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‫Hello and welcome.

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‫In this lecture, we're going to be talking about compilers and editors figuring out what they are and

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‫why we need them when we want to write C++.

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‫So let's start off with a few glossary definitions and we'll see how they fit into the wider ecosystem.

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‫First of all, source code.

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‫This is crucial to understanding why we need a compiler in the first place.

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‫Source code is the code we write.

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‫It's usually text.

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‫It's a human readable form of code such as C++.

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‫But sometimes you could think of source code as being blueprints as well.

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‫They're human readable ways of describing what you'd like your game to do, what you'd like the computer

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‫to do.

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‫And crucially, it's the human readable part because it's not meant for a machine to be able to execute

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‫this, to be able to make it run.

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‫That is the role of binary executable.

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‫It is usually binary code ones and zeros, and it is intended for a machine to be able to quickly read

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‫it and execute it on your CPU and on your CPU.

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‫And so it is machine readable code.

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‫So between these two there is a gap and we need to fix that gap so that we can convert our human readable

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‫code into machine readable code.

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‫And that is the role of this so called compiler.

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‫It translates from the human readable C++ or blueprints.

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‫As we've seen before, we've come across blueprint compiler errors and stuff like that.

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‫So it translates from the human to the machine domains and creates those XY files or those binary files

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‫or whatever platform you're on.

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‫And obviously there's a lot of complexity involved in what a compiler does, and we'll learn more about

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‫some of the more intricate parts of it later down the line.

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‫But for now, it's enough to know that it is a piece of software that converts from source code to binary

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‫code.

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‫And then there's another piece of software in the mix called a source code editor, which simply is

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‫there to make your life easier when writing human readable code like C++.

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‫It just gives us things like autocomplete and highlights any errors that we may have typed automatically,

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‫a bit like a spell checker, so it can make our life a lot easier when dealing with source code.

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‫So let's see how this all fits together in the unreal ecosystem.

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‫So we've been dealing up till now with the editor.

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‫We the editor is a piece of software and is one that has already been compiled for us and we already

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‫have the executable for that editor when we went and installed it.

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‫So we can open up the editor.

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‫The editor allows us to modify and create our game project using various game assets.

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‫These include things like the meshes that we've brought into our project.

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‫They include the blueprint assets and blueprint code in there.

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‫And what this allows us to do is using these game assets that we've created in an editor, we can then

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‫run the game in a separate standalone executable where it just plays the game and nothing else.

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‫However, the picture changes a little bit if we want to start using C++.

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‫C++ is the bedrock of the editor, and as such, if we changing the C++ in the editor, we essentially

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‫need to rebuild the editors binary executable.

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‫So if we have our source code over here, we know that it looks a little bit like this.

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‫We've got some text.

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‫Basically, it's what makes up our source code and we edit this source code again using a separate piece

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‫of software called a source code editor previously blueprint.

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‫We've been editing it all within The Unreal editor because it is tightly integrated with the software.

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‫However, when we're dealing with C++, we're using third party software to edit the code.

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‫Now, the one we're going to be using in this course is called Visual Studio Code because it is cross-platform

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‫works on Mac, Linux and Windows just perfectly and it's also very lightweight.

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‫But like I said, there's this gap between the source code we've written and turning it into the binary

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‫executable required for running the game in the editor and in the actual final game product.

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‫And that bit is the compiler.

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‫The compiler will take our source code, it will take the libraries and functionality already built

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‫into Unreal that we use in our source code.

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‫It will compile these together, turn them into binary and output.

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‫Either an editor that we can open up and edit our game assets or it will output a game which will take

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‫our game assets and allow the player just to play our game.

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‫Now there are two choices of compiler depending on which platform you're on.

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‫If you're on Windows, we're going to be using Visual Studio, so don't get these too confused.

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‫They have very similar logos and very similar names.

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‫One is Visual Studio, which is the compiler, and then there's one that is just the source code editor,

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‫and that one's called Visual Studio Code.

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‫Now, if you're on a mac, you instead are going to be using X code which.

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‫Is the compiler over on the Mac to keep things cross-platform, to keep things the same for everybody.

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‫We're going to be using Visual Studio code to actually edit the code, even though these compilers have

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‫source code editing capabilities built in.

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‫But we'll be using these compilers to actually take the source code and turn it in to binary executable.

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‫Okay, so that's it for this lecture.

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‫Hopefully you're a little bit clearer on why we need a compiler, why we need the source code editor.

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‫The next few lectures, we're going to go through the process of installing those.

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‫I'll see you there.