4 ms·

Agreed, what a great interview! I remember UnrealEd from the Unreal 1 and Unreal Tournament 1 disks. That's how it looked like: https://www.gamasutra.com/db_ar

Agreed, what a great interview! I remember UnrealEd from the Unreal 1 and Unreal Tournament 1 disks. That's how it looked like: https://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/blog/309414/ide1.jpg https://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/blog/309414/ide1.jp... Back in the "engine war" between Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament, the map community loved UnrealEd, it was definitely easier to use and was just-in-time, no seperate minute-long build-process to build the level and try it out, in UnrealEd you could just try it out. Visual Basic 4-6 were incredible RAD product (rapid application development). Before Github, before GoogleCode, before Sourceforge, there was PlanetSourceCode and it was the go to place for Visual Basic dev community. For everything you could find little programs and code. Windows 95/98 era and Visual Basic was the perfect symbiosis. Very sad when MS announced the vision of .net and stopped VB6 in 1999 (it took them until 2003 to show up with something, yet many devs faced a wall with no support, and were forced to moved on to Java/PHP/etc). Anyway when I first read about UnrealEd was coded in Visual Basic 5 or 6 I couldn't believe it, it had an outstanding performance and integrated the C++ renderer perfectly. Though it was a bit unstable (which was common also for Word 97 and Excel 97 back then), so one had to save a lot, and use "save as" to not correct files. I would say the next evolution of game editors was certainly Sandbox editor of Cryengine 1 from Far Cry 1 disk (2004). Creating tropical islands with its landscape editor was never easier. Of course other tools soon reached parity.

