D and the world

[Tom S]

First of all, thanks for all the feedback, guys :) It matters a lot to us.



 > Here's another thought.  Emphasizers how much faster D can compile 
then C++ due to the language features.  I don't know of a game company 
(I keep in contact with only about 6 or 7) that isn't using something 
like incredbuild (or discc) and still battling with compile-times.

Deadlock has about 67,000 lines of our own code, plus lots of 
dependencies which we don't even bother compiling into static libs. 
Along with these dependencies, it compiles within about 30 seconds on 
Pentium D 3.2 and Centrino 1.7.
There are also some more external dependencies that sit in DLLs which 
are mostly C++ code. They take about another 30 seconds, but are 
compiled rarely.

D's quick compile times along with DDL allow us to use quite an 
interesting rendering architecture, which resembles a microkernel 
design. In future, these 'kernels' or 'shaders' will be dynamically 
recompiled and reloaded at runtime.



 > PS - Wasn't there already a game called Deadlock?

Yup, a strategy game. Deadlock is just a codename, so I guess they won't 
be after us ;)



Some info on the project:
Deadlock is currently being developed by five univ students for the 
'Team Programming' course at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, 
Poland. The development has lasted about 6 months, during which we've 
coded lots of cool features, such as:
- OpenGL-based rendering with Cg boosted graphics and fallbacks for 
older machines
- Particle systems
- Skeletal animation
- 3d sound
- Networked physics using the PhysX middleware
- Framebuffer effects
- Pretty advanced (IMHO) scene graph management
- Custom Immediate Mode GUI
- In-game console
- Custom model exporter (MAXScript) and importer (D)
- Quake3 BSP level loading and rendering

It wouldn't be quite possible in any other language... Some of us had 
prior C++ knowledge, some knew Java, others a bit of Python. None of the 
languages would do quite the job that D did. As the lead programmer, I 
talked the rest of the team into trying out D and they got sucked in. 
Most of us had little to no idea about game or 3d graphics programming 
prior to the project, and yet it turns out that it's possible to learn 
D, 3d and game programming AND make a cool game in half a year.


I hope no one minds the shameless self-promoting. We wanted to publish 
some info about the project after its official presentation on May, 10th 
but as the info has already 'leaked' to the NG ;) then maybe someone 
might want to hear more about it.

We're currently in the process of adding last features into the game, 
polishing it as far as possible and preparing for the presentation. I'm 
definitely looking forward to continuing the project later and I hope 
the team will share the same passion :)


-- 
Tomasz Stachowiak
http://h3.team0xf.com/
h3/h3r3tic on #D freenode