The point of C++ is C, but with extra footguns.
this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2026
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The point of C++ isn't optimization, rather it is that one only pays for what one uses. Experience in C++ leads to using only the features of C++ that are appropriate and conscientiously eschewing the rest.
I understand C++ better than what C++ coders say online fr
Much love
It's kind of sad that so many big studios have abandoned their proprietary engines to adopt unreal engine 5. What's going to happen when Epic starts to turn the screws because they feel like they aren't making enough money? All these big studios won't have any staff left that knows how to build graphical engines. Honestly, at least it would make sense if they have up on their engines and started using Godot. At least they wouldn't be bound to Epic's bullshit.
At a conceptual level, it makes 100% sense that companies are moving away from bespoke engines and towards a standardized engine. This is something you see in many different industries. Spending a whole bunch of money and effort when 95% of your requirements are the same as everyone else is a bit silly.
However, you're completely right that there's the same danger as in other industries where the 'boring software infrastructure' gets standardized and outsourced: a niche monopoly able to exploit their position. What tends to happen in the long run is an open source project for that infrastructure run by an NGO with the industry members (in this case AAA game companies) on the board of directors.
What tends to happen in the long run is an open source project for that infrastructure run by an NGO with the industry members (in this case AAA game companies) on the board of directors.
So, O3D, basically. Formerly basically Lumberyard, one of the branches of CryEngine, that Amazon bought, then gave up on actually making work, then open sourced it, but still basically runs the NGO/NonProfit that technically runs it.
As opposed to the other branch that StarCitizen/RSI is... "developing"... or just the main branch that CryTek still owns and does liscense out.
But yeah we still currently have Godot that is opensource and run by an NGO/NonProfit that at least currently doesnt seem to be totally dominated by corpo spending/influence.
And it only makes conceptual sense to adopt a 3rd party AAA engine as an industry standard if youre financially fucked as a publisher/game studio. Its basically the same thing as a company being bought out by private equity; the only thing that can happen from that point is squeezing the last bit of juice out of whatever is left.
Because when there's a monopolistic game engine, well it just colludes with monopolistic hardware.
Then nobody in the bottom 90% can afford the 'AAA' experience, because prices are too high, because the engine doesn't need to be optimized, because that would decrease monopolistic rents on the hardware, which also doesn't need to be optimized.
So that market and production model cannibalizes itself.
It comes down to money. Studios dont want to spend the time and money anymore. People will buy whatever garbage they put out anyway. It can be shitty UE5 at 30fps, people have no standards anymore.
By that logic, if your English language essay gets an F it's the English language's fault?
Given we're talking about the English language, yes /jk
Hey! Native speaker here. If we:
-
reformed the spelling
-
stopped the locals from coming out with any deranged shite that they liked the sound of and made them follow some rules instead
...then it would be a perfectly usable language, thank you.
"Reform the spelling" how would you go about that?
"Refom de speling" hou wud ju go abaut dat?
(Croatian way - write what you hear)
Starting to look like dutch
The whole point of C++ is to graft Object Oriented Programming into C like some Frankenstein’s monster because OOP was the big hype.
C++ being performant is mostly a side effect of it being based on a language created when programs were still punched into paper cards.
That was the point 20 years ago. These days it is pivoting to compile time functional programming
does anyone actually follow whatver the comittee sees as best practices?
C++ has a lot of terrible language features because it would allow some 8 bit embedded CPU to dynamically change from LSB to MSB ordering in the middle of decoding some input. 🙈
What does that mean ?
If you have a constant expression like 1 + 2 in your code you can evaluate it at compile time once and avoid computing it at runtime. You can do that with control flow and much more complex language constructs in C++. If you want to know more about that look into C++ template meta programming, constexpr, and constval.
Or don't look into those things if you wish to remain sane
Templates are cool as fuck tho... For like 5 minutes until you go insane
yeah, zig and rust have the same concepts but much better thought and structed
It's easy to build a well-designed language when you don't have to work around the mistakes of the past that were too difficult to solve then and too deeply entrenched to change now.
yes, thats why I dont bother finnishing projects
To be fair, I never fully understood why programming projects have to be native Finlanders, in the end.
Translation: "We've made the preprocessor a first-class language feature!"
(jk, don't kill me)
thank you !
it means rust is cool as fuck
aren't they talking about C++ ?
C++ has pretty much no compile-time checks, while Rust's overengineered syntax allows it's compiler to catch vast majority of your everyday errors during compilation.
ok thanks
Rust is a very modern alternative to C /C++.
Overengineered mess
Go ahead, write your 3D engine in Python. I dare you.
You know the majority of LLM stacks are in python, right?
We already live in that world, basically.
Python LLM training produces models that are then refined into things that 3D engines plug into to do AI upscaling and framegen, and then different python trained LLM models use more python to interface with MCPs to write more slop extensions and frameworks in/for game engines, and other programs.
Still different python derived LLMs do image/facial/3d object recognition, get plugged into moar python, and then produce models... often for game engines.
Its nearly literally an ouroboros.
You'd write the code in something else and then be like
import 3dengine
3dengine.run()Aah yes, the entire numerical python stack being carried on Fortran and C's shoulders
The tutorials and walkthrough guides for all of that stuff are infuriating.
What do you mean I just import and run "unbelievably_specific_tool" and run it? How am I supposed to do anything other than process this example data with that?
Never underestimate my self-loathing and my desire to write the most unusable piece of shit.
How many games write their own 3D engine anymore
Not enough. It's why they all need so many fucking resources and why you need to spend $1500 on a video card for a game that could run on a 15 year old GeForce if the developers put any effort into optimizing anything.
Expecting even a medium to large team to waste resources on essentially reinventing the wheel would probably result in shittier games, IMO.
And with their new engine no one is stopping them from adding dlss the entire way, so performance never once has to be a consideration (minus on their test rig of 2 5090s, 128GB of ddr5, and the latest threadripper of course).
3D engine in LOLCODE or bust
You'd be surprised how few game devs actually touch any code. It's not just artists or designers. Even the 'programmers' increasingly rely on visual tools instead of coding.