How do I edit runtime variables within a custom C++ game engine?

Question

I want to add a feature to my game engine where I can change different variables that control in-game things while the engine is still running from a console window.

I have designed the engine in C++, and because of its compile-time nature, I don't think it's possible to change inner-working variables during run-time. I have looked at python extensions for C++, but I do not know if that will be sufficient to change values while the program is running.

How do I edit runtime variables within a custom C++ game engine?

Answer 1

Of course you can change variables during run time, your engine is doing in constantly, otherwise it wouldn't be an interactive! It'll be a lot of work to dynamically list variables, since you'd have to create some kind of preprocessor to parse the code (essentially recreating C#s reflection).

• Create callbacks for each variable you want to be able to modify
• Add them to a dictionary with their name as the key.
• Your terminal just looks for the key and parses the input to convert it to the correct type, then sets the variable.
• You'll also need events for when variables change, to reload the systems that use those variables