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Introduction
[Tutorial 4 - Writing a Plugin]

This lesson builds on the small application written in the previous lessons. This time out we will write a RenderWare Graphics plugin. A RenderWare Graphics plugin extends the functionality of RenderWare Graphics. Most RenderWare Graphics intrinsic objects can be extended to store application data. An example of this might be the extension of the RpAtomic objects to hold custom physical properties, or custom animation data. This extension data can be serialized to disk. Many optional components of RenderWare Graphics such as the skinning and animation are implemented as plugins.

In this application we will modify the RpAtomic object so that it can store a character string, used to identify the atomic. Although this may not be a very realistic example of what an application might want to do to an atomic, it none-the-less covers all aspects of writing a real plugin. Specifically we will implement the following features:

• New functions RpAtomicNameSetName() and RpAtomicNameGetName() used to change and retrieve an atomic's name.

• Serialization of the atomic's name into a .DFF file.

We will modify the application to provide console commands to access the new information contained in the atomics.

Often plugins are implemented as libraries and header files. In this application we will simply compile and link the source code in with the application.

Next...

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