VS2003 Network Debugging

[alexs]

Hi Guys,

Just thought i would share something i found today by accident today after using vs 2003 for over a year! (yes i know im slow)

When debugging network games i was using 2 machines, but while right clicking on the solution explorer on the project, there is an option in the menu that pops up that is "Debug" and drops down to a further menu that is "Start New Instance" which helps immensely when debugging - it means i can run both programs on the one machine, and in debug mode!

It seems to be a little buggy - occasional unprovoked slowdowns for 30 seconds or so, and some extra cl.exe processes if i make a change which takes forever, but even still - it is a great timesaver.

It got me to thinking - what other tidbits am i missing that would make my life easier?
Anyone got any shortcuts they would like to share?

Alex

[the_viking]

Hm yeah VS sometimes hides features
Some time ago i found out you can exclude source files from a build (show properties of a cpp file in the solution explorer, there you can exclude it). This stopped me from removing and adding source files just to stop them being compiled..

Instead of running two instances on the same debugger, it'll maybe better to start two vs.net instances and let each debug one instance (you can link the debugger dynamically to any instance, look into the debug menu).

Some more interesting features provides WholeTomatoe's VisualAssistX (http://www.visualassist.com/). Some nice features I like there is of course the improved coloring and intellisense but also some buttons on it's toolbar, like switching between header file and implementation file of a class by one click

[Rak'kar]

You can use remote debugging so you run one instance on one machine and another on the local machine.  This way you only do one build for both machines and only updates assets, not source.  You can make this easier by creating a project in the solution to do remote debugging by default.