Re: Games (Re: [Caml-list] Caml productivity.)

[eijiro_sumii@anet.ne.jp]

From: Issac Trotts <issac@myfirstlink.net>
> > I'm just curious: are people developing console games 
> > (PS2/XBox/Gamesomething) using gcc? Is it even an option?
> 
> Yes, a lot of Playstation2 developers use a modified version of gcc.
> 
> > What about O'Caml?
> 
> I haven't heard of any console games written with OCaml.  That's not
> necessarily because it would be a bad idea.  More likely it's because
> not many game developers know OCaml.  

I often have discussions with a friend and former colleague of mine
(who has very good expertise in many programming languages including
C, C++, Scheme, ML, etc. and is now working in a Japanese game
company) about using OCaml or other high-level languages for
developing console games.

Ignorance may of course be the most significant obstacle, but another
problem is PlayStation2's slow main memory, which is a big challenge
to such languages as ML, in particular to the garbage collector - it
should not pause the real-time 3D graphics animation for any more than
1/60 seconds, you know.

A good news is, even so, the developers (around him, at least) are
_eager_ for garbage collection in order to manage a tremendous number
of 3D objects (or other data structures) with complex dependencies.
For this purpose, he has even tried porting Boehm's conservative
garbage collector.  (Reference counting doesn't work because the
dependencies are often mutual.)

Another is that some 3D graphics people in Hollywood are actually
using LISP because (the major part of) 3D graphics is in fact symbolic
computation, at which "functional" languages are good.

--
Eijiro Sumii (http://www.yl.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~sumii/)
Research Associate, Department of Computer Science, University of Tokyo
-------------------
To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr
Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/
Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners