On 10 April 2013 00:50, Dmitry Olshansky <dmitry.olsh@gmail.com> wrote:

> 09-Apr-2013 14:18, Manu пишет:
>
>> On 9 April 2013 13:09, Rob T <alanb@ucora.com <mailto:alanb@ucora.com>>
>>
>> wrote:
>>
>>     On Monday, 8 April 2013 at 08:21:06 UTC, Manu wrote:
>>
>>
>>         The C++ state hasn't changed though. We still avoid virtual
>>         calls like the
>>         plague.
>>         One of my biggest design gripes with D, hands down, is that
>>         functions are
>>         virtual by default. I believe this is a critical mistake, and
>>         the biggest
>>         one in the language by far.
>>
>>
>>     My understanding of this is that while all of your class functions
>>     will be virtual by default, the compiler will reduce them to
>>     non-virtual unless you actually override them, and to override by
>>     mistake is difficult because you have to specify the "override"
>>     keyword to avoid a compiler error.
>>
>>
>> Thus successfully eliminating non-open-source libraries from D... Making a dependency on WPO is a big mistake.
>>
>>
> final class Foo{ //no inheritance
> final: //no virtuals
> ...
> }
>
> 2 extra words and you are done. The only problem I see is that there is no way to "undo" final on a few methods later...


Yes, it can not be un-done. And any junior/tired/forgetful programmer will accidentally write slow code all over the place, and nobody will ever have any idea that they've done it. It's very dangerous.

On Tuesday, 9 April 2013 at 16:49:04 UTC, Manu wrote:
>>>
>>>
>> final class Foo{ //no inheritance
>> final: //no virtuals
>> ...
>> }
>>
>> 2 extra words and you are done. The only problem I see is that there is no
>> way to "undo" final on a few methods later...

final class Foo
{
   final //no virtuals
   {
      ...
   }

   // final ends, virtual methods below?
   ....
}

>
> And any junior/tired/forgetful programmer will
> accidentally write slow code all over the place, and nobody will ever have
> any idea that they've done it. It's very dangerous.

I suppose, OTOH forgetting to make methods virtual can lead to another problem.

In general, perhaps we're still talking about the same problem as with how to ensure that portions of code do not contain unwanted features of the language. If you want to ban the use of virtual functions, there ought to be a way to do it easily, same for writing code that does not contain features of the language that require a GC, etc.

--rt

09-Apr-2013 20:48, Manu пишет:
> On 10 April 2013 00:50, Dmitry Olshansky <dmitry.olsh@gmail.com
> <mailto:dmitry.olsh@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     09-Apr-2013 14:18, Manu пишет:
>
>         On 9 April 2013 13:09, Rob T <alanb@ucora.com
>         <mailto:alanb@ucora.com> <mailto:alanb@ucora.com
>         <mailto:alanb@ucora.com>>>
>
>         wrote:
>
>              On Monday, 8 April 2013 at 08:21:06 UTC, Manu wrote:
>
>
>                  The C++ state hasn't changed though. We still avoid virtual
>                  calls like the
>                  plague.
>                  One of my biggest design gripes with D, hands down, is that
>                  functions are
>                  virtual by default. I believe this is a critical
>         mistake, and
>                  the biggest
>                  one in the language by far.
>
>
>              My understanding of this is that while all of your class
>         functions
>              will be virtual by default, the compiler will reduce them to
>              non-virtual unless you actually override them, and to
>         override by
>              mistake is difficult because you have to specify the "override"
>              keyword to avoid a compiler error.
>
>
>         Thus successfully eliminating non-open-source libraries from D...
>         Making a dependency on WPO is a big mistake.
>
>
>     final class Foo{ //no inheritance
>     final: //no virtuals
>     ...
>     }
>
>     2 extra words and you are done. The only problem I see is that there
>     is no way to "undo" final on a few methods later...
>
>
> Yes, it can not be un-done. And any junior/tired/forgetful programmer
> will accidentally write slow code all over the place, and nobody will
> ever have any idea that they've done it. It's very dangerous.

Yup.

Well for that matter I had a wild proposal on the back-burner to ditch the whole OOP part of D and/or redesign it. And the reasons roughly go like this:

What we have is an inforced model with a bunch of arbitrary choices that fail short on the "one size fits all" promise :
 single inheritance, all virtual (yet private is always final), GC-ed infinite lifetime model backed-in, reference semantic (that might be fine), "interface is not an Object" etc..

Basically it's a set of choices that doesn't give you any of control over internals (life-time, object layout, virtuality, ABI). Yet it presents all of them together in a form box with half-usable knobs like:
	- hidden v-table (always!)
	- obligatory TypeInfo
	- the lame copy-paste monitor mutex from Java
	- etc.

