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I write games in C (yes, C) (2016)

jonathanwhiting.com

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Re: I write games in C (yes, C) (2016)

#101

Post by jsheard »

levodelellis wrote: post #98
petters wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> C++ doesn't take longer to compile if you don't abuse templates. Surprisingly, this is not true. I've written a C++ file only to realize at the end that I did not use any C++ features. Renaming the file to .c halved the compilation time.

[flagged]

I agree it shouldn't really matter if there's no C++ features in play, but I suppose third party headers could bite you if they use #ifdef __cplusplus to guard optional C++ extensions on top of their basic C interface. In that case the compiler could be dealing with dramatically more complex code when you build in C++ mode.

Re: I write games in C (yes, C) (2016)

#102

Post by jiggawatts »

cedilla wrote: post #28
jiggawatts wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DirectX is C++ (technically a set of COM interfaces) and most game engines are also C++. Unlike, say, Linux programming where C is the standard, almost all games have been written exclusively in C++ for a long time now, probably three decades.

There are a few exceptions though, like most mobile games, visual novels (many of which use Python of all languages, due to an excellent framework called ren'py), and of course games written using Unity or XNA, which use .NET languages. Also, three decades is going a bit too far back, I think. In the mid nineties, C was still king, with assembly still hanging on. C++ was just one of several promising candidates, with…

> Also, three decades is going a bit too far back

My memory was wrong: I was thinking of the Quake 1 engine, but I just looked it up and it’s C with some assembly code, no C++. The reason I remember it being C++ was because Visual C++ was the compiler tooling required on Windows.

Re: I write games in C (yes, C) (2016)

#105

Post by karamanolev »

pron wrote: post #49
torlok wrote: post #20

I write mostly like I would in C, but use C++ features as needed. It ends up looking similar to Rust if you squint. All these "I write games in C" people complain about C++ features, and then end up reimplementing virtual interfaces manually with struct headers or massive switch statements, just to feel better about themselves. Writing games in C is not harder, you just have to implement modern language features by h…

> Complaining about a language having features you don't want is silly. It might be silly if you're working on your own. Software that delivers a lot of value is usually developed and evolved not only by team, but by a team with changing members and changing leadership over the project's lifetime. The features used will be the union of all features used over the years, and while it's easy for team leads to allow the…

> It might be silly if you're working on your own.

That's exactly the case when it's easiest. If you don't need a feature, just don't use it and case closed. With a team it's harder - you have to force/enforce others not to use a given feature.

> if they're used by libraries whose functionality you do want

If you're using C++ you can just use the C library you would've used otherwise, no?

Re: I write games in C (yes, C) (2016)

#106

Post by uecker »

pantalaimon wrote: post #86
pansa2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you could argue that choosing C is just choosing a particular subset of C++. The main difference from choosing a different subset, e.g. “Google C++” (i.e. writing C++ according to the Google style guide), is that the compiler enforces that you stick to the subset.

C is not a subset of C++, there are some subtle things you can do in C that are not valid C++

Some subtle and some not so subtle.

Re: I write games in C (yes, C) (2016)

#108

Post by adastra22 »

karamanolev wrote: post #105
pron wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Complaining about a language having features you don't want is silly. It might be silly if you're working on your own. Software that delivers a lot of value is usually developed and evolved not only by team, but by a team with changing members and changing leadership over the project's lifetime. The features used will be the union of all features used over the years, and while it's easy for team leads to allow the…

> It might be silly if you're working on your own. That's exactly the case when it's easiest. If you don't need a feature, just don't use it and case closed. With a team it's harder - you have to force/enforce others not to use a given feature. > if they're used by libraries whose functionality you do want If you're using C++ you can just use the C library you would've used otherwise, no?

There are linters to do that enforcement automatically.

Re: I write games in C (yes, C) (2016)

#109

Post by anatoly »

howToTestFE wrote: post #103

Has anyone got any good resources for something like this? I haven't touched C in years, and never worked on anything game-like. But it does look like a really interesting project to start something like this.

raylib is one possible starting place. Also might look at dos-like (https://mattiasgustavsson.itch.io/dos-like).

Re: I write games in C (yes, C) (2016)

#110

Post by uecker »

teo_zero wrote: post #95
ninkendo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C's string handling is so abominably terrible that sometimes all people really need is "C with std::string". Oh, and smart pointers too. And hash maps. Vectors too while we're at it. I think that's it.

I agree on the former two (std::string and smart pointers) because they can't be nicely implemented without some help from the language itself. The latter two (hash maps and vectors), though, are just compound data types that can be built on top of standard C. All it would need is to agree on a new common library, more modern than the one designed in the 70s.

why not std::string?
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