Tim Sweeney Interview

[hal]

Tim Sweeney talks to GameDaily about all things Unreal Engine 3, including the adoption of the engine for use in television and film. Interestingly, he also reveals that the engine is now up to 2 million lines of C++ code for the engine and 150,00 lines of UnrealScript.

The introduction of Unreal by Hollywood is really neat. They're actually creating backdrops to some TV shows using the engine. It's all done in real-time. We're starting to see this be adopted by movie production houses for films, which is crazy. When you look at the history of Hollywood they started out with extraordinarily powerful movie business tools that are heinously slow. On the other end, we have simpler and less powerful tools that are completely fast in real-time.

[elmuerte]

lines of code doesn't tell anything except the number of times the "enter" or "return" key was pressed.

[JaFO]

...
OTOH how what unit of measurement would be useful to measure the 'size' of a program ?
Lines of code ?
#number of classes or files used ?
...

[elmuerte]

depends, what do you mean with "size"?

size metrics for source code have only a useful relative meaning, but number of lines of file size is pretty much always a useless metric. Number of statements can be useful, memory size can be useful, compiled code size, etc. these can be useful

[Deapblade]

Originally Posted by JaFO

...
OTOH how what unit of measurement would be useful to measure the 'size' of a program ?
Lines of code ?
#number of classes or files used ?
...

Nothing, it's just plain stupid to 'measure' a program. A program has to fullfill the tasks it's written for in the most efficient way possible. Like elmuerte said, lines could mean anything: empty spaces, redundant code, programmer notes, actual useful code, etc.

[ShatteredX]

While the number of lines of code in a program is certainly not an accurate representation of how much actual "code" is present, it does give someone who is unfamiliar with programming some sense of how much thought and work goes into creating a game engine such as UE3.

[elmuerte]

no it doesn't, there is no relation between required thought and the number of line of code that it resulted in.
also, previously invested thought time for old solutions is not shown because those lines of code have been replaced.

[[SAS]Solid Snake]

Also lines of code means nothing other than what elmuerte has stated, and gives the wrong impression of why code is complex.

for (i=0;i<j;++i) dothis();

for (i = 0; i < j; ++i)
{
  dothis();
}

[JaFO]

Originally Posted by elmuerte

no it doesn't, there is no relation between required thought and the number of line of code that it resulted in.
also, previously invested thought time for old solutions is not shown because those lines of code have been replaced.

That part of the development-process is interesting indeed.
Imagine a program that needs 10,000 lines less code because someone found a better solution ...

I think there is no real way to indicate the complexity of code to anyone who is not familliar with the subject at hand.

// another example :

int addone(int i)
{
   return i + 1;
}

main()
{
...
  int i = 0;
  int j = 10;
  while (i < j)
  {
    doThis();
    i = addOne(i);
  }
...

See ... I've added even more lines, the routine became even more complex (and has an increased chance of having bugs). It has not become 'better' code.

// ---
It is interesting to see what game-development tools are doing to 'traditional' Hollywood industry.

[MonsOlympus]

On the flipside less lines does not always make 'better' code either

[elmuerte]

McCabe's Cyclomatic Complexity metric is quite a good indication of code complexity, and there are a few other good metrics when it comes to code complexity.
But code complexity is something very different from source code size metrics.

[Severin]

elmuerte is correct. 2 million lines of 'print' statements does not equal a complex piece of code neither does 20 million.

With the case in hand though a fair chunk of that can be assumed to be complex code and not just 'print' statements.

[elmuerte]

Originally Posted by Severin

With the case in hand though a fair chunk of that can be assumed to be complex code and not just 'print' statements.

Everybody should know that assumptions are bad. Assumptions result in rockets blowing up, collapsing bridges, demoguy and darkpulse.

[Severin]

If they managed to get UE3 up and running just by using prints then hats off to them I say.

But your right you can't assume that its not. (though it almost certainly isn't )

[elmuerte]

Originally Posted by Severin

If they managed to get UE3 up and running just by using prints then hats off to them I say.

But your right you can't assume that its not. (though it almost certainly isn't )

doing that is much more complicated than doing it the "normal" way.

[Severin]

There we disagree. As I said above no matter how long the list of prints, its still simple from a code perspective. The thought that would go into such a (insane) project and the end result (output) would be complex though.

[elmuerte]

ok, then show me a program that only uses `print' and can list the number of lines in a file.
remember, you can only use `print' in the source code, nothing else.
erm.. is there even a print function in C? ok, you can only use `printf'

[Severin]

I did say such a thing would be an insane way of coding.

Print "1"
Print "2"
...

is there even a print function in C? ok, you can only use `printf'

I was trying to be nonspecific about language and used quotes to make it distinct from BASICs Print statement.

Edit..
Oops my bad. I misread your challenge. Nope I cannot come up with a version that would read another file.

More edit...
For something graphical you could conceivably come up with something by overlaying prints at the same x,y coords... aggh i'm starting to take this premise seriously.

[8-4-7-2]

Originally Posted by JaFO

...
OTOH how what unit of measurement would be useful to measure the 'size' of a program ?

There are tons of metrics. Usually they measure not so much the size of the program, but the complexity of its modules and its design. That is how many loops, checks, dependencies, etc. are present.

But as said, that's still not all that useful to compare any project to any other project.

[niaz2]

HI

THIS INTERVIEW IS FINE.
THIS SYSTEM IS NICE.