Why Java?

[Harley Rana]

Hi erikd, i don't see how you can argue that c++ isn't the fastest game proggraming language.  Check out http://osl.iu.edu/~tveldhui/papers/DrDobbs2/drdobbs2.html

Talks about the improvements in compilers that have now let c++ bet fotran at its own game, in linear algebra and others.  The improvements also mean that c to c++ difference is only in style.

Theres also more info in a ddj tech net cast from Mr Stroustrup.

Princec has has shown how much we can get out of lwjgl and java, to make real games that are close to their c++ counterparts.  It will be interesting to see if any commercial game companies will start using java, with its huge productivity improvments.  
There was a recent game that used python to control the whole game, using c++ for rendering functions and math.
Don't have a link, but i think it was on orielynet.
There is a strong possibility of java being used similarly, as the control language, with platform specifc stuff were performace is critical.

[cfmdobbie]

Hi erikd, i don't see how you can argue that c++ isn't the fastest game proggraming language.  Check out

As an aside, I love the first line from the conclusion:

"After nearly a decade of being dismissed as too slow for scientific computing, C++ has caught up with Fortran and is giving it stiff competition"

Considering Java2 was first released in 1999, if we beat C++ performance by 2009 we're going to be improving faster that C++ did.  Nice!

It will be interesting to see if any commercial game companies will start using java, with its huge productivity improvments.

But they already are!  There already exist commercial games using Java in some way, all the way from using it as a scripting language (as in your Python example) to writing the whole game in it!

[princec]

Like, ME, for example

C++ and Fortan and C all have the potential to be more or less the same speed at doing anything because of their design - they can all, one way or another, get straight to the metal, and at the end of the day they all compile down to remarkably similar sets of machine code.

Java doesn't, because it's got some holes that need filling to do with memory access, and it's got some deliberate safety nets which are entirely welcome; but even with those holes, I think I can squeeze the same performance out of my Java code as anyone can from their C++ code, and where necessary I can cheat and do little bits of JNI.

Cas

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[oNyx]

[...]
Imagine the mod community! Dynamically downloaded mods from the server no matter what O/S you're on! Woo! It just all makes sense.[...]

q3 uses vms for mods. they are platform independed. one mod for all plattforms

well there are dll based mods too but noone uses em anymore.

even pure q3 (aka vanilla) consists out of 3 vms (game, cgame(client) and ui) and q3 is the interpreter

and curves (aka patches)... yes they r just a bunch of polys, build around some control points. u can change the amount of polys with r_subdivisions. "4" is the default value and pretty round "80" is somewhat blocky. btw the curves itself use LOD too (like player-models and items).

i worked (and i'm currently workin) on different q3 mods - i know alot bout this subject

[erikd]

q3 uses vms for mods

Cool. So they took the same way as Unreal I? (which is heavily inspired by java).
What language do you use then for Q3 mods?

Hi erikd, i don't see how you can argue that c++ isn't the fastest game proggraming language

Because:

Like the ability to go into asm blocks for those tight loops

Doesn't that make ASM the fastest language?
But I would agree that for games, you would be pretty insane to do it 100% assembly.
People went from ASM to C and C++ for the productivity gain, not for C++'s speed.
An argument which now also applies for using Java instead of C++.

That Fortran - C++ benchmark is interesting, but there's lots of other benchmarks showing Fortran to be faster than C++ and Java to be faster than C++ even and then VB.net being faster than Java  .
I'm not sure what to believe anymore except that benchmarks do not provide the rules except showing an example of 1 application alone, which is the benchmark code.

[oNyx]

Cool. So they took the same way as Unreal I? (which is heavily inspired by java).
What language do you use then for Q3 mods?
[...]

C. and a free available version of lcc produces *.qvm files out of it