assume, assert, enforce, @safe

[Brad Roberts via Digitalmars-d]

On 9/29/2014 6:01 AM, Bruno Medeiros via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> I would invite you to buy a *retail copy* of Elder Scrolls 3 : Morrowind
> for PC and try playing that. The game did exactly what Walter and you
> guys suggested: when an assertion tripped, it would crash straight away
> to the desktop, with only a message dialog saying that an assertion had
> failed (with info on the source and line of the assertion, and an extra
> message).
> I couldn't play that game, it would crash too often. And saving wasn't
> quick enough that I could in practice be manually saving every 15 min.
> or so.
> Only when several iterations of patches game out, several months after
> release, did the game become stable enough to be played enjoyably.
> (in fairness, if the assertions where about core game logic, I too would
> prefer a crash rather then possible corruption of game state. But IIRC
> there was a few assertions crashes that seemed related to textures,
> directx, or shader stuff - for that I could have lived without a game
> crash)
>
> Sometimes even with known bugs the game is shipped, because of
> management pressure and/or huge delays already. (especially with
> pressures to do multi-platform releases).

The problem isn't the use of asserts and quick exiting of the app, 
though.  The problem is releasing an app of horrible quality.  The 
assert based reporting just makes it super obvious.  There's no way to 
say how bad the game would have been with "try and continue anyway" code.