Yet what I think is needed is getting the orthogonal concepts:
  - custom polymorphic behavior (WHEN you need it and HOW you need it)
  - being able plug into a COM of your choice (GObject, MS COM, XP COM, your own object model etc.)
  - optional "pay as you go" reflection (extends on the previous point)
  - control over ABI (with potential for true late-binding)
  - life-time policy: RC, GC, anything custom including manual management


All of this should be CUSTOMIZABLE and DECOUPLED! Give people the frigging control over the OOP breed they want to use.

Providing people a toolkit not a one-button black box (and that button keeps getting stuck!) would be awesome.

Say I want v-table and late-binding for a set of methods and want a particular ABI for that. And it be manually managed/staticaly allocated. No typeinfo and half-ass reflection (=boat). There is no such thing in D (and in C++ for that matter as it has no "fit this ABI" too). It feels like I'm back to C + preprocessor or ASM.

And again to have great interop with OS/engine/framework it has to be able to follow some PLATFORM-SPECIFIC object model like Obj-C one. (We sort of has it with M$ COM, but again why only M$ and why it's built-in into the _language_ itself?)

If compiler front-end manages to deliver on "multiple alias this" and other features then it could be done (half-decently) in library. Of course, some generic compiler support could help here and there.

Quiz: why do D structs look like powerhouse that has all of the tricks and classes look like poor lame Java wannabes?


-- 
Dmitry Olshansky

On Tuesday, 9 April 2013 at 18:38:55 UTC, Dmitry Olshansky wrote:
[...]
>
> All of this should be CUSTOMIZABLE and DECOUPLED! Give people the frigging control over the OOP breed they want to use.
>
> Providing people a toolkit not a one-button black box (and that button keeps getting stuck!) would be awesome.
>

What we have is a traditional monolithic language and compiler which is rather inflexible and not as useful as it could be if it were instead a library of components that you can pick and choose from to assemble the language sub-set and compiler components that you need for a particular application. If you don't like a component, you should be able to plug a different one in or write your own.

Same with the features of the language. I should be able to say "No I don't want dynamic arrays" in this part of my code and the compiler will refuse to compile them in. Perhaps I should even be able to create my own language features that natively compile.

Furthermore, as a library of components, you should be able to hook them into your applications for general use, such as creating a JIT compiler for a sub-set of the language.

--rt

09-Apr-2013 23:39, Rob T пишет:
> On Tuesday, 9 April 2013 at 18:38:55 UTC, Dmitry Olshansky wrote:
> [...]
>>
>> All of this should be CUSTOMIZABLE and DECOUPLED! Give people the
>> frigging control over the OOP breed they want to use.
>>
>> Providing people a toolkit not a one-button black box (and that button
>> keeps getting stuck!) would be awesome.
>>
>
> What we have is a traditional monolithic language and compiler which is
> rather inflexible and not as useful as it could be if it were instead a
> library of components that you can pick and choose from to assemble the
> language sub-set and compiler components that you need for a particular
> application. If you don't like a component, you should be able to plug a
> different one in or write your own.
>

Love the positive radical nature of your post ;)

But - it can't hot swap components, it would break guarantees: say library expect Ref-Counted objects and you hot-swapped that for GC ones, and so and so forth.

The sane way is sub-setting by restrictions - no changes and no extras.
At least you can use the libraries if your set of restictions is superset of theirs.

> Same with the features of the language. I should be able to say "No I
> don't want dynamic arrays" in this part of my code and the compiler will
> refuse to compile them in.

Fine and nice. See threads about nogc.

> Perhaps I should even be able to create my
> own language features that natively compile.

Too bad and doesn't scale. Sub-setting works pulling custom built-ins doesn't. What could work is seeking smaller sets of "meta" or "proto" features in which we can implement others (in std-lib) at no loss in expressiveness, performance etc.

I claim that the whole OOP should be the first one to be broken down into few smallish proto-features. But as a start we'd better fix the AA in library disaster (by completing the move) though.



-- 
Dmitry Olshansky

On Tue, 9 Apr 2013 20:15:53 +1000
Manu <turkeyman@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9 April 2013 11:32, Nick Sabalausky
> >
> > I can't help wondering how big the "big games" world really is anyway, though. I know there's huge sums of money involved, both cost and revenue, and lots of developers, but...well, let me put it this way:
> >
> > Maybe I'm just projecting my own tastes into this, or maybe this is just because I don't have sales/profits/etc charts for the last 10-20 years to examine, but lately I'm finding it difficult to believe that "AAA" games aren't becoming (or already) a mere niche, much like high-performance sports cars. (Ie, big money, but small market.)
> >
> > Part of this is because, as I see it, the "big/AAA games" *as they used to exist* up until around the early 2000's don't seem to be around much anymore. The big business development companies have, for the most part, split their non-sports product lines into two main areas:
> >
> > 1. Mobile, Casual IP tie-ins, "Free-2-Play", etc.
> > 2. Interactive movies.
> >
> 
> Where is Call of Duty? Grand Thieft Auto? Starcraft? World of
> Warcraft? Is Uncharted an interactive movie? What about Tomb Raider?
> Mario? Zelda?
> Gears of War? Bioshock? They have lots of cinematic presentation, but
> clearly complex and involved gameplay.
> God of War?
> 

First of all, I should emphasize that I'm not making an actual statement of "big/AAA tiles have a tiny audience". Just that, due to a combination of factors, I can't help getting the feeling that they're either headed towards being niche, or are perhaps at least somewhat closer to niche than they're typically considered. Like I said previously, these could very well be unfounded impressions.

