On Saturday, 2 August 2014 at 20:38:59 UTC, David wrote:
> Hi, not too sure if there's still someone reading this post, but i do have another question. So, I heared so much good stuff about D, it's powerfull, fast the syntax is nice, but well, why is D actually not used for common games yet? (I mean I know about some smaller projects, but nothing "big")

Because D has a GC, is unstable and has many many bugs (even an ape could find some).

On 3/08/2014 8:38 a.m., David wrote:
> Hi, not too sure if there's still someone reading this post, but i do
> have another question. So, I heared so much good stuff about D, it's
> powerfull, fast the syntax is nice, but well, why is D actually not used
> for common games yet? (I mean I know about some smaller projects, but
> nothing "big")

The GC is an issue yes, mostly because of it being stop the world with collections. Also language features can't all be used without the GC which is also another issue.
So it's possible for games to skip frames because of this.

Another reason is, game engines. A lot of smaller companies will want an engine already made. After all they can't spend the time making that as well.

IDE's do I need to explain that?

Lastly the game dev industry is very hesitant to change languages for a lot of reasons. And one of those is platform support. They won't be seeing D on e.g. Xbox One anytime soon if you get my drift.

On 8/3/2014 5:38 AM, David wrote:
> Hi, not too sure if there's still someone reading this post, but i do
> have another question. So, I heared so much good stuff about D, it's
> powerfull, fast the syntax is nice, but well, why is D actually not used
> for common games yet? (I mean I know about some smaller projects, but
> nothing "big")

There's a huge amount of existing, and proven, C and C++ infrastructure in the game industry. Companies aren't going to be willing to throw that out on a whim. Then there are issues about platform support, tooling, GC-phobia, and other small things that all add up to put D in the category of "Big Risk."

That said, it has seen some minor use in the game industry (most notably from Remedy). It may yet see more, but until a AAA team takes a chance on it and has a proven success, I don't expect it to catch on there. The indie/hobby space is a different matter entirely.

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On Sunday, 3 August 2014 at 03:39:25 UTC, Rikki Cattermole wrote:
>
> Lastly the game dev industry is very hesitant to change languages for a lot of reasons. And one of those is platform support. They won't be seeing D on e.g. Xbox One anytime soon if you get my drift.

Apparently D already works on the Xbox One using Windows with -m64 (and thus COFF) and Visual Studio's toolchain, at least in conjunction with some C++ (I'm not sure about standalone, though I don't see why not).

On 3/08/2014 5:18 p.m., Kapps wrote:
> On Sunday, 3 August 2014 at 03:39:25 UTC, Rikki Cattermole wrote:
>>
>> Lastly the game dev industry is very hesitant to change languages for
>> a lot of reasons. And one of those is platform support. They won't be
>> seeing D on e.g. Xbox One anytime soon if you get my drift.
>
> Apparently D already works on the Xbox One using Windows with -m64 (and
> thus COFF) and Visual Studio's toolchain, at least in conjunction with
> some C++ (I'm not sure about standalone, though I don't see why not).

Interesting, thought we'd need some sort of changes to at least the compiler for it. Might be worth making this more well known.

I can make the point for other consoles. E.g. PS4, Nvidia Shield.
It won't work like c++ does atleast. Who is a first class citizen.

I'm just gonna leave this here: https://github.com/Circular-Studios/Dash

I should note that Dash is extremely not 1.0, but we're definitely close. Expect some API changes, though.

On Saturday, 2 August 2014 at 20:38:59 UTC, David wrote:
> Hi, not too sure if there's still someone reading this post, but i do have another question. So, I heared so much good stuff about D, it's powerfull, fast the syntax is nice, but well, why is D actually not used for common games yet? (I mean I know about some smaller projects, but nothing "big")

A lot of commercial game middleware is already written in C++.
Without such third-party libs, it's hard to make a AAA games.
Linking to C++ middleware is way easier if your game is in C++ itself.
C++ programmers are accustomed to C++ and the ones who weren't flocked to Java, C#, whatever.

On Saturday, 2 August 2014 at 20:58:34 UTC, Foo wrote:
> On Saturday, 2 August 2014 at 20:38:59 UTC, David wrote:
>> Hi, not too sure if there's still someone reading this post, but i do have another question. So, I heared so much good stuff about D, it's powerfull, fast the syntax is nice, but well, why is D actually not used for common games yet? (I mean I know about some smaller projects, but nothing "big")
>
> Because D has a GC, is unstable and has many many bugs (even an ape could find some).

I am not in the game industry, but in other time-constrained industry (realtime). For me, it nails down to GC and lack of volatiles.

I tried to use it for some scripting, but finally reverted back to simple Bash and some Python.

My opinion on the matter is that, in order to succeed, D really must become a tool that could be used everywhere. The discourse that "yes, but you could do that part in C (speaking about realtime)" usually receives this kind of reply: "yes, but, then, why bother? If I have C for this part, I have Bash for the other and C# for the GUIs".

As long as it does not try to cover all the range, the differential that it offers wrt C+C#/Java+Bash/Python does not seems conclusive enough to justify the effort.

Add to this the quality of tools, which are still in their infancy (just consider dynamic libs, debug support, IDE support, static analysis tools etc.)

Well, feel free to destroy it. But I tried to use it at my workplace. It is a nice language, but the differential is simply not enough. The main selling point would be its potential ubiquity ("hey, boss, one language to rule them all!"), but here it fails short in systems programming, embedded realtime programming and, as far as I hear, in massive multi-threading/couroutines where Go is better. And C# has that async...

I agree it is a bit o chicken and egg problem: "we don't invest in D because is not popular/ the language is not popular because nobody invest in it". That's true, but, as I tried it, in the end the marginal gain was too small for us to continue on this road. It matters less for us to be able to use slices than it matters to have robust and time-predictable code.

On Sunday, 3 August 2014 at 05:17:08 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
> On 8/3/2014 5:38 AM, David wrote:

> about platform support,

I know the story. But throwing all the weight behind a more-standard back-end would improve things. Yes, it would require some transition effort. But, then, ldc and gdc won't be condemned to play catch-up forever.

On Sunday, 3 August 2014 at 12:37:51 UTC, eles wrote:
> On Saturday, 2 August 2014 at 20:58:34 UTC, Foo wrote:
>> On Saturday, 2 August 2014 at 20:38:59 UTC, David wrote:

> on this road. It matters less for us to be able to use slices

And this while D really nailed down two things very well: strings and templates (I dream that one day C++ will adopt D's syntax for templates...). And scope() too, albeit recently people are talking about its deprecation. We go back to C++'s RAII...

Plus, there are some features that never were nailed down and, as long as they remain in fish tail, many will simply just wait for them to be, you know, cleared in a way or another: @property, the recent assert/assume, the allocation in Phobos, the destructors of a class etc.

Facing all this stuff, one simply wonders sometimes how other languages managed to stick for a solution and still get some use in real life...

Flame or not, too much hesitation on some topics. Yes, much concern to nail them perfectly, I agree. But sometimes is rather paralysis by analysis...