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

Thoughts on Modern C++ and Game Dev

elbeno.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 143 posts

Re: Thoughts on Modern C++ and Game Dev

#71

Post by arandr0x »

I'm not in games but my industry is adjacent and I have the same gripes with c++. (Which the author characterized very well.) Although build and debug times definitely are an issue regardless of the performance of the hardware.

I find reading C++ "standards" papers onerous and feel like they're written in a way that's deliberately inaccessible. I don't much like the idea of going to CppCon -- even if my company funded it, which maybe they would, I feel like I'd be marginalized for not using template metaprogramming, not knowing the new hotness by heart, and generally being a proponent of C-with-classes. I just feel like so much of the C++ "standards" work feels like it's led by academics who think the concerns of working programmers like me are beneath them.

Is there a way I can "get involved" and does my voice have any value?

Re: Thoughts on Modern C++ and Game Dev

#72

Post by doctorRetro »

arandr0x wrote: post #71

I'm not in games but my industry is adjacent and I have the same gripes with c++. (Which the author characterized very well.) Although build and debug times definitely are an issue regardless of the performance of the hardware. I find reading C++ "standards" papers onerous and feel like they're written in a way that's deliberately inaccessible. I don't much like the idea of going to CppCon -- even if my company funde…

Upvoted. And I just want to say I agree completely. Your comments re: "not knowing the new hotness" and "led by academics who think the concerns of working programmers like me are beneath them" really strikes a chord with me. I think this is a problem in all of programming these days and has really soured me on the industry.

Re: Thoughts on Modern C++ and Game Dev

#73

Post by justinhj »

otikik wrote: post #20
jayd16 wrote: post #2

I don't want to weigh in on the rest of the content but the characterization of the game industry is pretty accurate in my experience. I would expand more on the first bullet point of why game devs don't test. Tests are anti-agile and game development is extremely agile. Usually you don't know what kind of game you're making until you're done.

I think the reason is that tests have a very obvious up-front cost, while the time they save is distributed in the future, in a non-immediately obvious way. I still think that they end up saving time, with some exceptions like UI code, which are more easily tested "by hand". Game project managers are infamous for not being great planners, so it wouldn't surprise me that they dismissed automated tests as "a waste of t…

Or perhaps game projects are extremely difficult to manage? You think if it was just a matter of competence then these companies would put billion dollar revenue on the line not hiring the best they can find?

Re: Thoughts on Modern C++ and Game Dev

#74

Post by midnightclubbed »

otikik wrote: post #20
jayd16 wrote: post #2

I don't want to weigh in on the rest of the content but the characterization of the game industry is pretty accurate in my experience. I would expand more on the first bullet point of why game devs don't test. Tests are anti-agile and game development is extremely agile. Usually you don't know what kind of game you're making until you're done.

I think the reason is that tests have a very obvious up-front cost, while the time they save is distributed in the future, in a non-immediately obvious way. I still think that they end up saving time, with some exceptions like UI code, which are more easily tested "by hand". Game project managers are infamous for not being great planners, so it wouldn't surprise me that they dismissed automated tests as "a waste of t…

In defense of game project managers (a phrase I may have never said before) is that their planning is often fine, but hampered by changes to game design/direction/requirements. Unless you're churning out a copy-cat derivative game design requirements have to be reasonably loose as you find what does and doesn't 'work'. Finding the fun is not easily managed.

Re: Thoughts on Modern C++ and Game Dev

#75

Post by mattnewport »

arandr0x wrote: post #71

I'm not in games but my industry is adjacent and I have the same gripes with c++. (Which the author characterized very well.) Although build and debug times definitely are an issue regardless of the performance of the hardware. I find reading C++ "standards" papers onerous and feel like they're written in a way that's deliberately inaccessible. I don't much like the idea of going to CppCon -- even if my company funde…

If you want to get involved and for your voice to have value then you have to educate yourself on the subject. Unfortunately too many of my former colleagues in the games industry (I'm now in a "games adjacent" industry too) fail to do this before complaining about C++ and have the same attitude of "it's not fair that I should have to know what I'm talking about before anyone will listen to my complaining seriously".

Videos of all CppCon talks from the last several years are freely available on YouTube and if you took the time to watch them you'd see that many of them are by working programmers and not academics, quite a few of them in the games industry. You'd also learn that the committee is quite focused on simplifying the use of the language and on finding more usable ways to get the benefits of template metaprogramming. You would also find explanations of many features that are more accessible than standards papers and occasional explanations of why standardese is the way it is - nobody, even the most academic speakers, claims to find the standard the most accessible way to learn about a new feature.