Secondly, with those "two main categories" I pointed out, I did say "for the *most* part". Clearly there are exceptions.

With that in mind:

- Call of Duty?: Can't speak for the original series, but for Modern
  Warfare, yes, most definitely. I do actually like what I've played of
  Modern Warfare (and was very surprised by that), but that doesn't
  change that it's most definitely an interactive movie.

- Grand Thief Auto?: This one's an oddball since it's sort of two games
  in one: A sandbox title and, if you actually do the missions, then
  yes, definitely an interactive movie.

- Starcraft?: Starcraft is 15 years old, so it isn't an example of a
  modern AAA title in the first place.

- World of Warcraft?: That would probably fall in the "casual"
  category. It's not an interactive movie AFAIK, but my understanding
  is that it's not much of a videogame, either. If you ignore the
  theme, it's closer to "Second Life" or maybe "Words With Friends"
  than it is to "Warcraft" or a cinematics extravaganza. But the D&D
  theme admittedly makes that considerably less-than-obvious.

- Is Uncharted an interactive movie?: What I played of the first one
  (from what I can remember, it was a while ago) didn't seem to be.
  Although the gameplay did feel a bit weak (FWIW). The demo of the
  second certainly seemed to fall into "interactive movie" though.

- What about Tomb Raider?: I wouldn't have any idea. When I tried the
  original fifteen-plus years ago, I was so turned off (within
  minutes) by the barely-usable controls that I've never paid the series
  any attention since.

- Mario?: Depends which one. Galaxy, yes. Sunshine, yes to a somewhat
  lesser extent. 64, not particularly, no (but it was starting to
  head that direction). New Mario and 8/16-bit mario, definitely no.

- Zelda?: Skyward Sword, definitely yes, it's Harry Potter with a green
  suit. The DS one, mostly yes. Twilight Princess and Wind Waker,
  borderline (I did quite like Wind Waker, though). Pretty much
  anything else, no.

- Gears of War?: Wouldn't know, I don't have a 360. But if it's
  anything like Bulletstorm, then yes.

- Bioshock?: From what I could stand to sit through, yes. And from the
  playthrough video of Bioshock Infinity in the PSN store, yes. (Right
  from the beginning I was wishing so much the player would kill that
  side-kick lady so she'd shut the hell up.)

- God of War?: If the first one is any indication, yes. It's borderline
  "Dragon's Lair without cell shading".


> They have lots of cinematic presentation, but clearly complex and involved gameplay.

In the ones I identified as "interactive movie", cinematic presentation deeply permeates the entire experience, gameplay and all. As one example, even during the "gameplay" sections NPCs very frequently won't shut the hell up. "Blah blah blah BLAH BLAH blah blah BLAH." (Side note: Journey, while not much of a game, was a notable breath of fresh air in that regard. I respected the fact that *it* respected *me* enough to not spoon-feed me every inane detail the writer could think of.)

Furthermore, any "game" that takes literally 30+ minutes to reach the real meat of uninterrupted gameplay most definitely counts as "interactive movie". This includes, just as a few off-the-top-of-my-head examples: Assassin's Creed 2 (god what a turd, never played the other versions though), Zelda Skyward Sword (takes at least a full 2 hours to reach anything remotely resembling real Zelda gameplay), and Bulletstorm (Was the dialog written by a fifth-grader? And does the redneck NPC ever shut up? And as an unrelated side note: why have we gone back to using view-bob again? FPSes stopped doing that in the late 90's for a very good reason - it was literally nauseating - and still is. If I wanted nauseating camerawork with pre-pubescent dialog, I'd watch a J.J. Abrams movie.)


> 
> The volume of games release is decreasing in recent years. This is due to a lot of factors, and the industry is suffering at the moment.

Again, perhaps unfounded, but I can't help wondering if the industry's suffering is directly related to the enormous amounts of resources they keep throwing at cinematics and photo-realistic rendering. If the industry has been pushing that stuff so hard...and the industry is suffering...it's time to examine whether or not there might be a connection. Maybe there aren't as many people with $60 worth of interest in such games as they thought. Or maybe there are. But in any case, it's something the industry needs to reflect on, if they aren't doing so already.


> 
> Games console generations have a 5-10 year lifespan, so it's not exactly an annual investment.

But it's still an up-front cost with a real potential for sticker-shock, and despite Sony's claims to the contrary, they're primary use is just games. So it's a non-trivial cost-of-entry which hinders casual-audience adoption.


