Hello language_fan,
Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:33:56 +0000, BCS thusly wrote:
First, I have zero interest in game development so that's not an
issue for me.
Game development is one of the largest users of systems programming
languages.
I would mandate the 10-25% test no mater what language is being used.
The bulk of programming is done for Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (and
is done in COBOL </yuck>) The most common programs out there are OSs and
MS Office. As I said, I don't care about games.
OK so the lead knows that they can make things x times faster. Well
then the demo on the 10-25th percentile machine must not be x times
slower than what you need on ship day. Exactly the same as would be
true if the demo were done on a 50th or 75th percentile machine.
Well basically you could do that. Usually it does not work that way.
The idea is to prioritize the features and remove the worst ones.
well that's also a way to make it run faster.
It
cannot be known beforehand which features are unnecessary, and there
is a hard limit on how much can be removed. So either you can remove
say 30-50% of features
Clearly you can't cut core features, but you can make some eye candy features
go away when there isn't enough power to run them.
or do a complete redesign.
If a different design is practical and would be faster, you should have used
it in the first place or should be planning on doing it at some point anyway
(I have never seen a non trivial program that was fast enough that I didn't
whish it was faster).
But if you end up
using only 50% of the potential resources of the platform, your game
will usually suck (if the audience is technology oriented as it
usually is).
This is the classic "fast cheap or well done, pick two". For anything
that will ship, I'll always pick well done.
That is ok if you are a hobby programmer, but in real world e.g. in
the game industry the contracts pretty much dictate the schedules and
if you spend too much time on the project, the producer will not offer
any extra money. So if $1000..$1500 / month is ok for you, then fine.
I will grant that games can legitimately require top of the line hardware
(scientific programs, and some things like photoshop can also) but most anything
that runs on a desktop should be written so that people can run it with the
hardware they have now, rather than have to buy new hardware