Re: Thoughts on Modern C++ and Game Dev

#76

Post by midnightclubbed »

blktiger wrote: post #55
otikik wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the reason is that tests have a very obvious up-front cost, while the time they save is distributed in the future, in a non-immediately obvious way. I still think that they end up saving time, with some exceptions like UI code, which are more easily tested "by hand". Game project managers are infamous for not being great planners, so it wouldn't surprise me that they dismissed automated tests as "a waste of t…

Modern games have only increased the benefits a game studio can gain from testing as well. Games are now moving into service territory which only increases the amount of time spent maintaining the game while continuing to add to it.

This. Determining when the effort should be applied is the tricky part. Games are still hit driven and get cancelled/re-purposed during development. You can spend a lot of QA engineering time developing systems to test functionality that never ships (case in point would be Fortnight - the original shipped game did not need to be tested against the current 100 player game instances and huge load but they could have spent a bunch of time testing AI systems that are no longer any part of the game).

Re: Thoughts on Modern C++ and Game Dev

#77

Post by tokyodude »

jayd16 wrote: post #2

I don't want to weigh in on the rest of the content but the characterization of the game industry is pretty accurate in my experience. I would expand more on the first bullet point of why game devs don't test. Tests are anti-agile and game development is extremely agile. Usually you don't know what kind of game you're making until you're done.

I'm not sure what most teams do now-a-days but I went to GDC in Koln and saw the Croteam talk. Over 10 or so years by programmers just adding a little here and there as it occurred to them they had build a pretty cool testing system.

First they had made it so if someone was playing the game and saw a bug they could press the "file a bug" key, type in a description and the game would save out enough info to bring someone back to that point in the game, same camera, and possibly other state. From the bug database they could click a link that would launch the game back into that state, let someone verify the fix and mark it as fixes.

The also had a waypoint system for bots to play through the puzzles (this was the Talos Principle they were talking about). If the bots ever got stuck, as in didn't make to the next waypoint within some time limit they bots would file a bug using the system above.

https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022784/Fast-Iteration-Tools-i...

As another interesting idea apparently the creator of Thumber built a URL system so people press a button which would generate a URL into the clipboard, they could then paste that URL into Slack (or email/chat/etc) that would launch the game in a particular state to pass that other users on the team.

Re: Thoughts on Modern C++ and Game Dev

#78

Post by edoo »

jokoon wrote: post #60
edoo wrote: post #57

Most industry game dev is also done on top of C++ engines and libraries. I can see Go being used in the near future as the big engines offer bindings but I bet in 5-10 years the average startup is using something like C#. It is slow as beans but eventually CPU speed will make it much more reasonable for real use. The Unity engine is a good example. It has a weird easy powerful super bloated paradigm.

You just mentioned 2 garbage collected languages on a game dev topic. I don't think they're adequate. Remember how the article was very insistent about being able to control memory and CPU resources. Those are one of the few reasons C++ is not dead. Rust? I don't see it either.

I see it in the sense of writing your game logic in Go using bindings for Unreal or one of the big ones. The real performance critical stuff will probably always be in C++. The popular game Rust (not language) uses Unity and the overall engine is pretty bad but it works and made them a fortune. By its nature it is incredibly extensible. You can mod it by dropping source files with hooks right into a directory without compiling anything. The ease of that kind of stuff draws people like crazy.

Re: Thoughts on Modern C++ and Game Dev

#79

Post by iseeyoubydesign »

mattnewport wrote: post #75
arandr0x wrote: post #71

I'm not in games but my industry is adjacent and I have the same gripes with c++. (Which the author characterized very well.) Although build and debug times definitely are an issue regardless of the performance of the hardware. I find reading C++ "standards" papers onerous and feel like they're written in a way that's deliberately inaccessible. I don't much like the idea of going to CppCon -- even if my company funde…

If you want to get involved and for your voice to have value then you have to educate yourself on the subject. Unfortunately too many of my former colleagues in the games industry (I'm now in a "games adjacent" industry too) fail to do this before complaining about C++ and have the same attitude of "it's not fair that I should have to know what I'm talking about before anyone will listen to my complaining seriously".…

if they dont want to learn c++ then its fine , c++ will live on without them

Re: Thoughts on Modern C++ and Game Dev

#80

Post by Clanan »

arandr0x wrote: post #71

I'm not in games but my industry is adjacent and I have the same gripes with c++. (Which the author characterized very well.) Although build and debug times definitely are an issue regardless of the performance of the hardware. I find reading C++ "standards" papers onerous and feel like they're written in a way that's deliberately inaccessible. I don't much like the idea of going to CppCon -- even if my company funde…

Off-topic but can you recommend any resources off-hand for improving in your preferred C++? I share your approach but have a heck of a time finding quality books and such. (Email in profile if preferred.)
Post reply on HN