zwang wrote:
> Victor Nakoryakov wrote:
> 
>> Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
>>
>>> "zwang" <nehzgnaw@gmail.com> wrote in message news:d9ej3v$2hpb$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>>>
>>>> I myself use D for fast prototyping and small utility programs with only a few thousand lines of code.  I wonder whether people are working on D projects for more serious purposes, for example, commercial softwares.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I'm also writing a 3D game engine.  Not really sure what for, as I'm really not that good at writing games.  But it's fun, and it gives me something to do :)
>>>
>>
>> Hmm, I see D is popular among gamedevers. It's looks like more than 1/5 of D users are gamedevers. I'm use it to write game engine too :).
>>
>> I work in one of Russian gamedev company where I have to work with huge project in C++, I love it but with time it become bigger and bigger cesspit of code. And when I set to D on my spare time, I feel I get into small paradise :).
>>
>>
> 
> I don't see why D appeals to game developers.
> The unpredictable pauses of GC are unacceptable, aren't they?


Gc only happens on allocation.  Game developers typically use memory pools for Inner-loop allocating.

I am also doing some OpenGL stuff with D.

-DavidM

zwang wrote:
> I don't see why D appeals to game developers.
> The unpredictable pauses of GC are unacceptable, aren't they?

Using specific approach you can always minimize allocs while frames updation, i.e while playing. Allocations are needed just on mission/scene initialization. Right after init/reinit call gc.fullCollect and voila... let the madness begin :).

-- 
Victor (aka nail) Nakoryakov
nail-mail<at>mail<dot>ru

Krasnoznamensk, Moscow, Russia

zwang wrote:
> Victor Nakoryakov wrote:
> 
>> Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
>>
>>> "zwang" <nehzgnaw@gmail.com> wrote in message news:d9ej3v$2hpb$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>>>
>>>> I myself use D for fast prototyping and small utility programs with only a few thousand lines of code.  I wonder whether people are working on D projects for more serious purposes, for example, commercial softwares.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I'm also writing a 3D game engine.  Not really sure what for, as I'm really not that good at writing games.  But it's fun, and it gives me something to do :)
>>>
>>
>> Hmm, I see D is popular among gamedevers. It's looks like more than 1/5 of D users are gamedevers. I'm use it to write game engine too :).
>>
>> I work in one of Russian gamedev company where I have to work with huge project in C++, I love it but with time it become bigger and bigger cesspit of code. And when I set to D on my spare time, I feel I get into small paradise :).
>>
>>
> 
> I don't see why D appeals to game developers.
> The unpredictable pauses of GC are unacceptable, aren't they?

Yes, I too thought that that was going to cause problems, but after actually implimenting my design, my framerates are extrmemly consitent, moreso than I ever got with a C++ program... And no i can't explain why my C++ program, with a practicly identical design would lag from time to time, but it did.

Anyhoo, D is good for game developers I guess, cause it lets complex things get done fast with less code, and in game development, there are allot of things, especially object oriented things, that get rather complex, that D can really simplify.

Its also really good for parsing text, as someone else mentioned, so, reading in models and such is also easy.

-- 
Thanks,
Trevor Parscal
www.trevorparscal.com
trevorparscal@hotmail.com

zwang wrote:

> 
> I don't see why D appeals to game developers.
> The unpredictable pauses of GC are unacceptable, aren't they?

Memory management is always a concern in games. Every AAA C/C++ engine on the market includes some form of custom memory management. In D we get it for free.

As for GC pauses, I've not had a problem with them. Aside from using GC friendly practices (such as avoiding frequent allocations of small objects), D gives the option to bypass GC if it does become a problem that you can't solve with freelists or some such.

"Victor Nakoryakov" <nail-mail@mail.ru> wrote in message news:d9h5uu$2p6i$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>
> Hmm, I see D is popular among gamedevers. It's looks like more than 1/5 of D users are gamedevers.

Yes, this is the impression I got. Perhaps this is because writing games is a big hobby activity and D is also attractive for hobby use.



I agree that D is a nice language. I'd rather be able to use it instead of C++. But being a good language is, unfortunately, not enough of a reason for me to be able to use it for serious work where I'm answerable to other people. I need to use a language that is also fairly widespread. I think there is a chicken and egg problem for D (probably as there is for almost all the lesser-used languages). You cannot use it for serious work until it is already used by many people in well-known companies creating well-known products that are selling. It needs to get a critical mass somehow. Until then, I believe it will be a hobby language.



One minor improvement to the D web site might be if it showed off some non-trivial sample programs written in D. (Perhaps they would be open source or perhaps not.) For example, if I go to the wxWidgets site I can see several examples of programs written with wxWidgets. Right on the front page is a list of programs like AOL Communicator and Forte Agent. I didn't see anything like that at the D site, unless I messed it.



Jim