> And they're cheaper than phones and iPad's amazingly!

Well, those things are outrageously expensive anyway, what with the combination of "palm-sized battery-powered super-computer", plus "telecom greed" (telecom is known for being one of the most anti-consumer, anti-competitive, greed-driven industries in the world), plus Apple's trademark cost inflation (for a significant number of the devices out there, anyway).

And in any case, most people already have such devices for non-game purposes. So gaming on them usually has a very low cost-of-entry compared to dedicated gaming devices. Therefore: "casual audience friendly".


> Demos are a known problem, that will be addressed
> by the coming hardware generation.

Ummm...what?!? The current generation is already more than perfectly capable of handling demos just fine. The only problem is that many (obviously not all, but still, "many") AAA titles choose not to do them. You could talk about demo size restrictions, but that's an artificial store-imposed limitation, not a hardware one. Fuck, I've got *entire* full games (plural) on my PS3's HDD with room to spare, and downloading them (over WiFi no less) was no problem (and yes, legitimately). There is absolutely nothing about demos for the next hardware generation *to* address. Either the studios/publishers put them out or they don't. Hell even the previous generation had demos, albeit disc-based ones (which *was* a notable problem in certain ways).


> I think it's only 'niche' by total volume. The percentage of 'core'/'hardcore' gamers is decreasing, but that's because the overall sensis is increasing. There are a lot more gamers now. Girls are gamers now! 51% of the population who were not previously in the statistics...
> 

Perhaps so, an interesting point. But then if that's so, why would the industry be suffering? If there's really that many more real gamers now, ones that like the big-budget cinematic stuff, shouldn't that mean enough increased sales to keep things going well? Or maybe there really are more gamers who like that stuff than before, but an even *greater* increase in the developers' interest?


> So is it the "core" gamers buying the modern AAA/big-budget titles?
> > Honestly, I'm not seeing it. From what I can tell, these days they're mostly switching over to indie games. As for why that's happening, I figure "Core" gamers are core gamers *because* they play videogames. Modern AAA/big-budget titles, are *not* videogames except in a very loose sense, and core gamers *do* frequently take issue with them. Modern AAA/big-budget titles are interactive movies, not videogames, because their focus is story, dialog and cinematics, not gameplay. So core gamers have been moving *away* from AAA/big-budget titles and towards indie games.
> >
> 
> Tell me Call of Duty and friends don't sell. They make squillions.

Yea, they do. And so does Porche. And yet most drivers have never touched a high-performance car and never will.

But how much room is there in the market for a big-budget games that *do* sell fantastically? Room enough for *some* obviously, the Italian sports cars of the gaming world, but is there really room for much more than a few?


> There are less successful titles than in recent years, and that's largely because the industry is sick, and kinda antiquated...

The question then is: What made it sick? My suspicion, and again this is only a suspicion, is that at least part of it is the production of big-budget cinematic extravaganzas overshooting demand. It wouldn't be too surprising for the industry to suffer if they're all trying to shoot the moon, so to speak. And it would seem that they are trying to, from what you've said about top-tier being so competitive.


> You may be right, traditionally self-identified *core* gamers are moving indy, because it's an innovative sector that's offering what they like about video games. But they've had their place taken by... 'normal people', you know, the kinds of people that go to the cinema and watch movies. There's a lot of them, and they still buy lots of games.

Maybe so, but I'm unconvinced that they buy a lot of AAA titles per-person.


> So is it the "casual" crowd buying the modern AAA/big-budget titles?
> > Definitely not. They're the ones who tend to be intimidated by 3D environments and game controllers and spend their time on Words With Friends, Wii Waggle, PopCap, etc., rarely spend much money on gaming and rarely venture outside iOS, Android and Web.
> >
> 
> What's your point here?

Just saying that I don't think the "casual" gaming crowd is buying a whole ton of AAA cinematic titles. Some, sure, but significantly more than that? I'd be surprised.


> 
> I know there is and will always be an audience for the modern
> > AAA/big-budget cinematic interactive-movie "games". But I don't see where there's a *large non-niche* audience for them. There's maybe the multiplayer-FPS enthusiasts, but that's a bit of a niche itself. And I don't see a whole lot else. It's the "Italian sports-cars" of videogaming: Just a big-budget niche.
> >
> 
> Well, a 'niche' that's bigger than the entire film industry is not a niche that one can ignore.

Bigger than the film industry? I know that's true in terms of revenue, and even profits IIRC, but in terms of audience size, ie number of people? I've never heard that claimed, and it would surprise me. Remember, niche doesn't mean small profits, just small audience. And I never said anything about ignoring it ;)


> I don't think the number of big-games players has significantly
> decreased though. It might have peaked, I haven't checked numbers
> like that for a fair while.
> What has happened, is the concept of the 'video games' industry has
> dramatically expanded. Basically everyone is a 'gamer' now, and
> everyone has some 99c games in their pocket.
> It's a whole new industry that is being explored, but since the
> statistics are all conflated into 'the video games industry', I can
> see how you might see it that way.
> 

Well, even looking exclusively at Console/PC, I still get the impression that AAA titles are becoming a harder and harder sell. But like I said, I don't have actual figures here, so I could be mistaken.


