use Visual Studio's testing and deployment options to guarantee your game works and plays smoothly.
Step 21: Run various tests, profile performance, and optimize your code to improve efficiency.
Step 22: When ready to release your game, utilize Visual Studio's tools and options to package and distribute your game files for various target platforms.
Thus, following these step-by-step instructions, you can adequately install Visual Studio for game creation and start building your games using its rich features and tools. For more information on maximizing the potential of Visual Studio in game creation, explore the documentation and tools given by Microsoft and your chosen game engine.
Read More: Overview of Editor in Game Development
Why do Game Developers Like Visual Studio?
Game developers can create high-performance 2D and 3D games in DirectX to run on various Windows platforms, including computers, tablets, and phones. Visual Studio has a comprehensive collection of tools for producing DirectX games, from writing shader code and designing assets to debugging and profiling graphics—all within the familiar Visual Studio IDE.
Use the built-in DirectX project templates to create DirectX games in Visual Studio. Whether you're building a DirectX 12 or DirectX 11 game for Windows or Windows Phone, there's a template for you.
Graphics for Testing/Debugging
Troubleshooting rendering issues requires a lot of work. In conjunction with the PIX on Windows standalone application, Visual Studio Graphics Diagnostics makes it simple to collect and analyze frames from DirectX 10, 11, or 12 games, either locally or remotely. To understand what happened throughout the frame, you can examine each DirectX event, graphics object, and pixel history and delve into the graphics pipeline. This tool also records call stacks for each graphics event, making it simple to return to your application code in Visual Studio.
Increase the frame rate
Are you looking for strategies to improve the frame rate of your game? Visual Studio Frame Analysis can be helpful. It examines captured frames for expensive draw calls and runs experiments on them to investigate performance optimization potential, all of which is summarised in a neat report.
Examine GPU usage
Use Visual Studio GPU Usage or PIX on Windows to see how your game performs on the CPU and GPU. GPU Usage collects data in real-time and supplements Frame Analysis, which is fulfilled offline on assembled frames. The GPU Usage report will indicate if the bottleneck is on the CPU or the GPU.
Shader syntax coloring
The shader editor in Visual Studio recognizes shader code in either HLSL or FX files. The shader editor in Visual Studio has syntax highlighting and brackets auto-completion, making it simple to read and write shader code. You can also set the editor to use your preferred fonts and theme.
Shader files are included in your project
Shader files, as they should, may be maintained and built as part of your Visual Studio projects. Provide the shader type, model, and optimization settings in the shader file attributes. Visual Studio handles shader compilation.
Visual Studio Shader Designer for creating pixel shaders
If you don't know HLSL or want a more visual approach to shader development, the Visual Studio Shader designer can help. Instead of entering shader code in an editor, you use a graphical interface to add and link shader nodes. You may change the textures and lights and add and observe animations in real-time. It's always been challenging to create shaders.
Look at 3D models
There's no need to leave the IDE you're now working in to view the latest 3D model given to you by your artist. Inside Visual Studio, you may view OBJ and FBX 3D models. There's much to discover in the 3D world: pan, zoom, change camera positions, and see things with time-based animations. In the Model Viewer, you can also make small model changes.
Editing Textures
Not only does the Visual Studio Image Editor operate well with image files, but it also recognizes DirectDraw Surface (DDS) texture files. Aside from viewing and drawing, you can also toggle RGBA channels, produce mipmaps, and apply filters. This picture editor can do a variety of texture modification tasks.
Pipeline for asset content
Managing assets in numerous formats can be daunting. Visual Studio contains the content pipeline for pictures, models, and shaders. Specify the parameters and set the file properties to use the content pipeline. Visual Studio will handle format conversions for you during the build process.
What Is a Microsoft Visual Studio Extension?
A Visual Studio extension is an add-on or plugin to improve your IDE experience. It can add new tools as well as upgrade and combine existing ones. The majority of attachments may be found on the Visual Studio Marketplace. You can also use the Visual Studio Software Development Kit (SDK) to create extensions.
1. ReSharper
ReSharper is a JetBrains.NET add-on for editing, refactoring, analyzing, and testing C# code.
Like other JetBrains products, Resharper is of excellent quality and seeks to make programming more fun.
