Comment by mabster
3 months ago
I think the choice of C++ vs JVM depends on your project. If you're not using the benefits of "unsafe" languages then it probably doesn't matter.
But if you are after performance how do do the following in Java? - Build an AOS so that memory access is linear re cache. Prefetch. Use things like _mm_stream_ps() to tell the CPU the cache line you're writing to doesn't need to be fetched. Share a buffer of memory between processes by atomic incrementing a head pointer.
I'm pretty sure you could build an indie game without low-level C++, but there is a reason that commercial gamedev is typically C++.
While there are many technical reasons to use C++ over Java in game development, many commercial games could be easily done in Java, as they are A or AA level at most.
Had Notch thought too much about which language to use, maybe he would still be trying to launch a game today.
Minecraft was Indie then. And anyway, it's now in C++.
Many people dream to make it as indie, most don't even achieve that.
No it isn't, there are now two versions of Minecraft, the classical one, and Minecraft Bedrock, that is the one written in C++.
Minecraft Bedrock doesn't have half of the community that Minecraft classical enjoys, hence why Microsoft is trying to use JavaScript based extensions to bring the mod community into Minecraft Bedrock.
Finally without Minecraft classical market success, there wouldn't exist Minecraft Bedrock at all, so Java did serve well enough to Notch's fortunes.
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Literally no one who has access to the Java version cares even a little bit about Minecraft bedrock edition.
> but there is a reason that commercial gamedev is typically C++.
Sure, and that's kind of my point. There are a few use-cases where C++ is actually needed, and for those cases, Rust (the language) is a good alternative if it's possible to use it.
But even for gamedev, the article here says that they moved to Unity. The core of Unity is apparently C++, but users of Unity code in C#. Which kind of proves my point: outside of that core that actually needs C++, it doesn't matter much. And the vast majority of software development is done outside of those core use-cases, meaning that the vast majority of developers do not need Rust.
We were using a modified Luajit, in assembly, with a bit of other assembly dotted around the place. That assembly takes a long time to write (to beat a modern C++ compiler).
Then we had C++ for all our low level code and Lua for gameplay.
We were floating a middle layer of Rust for Lua bindings and the glue code for our transformation pipeline, but there was always a little too much friction to introduce. What we were particularly interested in was memory allocation bugs (use after free and leaks) and speeding up development of the engine. So I could see it having a place.