> The business model is changing shape too, thanks to the indy/casual thing. $60 is silly (and I'd love it if I could get games for $60 btw, we pay $90-$120 here.

Ouch! (Out of curiosity, would that be Europe, Australia, New Zealand, something else? I've heard that New Zealand in particular it can be very difficult to get games quickly and inexpensively. But then I've heard a lot of grumbling about Europe's VAT, too.)

I did pay $80 for Conker's Bad Fur Day, back many years ago. And right before its cost came down, too ;)  'Course that high cost was for entirely different reasons (N64) than in your case.


> yanks get fucking everything subsidised!),
> people aren't happy to spend $60 on entertainment anymore, when
> something that can equally entertain them costs 99c.
> I reckon AAA will start to sell in installments/episodes,

Some of them have already been trying out episodic (Half-Life 2, Sonic 4 - the latter is underrated IMO). Actually, from what I can tell, there's been a *lot* of talk about moving to episodic gaming for some time now. So that wouldn't surprise me either. OTOH, I would have expected to see more of it by now already, but maybe there's just been a lot of inertia in the way.


> or start
> leveraging in-game sales of stuff a lot more to reduce the cost of
> entry.

That's definitely been taking off. Don't know if it's working or not, but that sort of thing is all over the PSN Store. I'd be surprised if it isn't working though, because it does seem to make a lot of sense in many ways.

Closely related to this, have you read the latest Game Developer Magazine (April 2013)? There's a lot of very interesting, and convincing, discussion about Free-2-Play and F2P-inspired models having a lot of promise for AAA gaming, and some implication that the current (old) AAA model may be a sinking (or at least outdated and slightly leaky) ship. "Money Issues" on page 4 was particularly interesting.


> One thing I've heard reports of, contrary to your assertion that AAA is losing participants to the more innovative indy area, is 'casual games' are actually bridging previously non-gamers into big games.

Really? That was Nintendo's intended strategy with the Wii 1, but I'd
heard they never got much conversion ratio (and I know they wound up
alienating a lot of core gamers and developers in the process).
The people would buy a Wii just for Wii Sports or Wii Fit and then
never buy much else.

So that's interesting if the conversion is happening with indie games...and unfortunate for N, as it suggests they should have been more indie-friendly and download-friendly like 360, PSN and Steam. Which I could have told them from the start, but meh, they never listen to me ;)


> You suggest games are becoming
> interactive movies... this isn't an accident, they sell extremely
> well! And I think this trend will continue as a larger percentage of
> the audience are becoming women... I don't think Call of Duty or
> Grand Thieft Auto are going anywhere just yet though.
> 

That does suggest though that such people still aren't really interested in videogames. They're just interested in the hot new type of movie.

On Tue, 9 Apr 2013 20:15:53 +1000
Manu <turkeyman@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9 April 2013 11:32, Nick Sabalausky
> >
> > I can't help wondering how big the "big games" world really is anyway, though. I know there's huge sums of money involved, both cost and revenue, and lots of developers, but...well, let me put it this way:
> >
> > Maybe I'm just projecting my own tastes into this, or maybe this is just because I don't have sales/profits/etc charts for the last 10-20 years to examine, but lately I'm finding it difficult to believe that "AAA" games aren't becoming (or already) a mere niche, much like high-performance sports cars. (Ie, big money, but small market.)
> >
> > Part of this is because, as I see it, the "big/AAA games" *as they used to exist* up until around the early 2000's don't seem to be around much anymore. The big business development companies have, for the most part, split their non-sports product lines into two main areas:
> >
> > 1. Mobile, Casual IP tie-ins, "Free-2-Play", etc.
> > 2. Interactive movies.
> >
> 
> Where is Call of Duty? Grand Thieft Auto? Starcraft? World of
> Warcraft? Is Uncharted an interactive movie? What about Tomb Raider?
> Mario? Zelda?
> Gears of War? Bioshock? They have lots of cinematic presentation, but
> clearly complex and involved gameplay.
> God of War?
> 

First of all, I should emphasize that I'm not making an actual statement of "big/AAA tiles have a tiny audience". Just that, due to a combination of factors, I can't help getting the feeling that they're either headed towards being niche, or are perhaps at least somewhat closer to niche than they're typically considered. Like I said previously, these could very well be unfounded impressions.

Secondly, with those "two main categories" I pointed out, I did say "for the *most* part". Clearly there are exceptions.

With that in mind:

- Call of Duty?: Can't speak for the original series, but for Modern
  Warfare, yes, most definitely. I do actually like what I've played of
  Modern Warfare (and was very surprised by that), but that doesn't
  change that it's most definitely an interactive movie.

