Cross-language issues in SIO2

There are some interesting issues trying to combine the SIO2 library with an objective-c core. Most of the SIO2 library is written in C++; using XCode, however, I am more familiar with Objective-C. My plan has been to write my main program in Objective-C and just use the SIO2 library for rendering. The two programming languages are cousins, and I knew that in theory, XCode and its gcc compiler could handle both. It certainly did a fine job of handling them separately....

Well, I was right, it can, but getting the computer to do so was more of a challenge than I expected. There is a trick - there is a setting associated with each source code file that says what language it speaks. When I wrote a file that spoke both C++ and Obj-C, I needed to specifically tell the compiler that it was a multi-lingual program - and I didn't know how to do that (or even that I needed to). Now that I've got that settled, though, things are working much better. In my Obj-C file, I can move an object to any location I want.

I find that if I move it away from the camera, it gets a lot dimmer, however. I think this is a trick of the lights in blender - perhaps if I create a "sun" light, it will work better. That's what I am going to try next. Also, I could stand to shrink the original objects a bit!

So I'm making progress, but it is largely behind-the-scenes stuff - not much to look at. But still, it is pretty important. Hopefully, I'll have cool stuff to show soon.