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Why I switched from Ruby back to C++

chrismdp.github.com

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Re: Why I switched from Ruby back to C++

#61

Post by azth »

rjurney wrote: post #54
apenwarr wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are completely right for things that don't involve real-time video (like games do). A 1/60 frame skip rate sounds like nothing important, but your eye will see it easily and it's instantly annoying. It's not subtle at all, and not something you can write off. Everyone will be annoyed by it and then your product will be doomed. (Edit) I do however agree that the frame rate is not that important. 30 fps ought to be…

Would you rather have: A complete game that people love, and is growing like mad, except for that damned skip at 60fps... or A very smooth 60fps game nobody plays.

A complete game that people love, and is growing like mad that is very smooth at 60fps.

Re: Why I switched from Ruby back to C++

#62

Post by enneff »

rjurney wrote: post #54
apenwarr wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are completely right for things that don't involve real-time video (like games do). A 1/60 frame skip rate sounds like nothing important, but your eye will see it easily and it's instantly annoying. It's not subtle at all, and not something you can write off. Everyone will be annoyed by it and then your product will be doomed. (Edit) I do however agree that the frame rate is not that important. 30 fps ought to be…

Would you rather have: A complete game that people love, and is growing like mad, except for that damned skip at 60fps... or A very smooth 60fps game nobody plays.

It seems a pretty sensible decision to switch to a more suitable technology when you're only a couple of days into a project.

Re: Why I switched from Ruby back to C++

#64

Post by andrewflnr »

gravitronic wrote: post #37

I'm using SDL for writing a DJ application and have it cross-building on Linux, Windows, and the target platform (HP TouchPad). For the Windows build I'm using the excellent http://www.mingw.org/ Mingw32 environment. I compiled SDL and my other needed libraries myself and there's pretty much no code differences. The only downside to mingw32 is that my target platform has full POSIX and mingw32 doesn't, so sometimes I…

Just out of curiosity: why is compiling on Windows important if your target is POSIX? Is it just for development convenience?

Re: Why I switched from Ruby back to C++

#65

Post by cheald »

rjurney wrote: post #54
apenwarr wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are completely right for things that don't involve real-time video (like games do). A 1/60 frame skip rate sounds like nothing important, but your eye will see it easily and it's instantly annoying. It's not subtle at all, and not something you can write off. Everyone will be annoyed by it and then your product will be doomed. (Edit) I do however agree that the frame rate is not that important. 30 fps ought to be…

Would you rather have: A complete game that people love, and is growing like mad, except for that damned skip at 60fps... or A very smooth 60fps game nobody plays.

If it's the difference between shipping and not shipping, ship, of course. But you propose a false dichotomy; the OP can both ship C++ code and avoid frame skipping.

Speaking as an avid gamer, that dropped frame matters, a lot. It's incredibly annoying to the gamer, and will produce an attitude of general discontent with the product that will earn it reviews like "sluggish", "slow", "unoptimized", and "chunky", none of which are exactly going to help you sell copies.

You might have missed the part where the author was saying that he wasn't even nearly done with feature implementation; the problem was only going to get worse as he added more garbage overhead. When you're talking about relatively expensive GC passes in a stop-the-world garbage collector, that dropped frame can turn into 150 dropped frames every 30 seconds pretty quickly (ie, a 2.5-second freeze/hitch), and that's enough to turn any player batty.

Re: Why I switched from Ruby back to C++

#66

Post by jtc331 »

kenjackson wrote: post #36
frankPants wrote: post #29

This post should be titled, "Why I fucked up by choosing Ruby to write a game." - Or "What the fuck was I thinking" I love Ruby, I spend a lot of time writing it. I also write kids games for iOS. I would never consider Ruby(in it's current state) a good language to write a game in. Anyone who would has clearly; never written a game before; or never used Ruby for anything serious before. I agree with the other posters…

While what you say may be 100% true you might be shocked by the number of Ruby and Python devs I talk to who tell me that Ruby can do anything that C++ does if you're even a half-decent Ruby or Python dev. I've literally asked people, "What about something like Gran Turismo 7?" And I've literally been in rooms where every dev there (none game devs, all web devs) basically said if they were writing it in Ruby it could…

These sound like designers turned quasi-developers rather than serious programmers. I don't know anyone that actually understands real software development that would make this claim.

Re: Why I switched from Ruby back to C++

#67

Post by jtc331 »

zizee wrote: post #48
erikpukinskis wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post is mean, and has no place on Hacker News. It's fine to say there's no reason to ever use Ruby for a game, but it seems like the main purpose of your post is just to call into question the OP's intelligence and experience.

I thought he was just calling into question the link-baity title. The title is designed to be controversial as people don't like their favourite programming language to be slandered, thus they will be obliged to read the article so that they can defend their baby. Using link bait as a title is contrary to HN guidelines, so if anything, it is the article that does not belong on HN, not the grandparent comment.

Agreed. This is pure link bait.

Re: Why I switched from Ruby back to C++

#68

Post by teamonkey »

trptcolin wrote: post #63
teamonkey wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just out of interest, why did you choose not to use Gosu in your C++ port?

I hope it was because of this: http://gosu-lang.org/comparison.shtml

Wrong Gosu.

He said he used www.libgosu.org for Ruby but the library also works with C++, so I'm wondering why he's switched to www.libsdl.org

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