On the pain caused by mixing vectors and scalars

[mihal89]

Come on man! x86!

:)

[LoadHitStore]

@mihal89

BEGIN_RANT

no gaming platforms use x86 except for the old Xbox. I could do a presentation on ATMEL AVR or some Microchip microcontroller but I wanted to stick to things that are actually used for gaming. Also, x86 assembly makes me want to vomit. Have you seen it? Its insanely ugly, you can't specify destination registers, and SSE is extremely lacking in useful features.

END_RANT

[mihal89]

@LoadHitStore 1/2 It's your right to ignore/dislike/whatever x86, but it doesn't change the fact, that games were, are and will be played on the PCs. And it's not only about liking - for us people that are not yet in the industry and keep learning stuff, there are not many viable alternatives, especially in "big" platforms. I can program in C# for X360 (bye bye assembly and thousands of other useful kinds of optimizations).

[LoadHitStore]

@mihal89 PC is an afterthought for most developers because 1) its a small market and 2) its a miserable platform to develop for (I said "for", not "on"). Being motivated mainly by technical concerns, I don't care about point 1. I write stuff for old hardware that has a smaller user base than PC. However, point 2 keeps most developers away from PC and is a valid concern for anyone who wants to really code to the metal. Again, not saying all PC games suck, just speaking about dev for the platform

[LoadHitStore]

@mihal89 and yes, I am sure you can find someone in the world that disagrees with me and thats fine. All I am doing is stating my opinion and moving on :) If you want to get into a discussion about the technical details of why its such a miserable platform to dev for, I'd be totally cool with that :) And I know how hard it is to convey tone on the internet, but I meant that last comment in the least angry and most excited for debate way possible

[LoadHitStore]

@mihal89 aarrgghh I really don't know how to say stuff without sounding like a jerk. Sorry. Also keep in mind my specialties and interests, and know that anything I say is coming from the point of view of someone who despises ugly ISAs, out of order execution, and anything that stands in the way of predictably optimal performance. Hopefully then you can see where I am coming from.. Again, sorry. I dont know how to say stuff and not sound argumentative

[mihal89]

@LoadHitStore It's ok, you don't sound like a jerk at all. But you seem to miss my point (or I miss yours :)). I don't want to argue about miserability of x86 - I'm not even in the position to, since 1)I'm just starting to get into assembly level coding, and 2) I can't compare to others, since I don't know them. But I can imagine why OoO sucks. My only point was that some devs are gonna need this kind of knowledge you put in the movies in their x86 coding, event if not for pleasure

[mihal89]

@LoadHitStore 2/2 I can program PS3 but with GPU disabled - SPUs alone are interesting, but here where I live I can't even find the version with old firmware that allowed OtherOS. So here we are, cpding mostly for PCs. I'am sure not complaining that you don't care about x86 in your videos - they're great and highly educative for me anyway - and my first post was merely a joke. But saying that x86 and PCs doesn't concern game developers at all is imho a little silly.

[LoadHitStore]

@mihal89 ok, so I owe you a bit of an apology. I let myself go off on a couple of tangents unrelated to my original argument. In my personalt experience, there are just not a lot of professionals developing for PC. Most companies are doing console dev. When I said "nobody" is developing for PC, thats obviously an exaggeration as PC games do exist so someone must be making them. I just don't think a lot of pro studios are making them, and therefore its not something a lot of people are likely...

[LoadHitStore]

@mihal89 ... to do. Again, my views are obviously tainted by my personal experience. If I lived in a world where all my friends were professional PC developers, I'd probably think no one in the world is doing console dev. So yes, all my technical and aesthetic arguments against x86 aside, I really think its just something _most_ professional developers wont have to deal with this generation. Thats why I didn't include. Also its ugly, inefficient, and causes cancer in very small kittens :)

[Argilliath]

Very interesting stuff, also it's nice to hear the part about odd and even and actually remember those things from your other videos. Thanks!

[LoadHitStore]

@Argilliath no problem! Hit me up if you ever have any video requests

[TheDaFox]

You know what CPU I encounter every day as a game developer? x86[-64] ;)

[LoadHitStore]

@TheDaFox hehehe I said game, not spreadsheet :)