pjmlp 9y ago
On those days I was still a bit biased towards Delphi and C++ Builder, much more productive that VB and VC++/MFC. Sadly Borland lost their way, and their key architects to Microsoft, so. Even today, C++/CX with XAML is not as productive as C++ Builder, and it took all the way to Windows 8, for Microsoft to start taking .NET AOT compilation seriously. Meaning VB 6 probably still produces better executables than VB.NET.
- vintagedave 9y ago
  > Even today, C++/CX with XAML is not as productive as C++ Builder I'm glad you think that - I work on C++Builder, and work hard to improve its strengths. Productivity is a key one compared to other C++ tools. These days it's not just Windows, but iOS and Android too, and you will hear more good news about platforms and C++ standards support sometime soon. Not all the team left for MS, by the way: we have some truly incredible people on staff. From the article, re Turbo Pascal, the precursor to Delphi, > You would be typing code, and then several seconds later it would be compiled, and you'd be running it. That's still true of Delphi today! There's a video on Youtube of a million lines of code compiled and linked in about six seconds. It's hard to overestimate the productivity that kind of round-trip speedy development brings.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Nowadays I am mostly a Java/.NET guy, but nice to hear about upcoming C++ Builder improvements. German companies are still into Delphi, with a few yearly conferences.
  - badsectoracula 9y ago
    Does modern C++ Builder still have DRM? I remember looking some years ago at how Delphi/C++ are doing and i saw that they had DRM (some people even complained in the forums that they had to use cracks to make the tools work in their laptop while on the go, which is a big screwup IMO). I have an ancient version of Borland C++ Builder - actually the first one - which i got off ebay some years ago (i like collecting old develpment tools [1]). I like that it basically works everywhere and is stable, even in Linux through Wine [2]. I used it mainly to make a few things for fun, like some patches for old games [3] (because it makes very small executables - like 250K or so), a small 3D editor [4] and a WinLIL [5] - a PyWin inspired shell for my LIL [6] scripting language (mainly an excuse to make yet another thing that uses LIL :-P). Normally i use Lazarus [7] (on which i wrote the more serious alternative for WinLIL, LIL Studio [8]), but there is value to being able to use C and C++ code directly from a very easy to use RAD GUI builder. For example it took me like a couple of hours to make WinLIL and 99% of that time was making the graphics routines - for LIL i just dropped the lil.c and lil.h files into the project and it worked out of the box. Also when a new version of GLEW was released, i thought "well, this is C right? Let's see if it works with BCB" and it did, although i had to remove the C99-isms (only a few changes here and there) [9]. For comparison to actually access OpenGL 4.6 through Lazarus i had to write an entire custom generator (basically reimplement GLEW) [10]. Some people have actually suggested me to try Qt Creator and i did... and it sucked. Ok, not exactly sucked, but it was way less "integrated" and more kludgy than what you'd get with classic VB, Delphi, C++ Builder or Lazarus. It is certainly a step above than the dialog editors you get in other toolkits that feel like glorified Win16 era resource editors (actually scratch the glorified bits because you can't even embed actual resources in them, only edit the dialogs). But even Delphi 1.0 on Windows 3.1 feels better. So yeah, C++ Builder can be a great thing to have... BUT! As i wrote above, the last time i tried Embarcadero's stuff, they seemed to be heavily infested with DRM crapware. I really detest DRM - notice how i actually have Borland C++ Builder running from its original disk basically 22 years after its original release from a company that practically doesn't exist anymore? I am certain it'll work even 22 years into the future - even if Microsoft goes braindead and kills Win32, it'll be Wine or even some emulation layer like DOSBox. But can i expect the same from modern C++ Builder? Does it still have the DRM? There have been several changes since the day i wrote the article at [1] (and even tried C++ Builder a year or so later and found that it addressed some issues i had with the UI that i mentioned at the bottom - although the bloat issues were still there, but those are minor issues that will solve themselves with time - after all i have tried BCB1 in an old PC from late 90s i have and it isn't exactly fast either :-P) and AFAIK the company has changed hands again so things might have changed on that front too. Personally i wouldn't like to pay $700 for a program that goes away in 3-4 years and shuts down their DRM servers making it impossible for me to use that again. And lets be honest, Embarcadero has changes hands (and names!) so many times over the years that their future prospects aren't exactly trustworthy. EDIT: i just saw that C++ Builder now costs $2k... well, FWIW i wouldn't be able to buy it even without DRM :-P. When did the cost change? I remember it being much cheaper. [1] http://runtimeterror.com/blog/borland-c-builder.html http://runtimeterror.com/blog/borland-c-builder.html [2] https://i.imgur.com/rInEdBY.png https://i.imgur.com/rInEdBY.png (that is XFCE with a Win95 theme) [3] https://i.imgur.com/eZ44J8y.png https://i.imgur.com/eZ44J8y.png [4] https://i.imgur.com/zRguUf8.png https://i.imgur.com/zRguUf8.png [5] http://runtimeterror.com/tech/lil/winlil.png http://runtimeterror.com/tech/lil/winlil.png [6] http://runtimeterror.com/rep/lil http://runtimeterror.com/rep/lil [7] http://www.lazarus-ide.org/ http://www.lazarus-ide.org/ [8] https://i.imgur.com/laBbvww.png https://i.imgur.com/laBbvww.png [9] https://i.imgur.com/JiQHAwz.png https://i.imgur.com/JiQHAwz.png [10] http://runtimeterror.com/rep/gl2unit/index http://runtimeterror.com/rep/gl2unit/index

pjmlp 9y ago

On those days I was still a bit biased towards Delphi and C++ Builder, much more productive that VB and VC++/MFC. Sadly Borland lost their way, and their key architects to Microsoft, so. Even today, C++/CX with XAML is not as productive as C++ Builder, and it took all the way to Windows 8, for Microsoft to start taking .NET AOT compilation seriously. Meaning VB 6 probably still produces better executables than VB.NET.