- Grand Thief Auto?: This one's an oddball since it's sort of two games
  in one: A sandbox title and, if you actually do the missions, then
  yes, definitely an interactive movie.

- Starcraft?: Starcraft is 15 years old, so it isn't an example of a
  modern AAA title in the first place.

- World of Warcraft?: That would probably fall in the "casual"
  category. It's not an interactive movie AFAIK, but my understanding
  is that it's not much of a videogame, either. If you ignore the
  theme, it's closer to "Second Life" or maybe "Words With Friends"
  than it is to "Warcraft" or a cinematics extravaganza. But the D&D
  theme admittedly makes that considerably less-than-obvious.

- Is Uncharted an interactive movie?: What I played of the first one
  (from what I can remember, it was a while ago) didn't seem to be.
  Although the gameplay did feel a bit weak (FWIW). The demo of the
  second certainly seemed to fall into "interactive movie" though.

- What about Tomb Raider?: I wouldn't have any idea. When I tried the
  original fifteen-plus years ago, I was so turned off (within
  minutes) by the barely-usable controls that I've never paid the series
  any attention since.

- Mario?: Depends which one. Galaxy, yes. Sunshine, yes to a somewhat
  lesser extent. 64, not particularly, no (but it was starting to
  head that direction). New Mario and 8/16-bit mario, definitely no.

- Zelda?: Skyward Sword, definitely yes, it's Harry Potter with a green
  suit. The DS one, mostly yes. Twilight Princess and Wind Waker,
  borderline (I did quite like Wind Waker, though). Pretty much
  anything else, no.

- Gears of War?: Wouldn't know, I don't have a 360. But if it's
  anything like Bulletstorm, then yes.

- Bioshock?: From what I could stand to sit through, yes. And from the
  playthrough video of Bioshock Infinity in the PSN store, yes. (Right
  from the beginning I was wishing so much the player would kill that
  side-kick lady so she'd shut the hell up.)

- God of War?: If the first one is any indication, yes. It's borderline
  "Dragon's Lair without cell shading".


> They have lots of cinematic presentation, but clearly complex and involved gameplay.

In the ones I identified as "interactive movie", cinematic presentation deeply permeates the entire experience, gameplay and all. As one example, even during the "gameplay" sections NPCs very frequently won't shut the hell up. "Blah blah blah BLAH BLAH blah blah BLAH." (Side note: Journey, while not much of a game, was a notable breath of fresh air in that regard. I respected the fact that *it* respected *me* enough to not spoon-feed me every inane detail the writer could think of.)

Furthermore, any "game" that takes literally 30+ minutes to reach the real meat of uninterrupted gameplay most definitely counts as "interactive movie". This includes, just as a few off-the-top-of-my-head examples: Assassin's Creed 2 (god what a turd, never played the other versions though), Zelda Skyward Sword (takes at least a full 2 hours to reach anything remotely resembling real Zelda gameplay), and Bulletstorm (Was the dialog written by a fifth-grader? And does the redneck NPC ever shut up? And as an unrelated side note: why have we gone back to using view-bob again? FPSes stopped doing that in the late 90's for a very good reason - it was literally nauseating - and still is. If I wanted nauseating camerawork with pre-pubescent dialog, I'd watch a J.J. Abrams movie.)


> 
> The volume of games release is decreasing in recent years. This is due to a lot of factors, and the industry is suffering at the moment.

Again, perhaps unfounded, but I can't help wondering if the industry's suffering is directly related to the enormous amounts of resources they keep throwing at cinematics and photo-realistic rendering. If the industry has been pushing that stuff so hard...and the industry is suffering...it's time to examine whether or not there might be a connection. Maybe there aren't as many people with $60 worth of interest in such games as they thought. Or maybe there are. But in any case, it's something the industry needs to reflect on, if they aren't doing so already.


> 
> Games console generations have a 5-10 year lifespan, so it's not exactly an annual investment.

But it's still an up-front cost with a real potential for sticker-shock, and despite Sony's claims to the contrary, they're primary use is just games. So it's a non-trivial cost-of-entry which hinders casual-audience adoption.


> And they're cheaper than phones and iPad's amazingly!

Well, those things are outrageously expensive anyway, what with the combination of "palm-sized battery-powered super-computer", plus "telecom greed" (telecom is known for being one of the most anti-consumer, anti-competitive, greed-driven industries in the world), plus Apple's trademark cost inflation (for a significant number of the devices out there, anyway).

And in any case, most people already have such devices for non-game purposes. So gaming on them usually has a very low cost-of-entry compared to dedicated gaming devices. Therefore: "casual audience friendly".


> Demos are a known problem, that will be addressed
> by the coming hardware generation.

