Why GTA 6 Will Disappoint

Rockstar will fall behind if GTA6 isn’t fun, not because they failed to adopt C++17 or higher. This article is bordering on ridiculous and almost reads like a subversive ad for Unreal Engine or Unity (moreover Unreal).

Many game engines eschew the C++ STL and latest language features in favor of rolling their own performance optimized platform, data structure and algorithms libraries.

I work at a large player in the video hardware industry and we roll all our own performance-sensitive video processing code in C99 or C++98 (we only recently adopted C++11 because, why fix what ain’t broken?). It doesn’t seem to be holding us back.

This article is weirdly focused on the version of C++ that each engine supports.

It argues that e.g. std::variant is important for Unity’s DOTS ECS system. And that std::optional is an optimization for rendering configurations. I mean, maybe? That doesn’t feel right to me at all. The STL classes are known to be relatively heavyweight.

I also can’t tell whether the author understands that you can get performance improvements from upgrading your compiler even if you continue to compile with an older language standard. Language version and compiler version are independent.

All C++ projects I was involved in used a very small, defined subset of C++ because C++ is too complex, large, and many of its more cryptic features are often just redundant (i.e. you can easily get away without them). Rarely, new syntax makes a lot of difference, other than confusing everyone even more. As for new additions to the standard library, it always felt like compiler vendors often make them way too heavyweight (maybe has to do with the spec), especially if it's something about I/O. Usually it's a non-brainer to wrap a bunch of native functions on a given platform yourself and get much more performant implementation with a far simpler interface. Consoles probably have their own SDKs with lots of platform-specific functions the standard C++ lacks anyway.

Strange article. It seems to be written by a guy who more or less knows what's going on, except he has a bizarre fixation on C++ standard versions and wants to coin the term "deep programming"? ("Deep programming" meaning programming based on using and creating state of the art [computer graphics] research or something? Weird.)

“ In an era defined by automation, smarter programming tools, and sky-high user expectations, companies can no longer rely on legacy methods.”

Not on topic but this structure of sentence was a really common first paragraph sentence in blog posts in the UK written by PRs over a decade ago, but seems to live on in US corporate language blogs and adverts. Not really sure why, given it doesn’t say…anything, really. It also just signposts the writing ahead will be fairly generic.

This is like saying a movie will disappoint because it was recorded on old film cameras instead of modern IMAX RED cameras. The version of C++ means absolutely nothing for the content of the game or the rendering techniques it can use. Whether or not it'll disappoint purely depends on the expectations of the public and what actually gets delivered

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IMHO, GTA6 will disappoint because of the exceedingly long 10 years of build up and hype for it that's been increasing exponentially since the first trailer dropped. No matter how good it is, it will never live up to player expectations.

We GTA fans have been speculating what might be coming in GTA6 since shortly after GTA5's release - since prior to this, GTA titles released every few years.

After the trailer was released, you had thousands of fans & YouTube videos examining seemingly every pixel of it looking for clues, secrets, easter eggs & creating a community map project to try and put together the map before the game was even released (I don't have sources for this stuff in front of me to link to at the moment, sorry)

Now the wait time for a second trailer is growing to a fever pitch, with GTA Online players trying to decipher when the trailer will release based on the waning & waxing of the moon in game. The fact that it's now been over a year since the first trailer releasing has started spilling over into anger and frustration. I can't imagine how enraged people are going to be when there's going to be an almost inevitable delay.

That's not to say that this same cycle of hype hasn't happened for other franchises, but this is a studio that has built almost nothing but hit game after hit game since it started producing them in ~1996. The original group of founders, Dan Houser, et al. have all left (or been fired - with the exception of Sam Houser) and moved onto other projects. Rockstar has gone from releasing multiple series of games across different platforms to having essentially two titles (Red Dead Redemption & GTA) to be their bread and butter, with microtransactions and subscriptions for GTA+, both of which are for GTA Online exclusively, being what funds their continued existence.

So, while GTA6 will still sell well regardless, they are absolutely reliant on the online component being a hit with players as they've put all of their eggs in that basket.

Obviously they may disappoint… but given the quality of RDR2 Im still gonna buy it on launch

Yeah it won’t.