Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Modern C++ gamedev: thoughts and misconceptions

vittorioromeo.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 221 posts

Re: Modern C++ gamedev: thoughts and misconceptions

#11

Post by humanrebar »

winterismute wrote: post #7

While I do agree with various points in the article, it is kind of funny that the author works in the financial sector and has, apparently, no experience in working on big games devloped in long stretches by hundreds of people at the same time: for example, this article about "C++ and gamedev" shows examples from his own Quake VR codebase, an insanely cool but clearly one-man project started and brought forward by he…

Does the author have no experience developing C++ on large teams or are you asserting that large team game dev is unique compared to other industries?

Re: Modern C++ gamedev: thoughts and misconceptions

#12

Post by pansa2 »

PezzaDev wrote: post #6

After years of experience writing code for games, I find that the dumbest code is the best code. It doesn't matter if it's C# or C++, whenever I've used something like reactive extensions or template metaprogramming, it has been a terrible mistake every single time. Make your code simple, dumb and verbose all the time. Avoid using any complex abstractions or any overcomplicated syntactic sugar and you'll have a codeb…

> I find that the dumbest code is the best code.

This is the idea behind Golang, isn’t it? That everything should be written out explicitly and not hidden behind abstractions. Some people love that, others hate it.

Re: Modern C++ gamedev: thoughts and misconceptions

#13

Post by MaxBarraclough »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #8
PezzaDev wrote: post #6

After years of experience writing code for games, I find that the dumbest code is the best code. It doesn't matter if it's C# or C++, whenever I've used something like reactive extensions or template metaprogramming, it has been a terrible mistake every single time. Make your code simple, dumb and verbose all the time. Avoid using any complex abstractions or any overcomplicated syntactic sugar and you'll have a codeb…

It's just so frustrating that they keep adding things that scratch no itch I've ever had as a programmer, while leaving out incredibly obvious things that would make my life easier and my code safer. Named parameters, for instance. It's insane that function parameters still can't be specified in any order with name=value expressions. That would have saved numerous bugs over the years, but apparently I'm the only one…

Named arguments are a good example of a simple feature that C++ still lacks, and cannot be effectively 'faked' without it being built into the language.

Re: Modern C++ gamedev: thoughts and misconceptions

#14

Post by wbradley »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #8
PezzaDev wrote: post #6

After years of experience writing code for games, I find that the dumbest code is the best code. It doesn't matter if it's C# or C++, whenever I've used something like reactive extensions or template metaprogramming, it has been a terrible mistake every single time. Make your code simple, dumb and verbose all the time. Avoid using any complex abstractions or any overcomplicated syntactic sugar and you'll have a codeb…

It's just so frustrating that they keep adding things that scratch no itch I've ever had as a programmer, while leaving out incredibly obvious things that would make my life easier and my code safer. Named parameters, for instance. It's insane that function parameters still can't be specified in any order with name=value expressions. That would have saved numerous bugs over the years, but apparently I'm the only one…

Here's a link to the named parameters spec. http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2014/n417...

Re: Modern C++ gamedev: thoughts and misconceptions

#15

Post by lazypenguin »

PezzaDev wrote: post #6

After years of experience writing code for games, I find that the dumbest code is the best code. It doesn't matter if it's C# or C++, whenever I've used something like reactive extensions or template metaprogramming, it has been a terrible mistake every single time. Make your code simple, dumb and verbose all the time. Avoid using any complex abstractions or any overcomplicated syntactic sugar and you'll have a codeb…

Matches my experience as well in the hobby gamedev realm. I can give an anecdote, I’m involved in a “private server” dev community for an old niche MMO from 2003. There exists 3 codebases: first the original code written in a windows-style C++ with heavy use of inheritance, custom collections, Hungarian notation, etc. The second is a collaborative open source version that is written in a naive/basic C++ style (e.g. c w/ classes) and the third is a from-scratch reimplementation in modern C++ with all the bells and whistles, cmake, heavy use of templates, etc.

Despite the modern c++ version being the highest quality and the original windows-style version being the most fully featured, the vast majority of people use and prefer the rinky-dink basic c++ version. Simply for the reason that you don’t need to be a senior level dev to contribute meaningfully to the code.