vintagedave 9y ago
> Even today, C++/CX with XAML is not as productive as C++ Builder I'm glad you think that - I work on C++Builder, and work hard to improve its strengths. Productivity is a key one compared to other C++ tools. These days it's not just Windows, but iOS and Android too, and you will hear more good news about platforms and C++ standards support sometime soon. Not all the team left for MS, by the way: we have some truly incredible people on staff. From the article, re Turbo Pascal, the precursor to Delphi, > You would be typing code, and then several seconds later it would be compiled, and you'd be running it. That's still true of Delphi today! There's a video on Youtube of a million lines of code compiled and linked in about six seconds. It's hard to overestimate the productivity that kind of round-trip speedy development brings.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Nowadays I am mostly a Java/.NET guy, but nice to hear about upcoming C++ Builder improvements. German companies are still into Delphi, with a few yearly conferences.
- badsectoracula 9y ago
  Does modern C++ Builder still have DRM? I remember looking some years ago at how Delphi/C++ are doing and i saw that they had DRM (some people even complained in the forums that they had to use cracks to make the tools work in their laptop while on the go, which is a big screwup IMO). I have an ancient version of Borland C++ Builder - actually the first one - which i got off ebay some years ago (i like collecting old develpment tools [1]). I like that it basically works everywhere and is stable, even in Linux through Wine [2]. I used it mainly to make a few things for fun, like some patches for old games [3] (because it makes very small executables - like 250K or so), a small 3D editor [4] and a WinLIL [5] - a PyWin inspired shell for my LIL [6] scripting language (mainly an excuse to make yet another thing that uses LIL :-P). Normally i use Lazarus [7] (on which i wrote the more serious alternative for WinLIL, LIL Studio [8]), but there is value to being able to use C and C++ code directly from a very easy to use RAD GUI builder. For example it took me like a couple of hours to make WinLIL and 99% of that time was making the graphics routines - for LIL i just dropped the lil.c and lil.h files into the project and it worked out of the box. Also when a new version of GLEW was released, i thought "well, this is C right? Let's see if it works with BCB" and it did, although i had to remove the C99-isms (only a few changes here and there) [9]. For comparison to actually access OpenGL 4.6 through Lazarus i had to write an entire custom generator (basically reimplement GLEW) [10]. Some people have actually suggested me to try Qt Creator and i did... and it sucked. Ok, not exactly sucked, but it was way less "integrated" and more kludgy than what you'd get with classic VB, Delphi, C++ Builder or Lazarus. It is certainly a step above than the dialog editors you get in other toolkits that feel like glorified Win16 era resource editors (actually scratch the glorified bits because you can't even embed actual resources in them, only edit the dialogs). But even Delphi 1.0 on Windows 3.1 feels better. So yeah, C++ Builder can be a great thing to have... BUT! As i wrote above, the last time i tried Embarcadero's stuff, they seemed to be heavily infested with DRM crapware. I really detest DRM - notice how i actually have Borland C++ Builder running from its original disk basically 22 years after its original release from a company that practically doesn't exist anymore? I am certain it'll work even 22 years into the future - even if Microsoft goes braindead and kills Win32, it'll be Wine or even some emulation layer like DOSBox. But can i expect the same from modern C++ Builder? Does it still have the DRM? There have been several changes since the day i wrote the article at [1] (and even tried C++ Builder a year or so later and found that it addressed some issues i had with the UI that i mentioned at the bottom - although the bloat issues were still there, but those are minor issues that will solve themselves with time - after all i have tried BCB1 in an old PC from late 90s i have and it isn't exactly fast either :-P) and AFAIK the company has changed hands again so things might have changed on that front too. Personally i wouldn't like to pay $700 for a program that goes away in 3-4 years and shuts down their DRM servers making it impossible for me to use that again. And lets be honest, Embarcadero has changes hands (and names!) so many times over the years that their future prospects aren't exactly trustworthy. EDIT: i just saw that C++ Builder now costs $2k... well, FWIW i wouldn't be able to buy it even without DRM :-P. When did the cost change? I remember it being much cheaper. [1] http://runtimeterror.com/blog/borland-c-builder.html http://runtimeterror.com/blog/borland-c-builder.html [2] https://i.imgur.com/rInEdBY.png https://i.imgur.com/rInEdBY.png (that is XFCE with a Win95 theme) [3] https://i.imgur.com/eZ44J8y.png https://i.imgur.com/eZ44J8y.png [4] https://i.imgur.com/zRguUf8.png https://i.imgur.com/zRguUf8.png [5] http://runtimeterror.com/tech/lil/winlil.png http://runtimeterror.com/tech/lil/winlil.png [6] http://runtimeterror.com/rep/lil http://runtimeterror.com/rep/lil [7] http://www.lazarus-ide.org/ http://www.lazarus-ide.org/ [8] https://i.imgur.com/laBbvww.png https://i.imgur.com/laBbvww.png [9] https://i.imgur.com/JiQHAwz.png https://i.imgur.com/JiQHAwz.png [10] http://runtimeterror.com/rep/gl2unit/index http://runtimeterror.com/rep/gl2unit/index