Ummm...what?!? The current generation is already more than perfectly capable of handling demos just fine. The only problem is that many (obviously not all, but still, "many") AAA titles choose not to do them. You could talk about demo size restrictions, but that's an artificial store-imposed limitation, not a hardware one. Fuck, I've got *entire* full games (plural) on my PS3's HDD with room to spare, and downloading them (over WiFi no less) was no problem (and yes, legitimately). There is absolutely nothing about demos for the next hardware generation *to* address. Either the studios/publishers put them out or they don't. Hell even the previous generation had demos, albeit disc-based ones (which *was* a notable problem in certain ways).


> I think it's only 'niche' by total volume. The percentage of 'core'/'hardcore' gamers is decreasing, but that's because the overall sensis is increasing. There are a lot more gamers now. Girls are gamers now! 51% of the population who were not previously in the statistics...
> 

Perhaps so, an interesting point. But then if that's so, why would the industry be suffering? If there's really that many more real gamers now, ones that like the big-budget cinematic stuff, shouldn't that mean enough increased sales to keep things going well? Or maybe there really are more gamers who like that stuff than before, but an even *greater* increase in the developers' interest?


> So is it the "core" gamers buying the modern AAA/big-budget titles?
> > Honestly, I'm not seeing it. From what I can tell, these days they're mostly switching over to indie games. As for why that's happening, I figure "Core" gamers are core gamers *because* they play videogames. Modern AAA/big-budget titles, are *not* videogames except in a very loose sense, and core gamers *do* frequently take issue with them. Modern AAA/big-budget titles are interactive movies, not videogames, because their focus is story, dialog and cinematics, not gameplay. So core gamers have been moving *away* from AAA/big-budget titles and towards indie games.
> >
> 
> Tell me Call of Duty and friends don't sell. They make squillions.

Yea, they do. And so does Porche. And yet most drivers have never touched a high-performance car and never will.

But how much room is there in the market for a big-budget games that *do* sell fantastically? Room enough for *some* obviously, the Italian sports cars of the gaming world, but is there really room for much more than a few?


> There are less successful titles than in recent years, and that's largely because the industry is sick, and kinda antiquated...

The question then is: What made it sick? My suspicion, and again this is only a suspicion, is that at least part of it is the production of big-budget cinematic extravaganzas overshooting demand. It wouldn't be too surprising for the industry to suffer if they're all trying to shoot the moon, so to speak. And it would seem that they are trying to, from what you've said about top-tier being so competitive.


> You may be right, traditionally self-identified *core* gamers are moving indy, because it's an innovative sector that's offering what they like about video games. But they've had their place taken by... 'normal people', you know, the kinds of people that go to the cinema and watch movies. There's a lot of them, and they still buy lots of games.

Maybe so, but I'm unconvinced that they buy a lot of AAA titles per-person.


> So is it the "casual" crowd buying the modern AAA/big-budget titles?
> > Definitely not. They're the ones who tend to be intimidated by 3D environments and game controllers and spend their time on Words With Friends, Wii Waggle, PopCap, etc., rarely spend much money on gaming and rarely venture outside iOS, Android and Web.
> >
> 
> What's your point here?

Just saying that I don't think the "casual" gaming crowd is buying a whole ton of AAA cinematic titles. Some, sure, but significantly more than that? I'd be surprised.


> 
> I know there is and will always be an audience for the modern
> > AAA/big-budget cinematic interactive-movie "games". But I don't see where there's a *large non-niche* audience for them. There's maybe the multiplayer-FPS enthusiasts, but that's a bit of a niche itself. And I don't see a whole lot else. It's the "Italian sports-cars" of videogaming: Just a big-budget niche.
> >
> 
> Well, a 'niche' that's bigger than the entire film industry is not a niche that one can ignore.

Bigger than the film industry? I know that's true in terms of revenue, and even profits IIRC, but in terms of audience size, ie number of people? I've never heard that claimed, and it would surprise me. Remember, niche doesn't mean small profits, just small audience. And I never said anything about ignoring it ;)


> I don't think the number of big-games players has significantly
> decreased though. It might have peaked, I haven't checked numbers
> like that for a fair while.
> What has happened, is the concept of the 'video games' industry has
> dramatically expanded. Basically everyone is a 'gamer' now, and
> everyone has some 99c games in their pocket.
> It's a whole new industry that is being explored, but since the
> statistics are all conflated into 'the video games industry', I can
> see how you might see it that way.
> 

Well, even looking exclusively at Console/PC, I still get the impression that AAA titles are becoming a harder and harder sell. But like I said, I don't have actual figures here, so I could be mistaken.


> The business model is changing shape too, thanks to the indy/casual thing. $60 is silly (and I'd love it if I could get games for $60 btw, we pay $90-$120 here.

Ouch! (Out of curiosity, would that be Europe, Australia, New Zealand, something else? I've heard that New Zealand in particular it can be very difficult to get games quickly and inexpensively. But then I've heard a lot of grumbling about Europe's VAT, too.)

I did pay $80 for Conker's Bad Fur Day, back many years ago. And right before its cost came down, too ;)  'Course that high cost was for entirely different reasons (N64) than in your case.