Re: Modern C++ gamedev: thoughts and misconceptions

#16

Post by eska »

HelloNurse wrote: post #9
PezzaDev wrote: post #6

After years of experience writing code for games, I find that the dumbest code is the best code. It doesn't matter if it's C# or C++, whenever I've used something like reactive extensions or template metaprogramming, it has been a terrible mistake every single time. Make your code simple, dumb and verbose all the time. Avoid using any complex abstractions or any overcomplicated syntactic sugar and you'll have a codeb…

C++ fold expressions, the main C++ feature the article covers, are simple and dumb (at least, enough to use them) but not verbose, and definitely harder to get wrong than a much more verbose for loop.

I just fixed a segfault the other day because one of our new hires fresh from college is eager on using modern c++ and didn't put parentheses at the correct place in his fold expression.

Re: Modern C++ gamedev: thoughts and misconceptions

#17

Post by PezzaDev »

pansa2 wrote: post #12
PezzaDev wrote: post #6

After years of experience writing code for games, I find that the dumbest code is the best code. It doesn't matter if it's C# or C++, whenever I've used something like reactive extensions or template metaprogramming, it has been a terrible mistake every single time. Make your code simple, dumb and verbose all the time. Avoid using any complex abstractions or any overcomplicated syntactic sugar and you'll have a codeb…

> I find that the dumbest code is the best code. This is the idea behind Golang, isn’t it? That everything should be written out explicitly and not hidden behind abstractions. Some people love that, others hate it.

I'd love to try Golang, but as a game developer, the gc makes it a no go due to perf. I begrudgingly accept C# due to unity. GC is a different topic altogether, but has also always been a pain. You end writing code to avoid allocations, which at that point you ask "Why am I not just writing C++?" I also discovered GC makes bad programmers worse by allowing them not to care about ownership, enabling them to develop systems in an adhoc way. Some programmers need a segfault screaming at them to make them realise they are writing terrible code.

Re: Modern C++ gamedev: thoughts and misconceptions

#18

Post by krapp »

PezzaDev wrote: post #6

After years of experience writing code for games, I find that the dumbest code is the best code. It doesn't matter if it's C# or C++, whenever I've used something like reactive extensions or template metaprogramming, it has been a terrible mistake every single time. Make your code simple, dumb and verbose all the time. Avoid using any complex abstractions or any overcomplicated syntactic sugar and you'll have a codeb…

>I find that the dumbest code is the best code

Not always, though.

See every bug and exploit with C arrays or pointers that exists because C devs think even minimal attempts at safety are too complicated or slow, or old-style PHP code that builds SQL queries out of printf strings directly from POST values, or probably countless other examples in other languages. C++ code that uses raw pointers instead of references or that uses std::vector but never actually bothers to bounds-check anything.

It's entirely possible for code to be too dumb for its own good.

Re: Modern C++ gamedev: thoughts and misconceptions

#19

Post by bullen »

PezzaDev wrote: post #6

After years of experience writing code for games, I find that the dumbest code is the best code. It doesn't matter if it's C# or C++, whenever I've used something like reactive extensions or template metaprogramming, it has been a terrible mistake every single time. Make your code simple, dumb and verbose all the time. Avoid using any complex abstractions or any overcomplicated syntactic sugar and you'll have a codeb…

I agree 100%, here you can see the result of an all-nighter getting my dumb engine to finally render models properly with GPU skinning (the problem was vertices with 5 weights, I'm dumb too!): http://talk.binarytask.com/task?id=5959519327505901449

Re: Modern C++ gamedev: thoughts and misconceptions

#20

Post by eska »

Reading the twitter thread he mentioned in the introduction gave me a very bad impression of the author. He started a nonconstructive flamewar, called all constructive criticism misguided, and thereby shit on half a dozen video game development VETERANS. The arguments by Omar in particular are worth reading much more than this article.

Also, all his code examples are bad. No one would build a texture atlas the way he did for example, and in any practical algorithm one wouldn't be able to use folds like he did. So suddenly one would have to use something entirely else like a for loop or std::accumulate().

Post reply on HN