Resharper directly supports the Unity game engine. It can produce overloads and implementations for your C# scripts automatically. It identifies coding patterns that degrade performance and recommends immediate modifications to avoid code smells.
Resharper is familiar with all of your Unity project's scenes, prefabs, and components. It also supports ShaderLab and Assembly Definition Files from Unity. It can show the Unity console in Visual Studio while emphasizing event functions and serializable fields in C# scripts.
Resharper C++, another version of this add-on, supports Unreal Engine and C++. It offers clever code assistance backed by a thorough understanding of Unreal Engine's reflection system. Resharper C++ analyses your code as you modify it, making suggestions and creating code.
Resharper is an all-in-one plugin for any game engine you use to create your game. It's a low-cost alternative that supports multiple programming languages in the same package. Some of the biggest names or giants in gaming, including Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard, also use it.
2. Virtual Assist
Whole Tomato Software's Visual Assist (VAX) plugin enhances Visual Studio's IntelliSense and syntax highlighting. Visual Assist is one of the most popular add-ons for Unreal Engine developers, along with Resharper.
With code inspection, refactoring, code correction, and code assistance, Visual Assist primarily supports the C++ programming language. Using this plugin, You may search for files, functions, and symbols in huge, monolithic code libraries.
Visual Assist can help enforce that standard if you're following a style guide. Using a solid static analysis, it detects style violations and other issues. Furthermore, Visual Assist detects and corrects typos and symbol case errors as you type.
Visual Assist includes Unreal Engine 4 and 5 functionality. It can scan game engine code, reduce bogus errors, and indicate syntax for macros and specifiers. This add-on additionally enforces the naming convention for classes and structs in Unreal Engine.
Visual Assist uses a context-aware search engine to understand Unreal Engine's expanded code language. It can display comments, documentation, and dialogues when base classes are used.
3. Extension for Android Game Development
This add-on adds the Android operating system to Visual Studio as a target platform for building C++ game applications. You can use this add-on to create cross-platform games in C or C++ and deploy them to Android.
The Android Game Development Extension enables fast debugging. It also provides quick access to performance and memory profiling.
This plugin is compatible with various game engines, including Unreal Engine, Unity, Godot, and Defold. It can also be used with your own C++ game engine or to extend an existing one.
4. Unity Visual Studio Tools
This software is not an extension but a core component of Visual Studio. It is a set of tools to accelerate game production on the Unity game engine. After installing Visual Studio, you can add the Visual Studio tools for the Unity component.
This plugin provides robust auto-completion for Unity events and functions. Thanks to IntelliSense, it accurately inserts lines of code into C# scripts and solves any parameter errors in functions. Furthermore, it supports the Unity shader language with syntax highlighting and auto-completion.
A robust debugger is included with the Visual Studio tools for Unity for inspecting complex expressions and data structures. The debugger can establish regular, data, and conditional breakpoints. It also allows you to monitor and change the variables' values while running.
This add-on provides refactoring ideas and simple solutions to conform your code to Unity's coding style. It also includes a reference viewer that keeps track of where your functions are called. The reference viewer shows Unity project files and can refresh Unity assets.
Why Should Game Developers Use Visual Studio Extensions?
Game engines are large pieces of software with thousands of files and millions of lines of code. Even the most excellent IDEs often struggle with complex code bases, reporting bogus errors and experiencing performance concerns.
If you've used Unreal Engine before, you'll know how tough it is to use it with a lightweight IDE like Visual Studio Code. For Unreal Engine developers, using Visual Studio without extensions is a frustrating experience.
Game development can be a time-consuming process. Much attention has been paid to the time constraints games like Cyberpunk 2022 place on developers. As a result, it's critical to save every second possible throughout game production by working more effectively.
Conclusion
Until recently, game development was a mysterious and relatively esoteric element of software development. Game production software was unusual and challenging to use for the typical coder.
However, with the introduction of game engines such as Unity and Godot and platforms such as Roblox and Core, game development has become more accessible. With little to no programming skills, you can get started quickly and build aesthetically appealing games.
These game frameworks are behind the thousands of indie games available on Steam and itch.io. They have also played a significant role in the emergence of video games as a dominating source of digital entertainment.