Visual Assist

What's new: NEW Faster initial Unreal Engine parse. By excluding engine plugins, which are not needed when writing game code, the initial parse is now more than twice as fast. If you are an engine developer, you can parse all files by navigating to the VA Options dialog, Unreal Engine tab and checking “Index plugins”. Indexing plugins will be disabled by default and you’ll start seeing the speed increase immediately.

NEW VA Modify Expression feature. VA Modify Expression allows you to take any logical statement and invert it, apply De Morgan transforms and more. We plan to add more to this feature soon and would love your feedback.

NEW Code Inspections for performance-inefficient-vector-operation and performance-faster-string-find to help optimize your use of vectors and strings.

NEW If you are using the latest additions to C++ you will notice some new support. We now parse C++20 module (ixx and cppm) files, and our parser and features understand coroutine keywords. See more features and bug fixes here and stay tuned for more info on our next release 2021.2.

Whether you're a casual developer or a seasoned developer team working with large UE4 projects across the globe, you'll benefit from Visual Assist.

Productivity tool for C/C++ and C# with support for UE4

Visual Assist fills gaps in the coding experience of Microsoft Visual Studio, making a great IDE a phenomenal IDE.

Download Visual Assist from this marketplace (gallery) page to install the extension into Microsoft Visual Studio 2019-2015.

Download an .exe installer from www.wholetomato.com if you want to install Visual Assist into mulitple IDEs or to install into Visual Studio 2013-2005.

Sample Features by Category

UE4 Specific Tooling

Make your games epic with integrated Unreal Engine support and new features that run as fast as your code. Save time, see more and work smarter.

Navigation

Move about your code efficiently and easily—to any file, method, symbol, or symbol reference in your projects and solutions. Navigate with commands like Find Symbol in Solution, Open File in Solution, an upgraded version of Find References, and Goto Related.

Go to related locations of any symbol, including base classes, derived classes, constructors, and members.

Navigate throughout a solution to VA Hashtags in comments. VA Hashtags are user-defined, shared bookmarks that move with code. Use the feature also as task manager.

Navigate among VA Hashtags using a dedicated tool window or local context menu.

Refactoring

Reduce the complexity of your code, improve its readability, and make it extensible without changing its external behavior. Refactor with commands like Rename, Encapsulate Field, Introduce Variable, and Change Signature.

Use Change Signature to add, remove and reorder parameters in definitions and call sites.

Code Generation

Generate code quickly with commands like Add Missing Case Statements, Implement Interface / Virtual Methods, and Create from Usage.

Create methods, variables, and enums without leaving your place in code.

Coding Assistance

Write code with assistance that doesn't get in your way. Select using enhanced member listboxes, surround selections with code snippets, quickly grow selections on logical boundaries, and accept suggestions that appear before you type.

Suggestions include relevant bits of nearby code.

Code Understanding

Make sense of complex or unfamiliar code with an assortment of informative fields, highlights that update as you move about code, and enhanced syntax coloring.

Decipher code faster with bold, italics, and more meaningful colors.

Debug Assistance

Use debugger enhancements in Visual Assist to shorten the time required to debug native C/C++. Browse PDBs efficiently; resolve symbols in text-only call stacks; and use the VA Step Filter step over trusted methods in argument lists.

Tool Windows

Access tool windows for a hierarchy of header files, list of recently visited places, and an outline of the current file that allows drag-and-drop to rearrange its contents.

VA Code Snippets

Expand frequently typed segments of code with a more powerful version of the like-named feature in the IDE. Expand symbols from the current context, prompt for user input, and edit VA Snippets in a custom editor.

Code Correction

Correct typing mistakes as you make them, including incorrect symbol case, invalid pointer notation, and spelling errors in strings and comments.