> yanks get fucking everything subsidised!),
> people aren't happy to spend $60 on entertainment anymore, when
> something that can equally entertain them costs 99c.
> I reckon AAA will start to sell in installments/episodes,

Some of them have already been trying out episodic (Half-Life 2, Sonic 4 - the latter is underrated IMO). Actually, from what I can tell, there's been a *lot* of talk about moving to episodic gaming for some time now. So that wouldn't surprise me either. OTOH, I would have expected to see more of it by now already, but maybe there's just been a lot of inertia in the way.


> or start
> leveraging in-game sales of stuff a lot more to reduce the cost of
> entry.

That's definitely been taking off. Don't know if it's working or not, but that sort of thing is all over the PSN Store. I'd be surprised if it isn't working though, because it does seem to make a lot of sense in many ways.

Closely related to this, have you read the latest Game Developer Magazine (April 2013)? There's a lot of very interesting, and convincing, discussion about Free-2-Play and F2P-inspired models having a lot of promise for AAA gaming, and some implication that the current (old) AAA model may be a sinking (or at least outdated and slightly leaky) ship. "Money Issues" on page 4 was particularly interesting.


> One thing I've heard reports of, contrary to your assertion that AAA is losing participants to the more innovative indy area, is 'casual games' are actually bridging previously non-gamers into big games.

Really? That was Nintendo's intended strategy with the Wii 1, but I'd
heard they never got much conversion ratio (and I know they wound up
alienating a lot of core gamers and developers in the process).
The people would buy a Wii just for Wii Sports or Wii Fit and then
never buy much else.

So that's interesting if the conversion is happening with indie games...and unfortunate for N, as it suggests they should have been more indie-friendly and download-friendly like 360, PSN and Steam. Which I could have told them from the start, but meh, they never listen to me ;)


> You suggest games are becoming
> interactive movies... this isn't an accident, they sell extremely
> well! And I think this trend will continue as a larger percentage of
> the audience are becoming women... I don't think Call of Duty or
> Grand Thieft Auto are going anywhere just yet though.
> 

That does suggest though that such people still aren't really interested in videogames. They're just interested in the hot new type of movie.

On Tue, 9 Apr 2013 16:44:53 -0400
Nick Sabalausky <SeeWebsiteToContactMe@semitwist.com> wrote:
> 
> [...giant snip...]

Sorry 'bout the duplicate post. My client seems to have gone haywire.

On 04/08/2013 06:30 AM, Manu wrote:
> I wonder if UDA's could be leveraged to implement this in a library?
> UDA's can not permute the type, so I guess it's impossible to implement
> something like @noalloc that behaves like @nothrow in a library...
> I wonder what it would take, it would be generally interesting to move
> some of the built-in attributes to UDA's if the system is rich enough to
> express it.

It's one of the most interesting use-cases for attributes so I hope to see this at some point.
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=9511

On 10 April 2013 04:29, Rob T <alanb@ucora.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday, 9 April 2013 at 16:49:04 UTC, Manu wrote:
>
>>
>>>>
>>>>  final class Foo{ //no inheritance
>>> final: //no virtuals
>>> ...
>>> }
>>>
>>> 2 extra words and you are done. The only problem I see is that there is
>>> no
>>> way to "undo" final on a few methods later...
>>>
>>
> final class Foo
> {
>    final //no virtuals
>    {
>       ...
>    }
>
>    // final ends, virtual methods below?
>    ....
>
> }
>

My point exactly. That is completely fucked.
final on the class means you can't derive it anymore (what's the point of a
class?), and the manual final blocks are totally prone to error.
In my experience, 90% of functions are not (or rather, should not be)
virtual. The common (and well performing) case should be default.

Any language with properties can't have virtual-by-default.
Seriously, .length or any other trivial property that can no longer be
inlined, or even just called.
And human error aside, do you really want to have to type final on every
function? Or indent every line an extra tab level?


And any junior/tired/forgetful programmer will
>> accidentally write slow code all over the place, and nobody will ever have any idea that they've done it. It's very dangerous.
>>
>
> I suppose, OTOH forgetting to make methods virtual can lead to another problem.
>

No it can't. override is explicit. You get an error if you forget to make a
function virtual.
And even if that was a risk (it's not), I'd take that any day of the week.

In general, perhaps we're still talking about the same problem as with how
> to ensure that portions of code do not contain unwanted features of the language. If you want to ban the use of virtual functions, there ought to be a way to do it easily, same for writing code that does not contain features of the language that require a GC, etc.


I don't want to ban the use of virtual functions. I want to ban the use of virtual functions that aren't marked virtual explicitly! ;)

Likewise, I like the GC, I just want to be able to control it.
Disable auto-collect, explicitly issue collect calls myself at controlled
moments, and give the collect function a maximum timeout where it will
yield, and then resume where it left off next time I call it.