What makes C++ such a good programming lang for games?

dlangdev · Post by **dlangdev** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 9:25 pm

Halifax: That meant I wrote games in BASIC even before C++ was around to be considered mainstream.

The bottomline is programming languages don't make a good programmer.

rogerborg · Post by **rogerborg** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 10:50 pm

Sure. In the end, it all comes down to instructions in a pipeline. The language and compiler are just intermediaries between design and execution.

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 11:08 pm

dlangdev wrote:Halifax: That meant I wrote games in BASIC even before C++ was around to be considered mainstream.

The bottomline is programming languages don't make a good programmer.

I was just joking around with you.

Couldn't you sense my sarcasim?

rogerborg wrote:Sure. In the end, it all comes down to instructions in a pipeline. The language and compiler are just intermediaries between design and execution.

Yes, that may be true. But that does not mean that all languages are equal. The same could be said for 3d engines, but companies wouldn't dare use TGEA in place of UE3.

Mr. Moxie · Post by **Mr. Moxie** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 10:47 pm

C++ all the way. Some assembly, but I haven't used it in years, last time was on a console bug.

You can always downgrade to a higher level language like C# if needed.

MasterGod · Post by **MasterGod** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 1:55 pm

From a book I'm trying to get:

C++ is the only implementation tool used in this book. You will not find in this book code that implements nifty windowing systems, complex networking libraries, or clever logging mechanisms. Instead, you will find the fundamental components that make it easy to implement all of the above, and much more. C++ has the breadth necessary to make this possible. Its underlying C memory model ensures raw performance, its support for polymorphism enables object-oriented techniques, and its templates unleash an incredible code generation machine.

wyrmmage · Post by **wyrmmage** » Thu Mar 27, 2008 5:53 pm

I find C++ (and C) useful because it lets you specify how things are done on a very low level, if you want to...if you don't want to, there are libraries that make it fairly easy to have the language perform like a 'higher level' language, like C# or Java. Boost takes care of automatic memory management, if you want that, and the STL lets you get things up and running quickly...if it's too slow, you can always write your own implementation of whatever STL thing you're using. There are networking libraries out there, windowing libraries that are platform independent, yet you can always fall back to plain C/C++ if the library is too slow. Higher level languages don't let you do this (or they do, and you end up having to learn C and C++ anyway so that you can write modules for the higher level language to make it run faster

)
I'm not saying that higher level languages are bad; they are certainly useful in many cases...cases where speed is not required. If you're wanting to make the next-generation game, you're pretty much stuck with C/C++ because it allows you squeeze every last bit of speed from the hardware you're running the game on.
-wyrmmage