Re: [Haskell-cafe] Re: Tim Sweeney (the gamer)

On Jan 10, 2008 12:41 PM, Achim Schneider wrote:

"Sebastian Sylvan" wrote:

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For those who don't know him, Tim Sweeney is the main programmer behind Epic Games's popular Unreal Engine. When he talks, many game developers will listen.

We will dream, most likely.

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Perhaps more importantly, anything he does will affect a large number of game developers.

Dreaming of pointy-haired bosses listening to him, that is.

I think he meant in the sense that the unreal engine has *lots* of licensees. If UnrealScript 4 is a Haskell-like language with lenient evaluation and limited dependent typing, etc., then that's what a large number of game developers will use in their day-to-day work.

Er, yes. Some gameplay programmers will, and also some level designers, seen 3d-wise, that most likely means gfx guys, who would generally rather work with some warm, fuzzy, graphical switch->event thingy. The rest is still afaict left with C++ which gets linked into the engine.

I would assume that if they did go this route of developing their own language, they would probably put a much larger part of the code-base in this new language, but this is all hypothetical.

You make less bugs with that language? Fucking learn to write C++!

Excuse me?

I don't think you would get even close to 1000 people who use UnrealScript to earn their living.

You don't need more than that. All you need to do is prove that it works, and other similar languages will have an easier time. If you get a couple of AAA titles using a purely functional language for >50% of the code, then the resistance towards switching languages will likely diminish. -- Sebastian Sylvan +44(0)7857-300802 UIN: 44640862