• Jean Crystof <news news.com> Jan 03 2011
• "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> Jan 03 2011

Jean Crystof <news news.com> writes:

Robert Clipsham Wrote:

 Having seen a post by Peter Alexander (in Re: D for game development), 
 mentioning some of the issues he's hit I thought I'd post this. I've 
 been in his shoes (every other time I use D it seems), and feel I should 
 ask - who here uses D, and to what extent?
 
 I'm mostly interested in those of you with 1000 Line plus projects in D, 
 as that's when I've found I start hitting issues.
 
 Just to clarify, for those D purists among you... I'm not trolling, just 
 curious (I wouldn't normally have asked, but now I know I'm not paranoid 
 and the only one having problems, I thought I'd ask).


We used D in a college project. It's a Wolfenstein 3D clone (simple ray caster
engine, untextured floor and ceil, our own software renderer, uses SDL) written
in D1 by 7 persons. Thanks to fast compile speed we were able to use TDD
heavily. The game is about 105 kLOC and the unittest suite 280 kLOC with
documents. We were impressed how tight code was possible to write in D (FPS
games can have millions lines of code) and how unittests were integrated in the
language. We would not have been able to implement anything as complex in C++
or Java in only 3 months. Maybe a tic tac toe or tetris. My role was porting
Java/C++ type coding style of other members in more like D as the repository
master. They quickly learned more advanced idioms.

We encountered one forward reference bug, but it disappeared when restructuring
program. No other bugs were found in D and we updated the compiler in 1-7 days
when a new came.

"Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:

"Jean Crystof" <news news.com> wrote in message 
news:ift3aj$b97$1 digitalmars.com...
 Robert Clipsham Wrote:

 Having seen a post by Peter Alexander (in Re: D for game development),
 mentioning some of the issues he's hit I thought I'd post this. I've
 been in his shoes (every other time I use D it seems), and feel I should
 ask - who here uses D, and to what extent?

 I'm mostly interested in those of you with 1000 Line plus projects in D,
 as that's when I've found I start hitting issues.

 Just to clarify, for those D purists among you... I'm not trolling, just
 curious (I wouldn't normally have asked, but now I know I'm not paranoid
 and the only one having problems, I thought I'd ask).


 We used D in a college project. It's a Wolfenstein 3D clone (simple ray 
 caster engine, untextured floor and ceil, our own software renderer, uses 
 SDL) written in D1 by 7 persons. Thanks to fast compile speed we were able 
 to use TDD heavily. The game is about 105 kLOC and the unittest suite 280 
 kLOC with documents. We were impressed how tight code was possible to 
 write in D (FPS games can have millions lines of code) and how unittests 
 were integrated in the language. We would not have been able to implement 
 anything as complex in C++ or Java in only 3 months. Maybe a tic tac toe 
 or tetris. My role was porting Java/C++ type coding style of other members 
 in more like D as the repository master. They quickly learned more 
 advanced idioms.

 We encountered one forward reference bug, but it disappeared when 
 restructuring program. No other bugs were found in D and we updated the 
 compiler in 1-7 days when a new came.


Cool. I find raycasters very nostalgic. Out of curiosity, was there any book 
or reference that you used for the raycasting algorithm, or did you just 
work out the math and implement? There are a least a couple old DOS-based 
raycasting book I read cover-to-cover back in the day. Although I've never 
actually implemented anything other than a Mode7-style floor.