Dev ToolsSuccess Story

Untangling a Legacy MFC Codebase: One Engineer's Refactor

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August 10, 2026
Untangling a Legacy MFC Codebase: One Engineer’s Refactor How Roger Swann took a sensor-testing system from unmaintainable spaghetti to a stable, object-oriented codebase, without rewriting it from scratch. When C++ developer Roger Swann took over the development of a sensor-testing software, the engineer who wrote it was no longer available to explain any of it—a situation that has been…
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Build Announcements

Visual Assist 2026.4 release post

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June 30, 2026
The first thing you do with Visual Assist is install it. The first thing you do with it on a project is wait for it to parse. VA 2026.4 makes both smoother. Download it now. This is a smaller build between larger ones — a few bigger efforts are running in parallel, shaped…
Tips and Tricks

How to Set Up a Fully Local AI in Visual Studio

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May 19, 2026
VA Intelligence is Visual Assist’s local AI feature. It runs Gemma3 on your GPU through Ollama, both bundled and managed by Visual Assist itself. No API keys, no cloud round-trip, no telemetry pipeline waiting to be audited by your security team. By the end of this guide you’ll have two features wired up inside Visual Studio: Explain with AI and Change Code with AI. If you’ve…
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Success Story

User Case Study: From AAA to Indie—How She Was Such A Good Horse Studio built Into the Unwell

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February 18, 2026
TL;DR   Discover how She Was Such A Good Horse Studio transitioned from AAA game development to building the indie co-op roguelite Into the Unwell. This case study explores the team’s creative workflow, Unreal Engine development process, and how Visual Assist helps them navigate large C++ codebases and accelerate game development.  Whole Tomato had a chat with one of the developers of Into…
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Tips and Tricks

Do I Need To Know C++ For Unreal Engine? The Updated 2026 Guide

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July 24, 2025
TL;DR You don’t need C++ to start with Unreal Engine since Blueprints let you build full games without coding. But if you want more control, better performance, and advanced features, C++ becomes a powerful addition to the quick prototyping provided by blueprints . The smartest path is not choosing one over the other. Start with Blueprints to learn fast and stay motivated, then gradually add C++…
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