5 ms·

Terraria Source Code (2013)

38 points by tentacleuno 5y ago

tentacleuno 5y ago
Posted this because I remember seeing it a few years back and was like 'woah, thsi is bad.'
- Longhanks 5y ago
  Why is it bad? It fulfilled all purposes: It made the developer some (a lot of?) money, a bunch of people very happy, Terraria shares among the most positive reviews of all games on steam (also meaning there can't be too many critical bugs, as that would piss off gamers pretty easily), was/is frequently updated since years, and is generally considered "a good game". What would a metric such as "clean code score" help with any of this?
  - perttir 5y ago
    The code looks bad. I guess it has been refactored later. The repo says this code is only for educational purposes. This spaghetti can be still a good example for the reasons you mentioned. Or maybe it is a good example for an ugly prototype version of an game. This could be even better if people could see a refactored version of this codebase.
  - hesdeadjim 5y ago
    This 100%. You are doing a great job if you maintain clean code for 50% of the project, because that last 50% will be a mad dash to get to ship. Source: 12 years in gamedev ;P
- CodeGlitch 5y ago
  Games don't optimise for "clean code" or maintainability - they optimise for speed and cost. Of course in a perfect world it would be all of those. - Former game developer
  - thi2 5y ago
    I'm really wondering why clean code or maintainability imply higher cost or lower performance for you.
    - CodeGlitch 5y ago
      Because game code is "throw away" = don't assume you are making a sequel = there's no reason to make it maintainable. You write it as fast as you can to fulfil the requirements. Stuff like unit/system tests are a waste of time because it's cheaper to hire people to manually press buttons. Yes I know this sounds bad - but that's how the games industry works. And is one of the reasons I left. Note that if you are working in engine code, then you want all the automated tests, proper architecture, etc.
- slingnow 5y ago
  Are you not aware that decompilers exist and that is likely the reason this code looks the way it does?
  - tentacleuno 5y ago
    Hmm, no? It says nothing about decompilation in the repository, from what I can ascertain. How have you deduced that the code is decompiled?
    - crossworth 5y ago
      From the Repo: https://github.com/TheVamp/Terraria-Source-Code/issues/1#issuecomment-714304110 https://github.com/TheVamp/Terraria-Source-Code/issues/1#iss... And: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30347289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30347289
- tuckerpo 5y ago
  It's pretty clearly reverse engineered from bytecode by some sort of tool. It's full of `goto IL_label` statements. Would a programmer write a goto in C# at all, let alone call their procedures "intermediate language xyz"?
kaszanka 5y ago
if (num9 + num7 >= num6) { num8++; num7 += num9 - num6; This looks a lot like decompiler output.
- crossworth 5y ago
  Yeah, Im not sure why we are talking about decompiled code. "I know that this is a real mess. But back in the days the decompiler was not so good to create super fancy code and I was to lazy to rewrite thousands lines of code." - https://github.com/TheVamp/Terraria-Source-Code/issues/1 https://github.com/TheVamp/Terraria-Source-Code/issues/1
- fantyoon 5y ago
  It is. The author of the repo wrote about it here in German: https://thevamp.cc/2013/10/12/terraria-1-2-decompiling-und-source-code/ https://thevamp.cc/2013/10/12/terraria-1-2-decompiling-und-s... From what I can tell this was originally motivated by bugs in the German version of the game. Back then 1.1.2 was to be the last version of Terraria (a running joke at this point, they announced 1.4.4 a little while ago) and so decompiling seemed like the best option to get those bugs fixed. This might be a more interesting blog post on that topic: https://thevamp.cc/2012/07/16/terraria-1-1-2-zu-terraria-1-1-3-bug-hunting/ https://thevamp.cc/2012/07/16/terraria-1-1-2-zu-terraria-1-1...
- taddeimania 5y ago
  this looks like a decompiler's take on the "why was 6 afraid of 7" joke. it would seem decompilers are not that funny.
junon 5y ago
100% this is decompiled output. There's no way this would be a single file. There's no way there'd be `String.concat(new object[] { "Some", '\t', "strings" })` written by a real human. This is reversed from some bytecode and the decompiler had to make some guesses as to what the original code was. Don't judge the developers based off of this.
- capableweb 5y ago
  > Don't judge the developers based off of this. I'd go further and say "never judge a developer by the code they write without knowing 100% of the context". So many times developers trash each other for shitty code quality without knowing anything about why the code was written the way it was. There isn't always good reasons for "excellent code", sometimes good enough is perfect. We like to think we all live in a vacuum where there is no reason for code to not be perfect, but we forget we live in an environment which is not perfect, and the code is meant to contribute to the this environment, sometimes leading to less-than-perfect code. So before you judge your fellow developer based on code, ask them first to explain the context around the code, before jumping to any conclusions.
  - kylegill 5y ago
    > we live in an environment which is not perfect, and the code is meant to contribute to the this environment That's a really delightful take! Makes me feel like the code I throw at the wall to see what sticks does make a difference in my corner of the world. When you add that the definition of perfect can be subjective, one person's definition of perfect might have evolved into it by passing through what is now their good enough definition.
  - lordleft 5y ago
    Amen. Even the best coder can write trainwrecks if given sufficiently little time and subject to enough pressure.
  - WalterGR 5y ago
    So many times developers trash each other for shitty code quality without knowing anything about why the code was written the way it was. In a perfect world, that context would go right into comments next to the code.
mac-chaffee 5y ago
This version is more up-to-date and has a readme: https://github.com/UTINKA/Terraria https://github.com/UTINKA/Terraria Having looked at a few games' source code, are there really any complex games with pretty code? With as many subsystems, items, and enemies as Terraria has, it feels almost inevitable that you'll have complexity like this snippet for determining when to spawn the hair stylist NPC: else if ((int) Main.tile[index1, y].wall == SpiderUnsafe | flag10) { if ((int) Main.tile[index1, y].wall == SpiderUnsafe && Main.rand.Next(8) == 0 && (!flag6 && (double) y >= Main.rockLayer) && (y < Main.maxTilesY - 210 && !NPC.savedStylist && !NPC.AnyNPCs(WebbedStylist))) NPC.NewNPC(index1 \* 16 + 8, y \* 16, WebbedStylist, 0, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, (int) byte.MaxValue); else if (Main.hardMode) NPC.NewNPC(index1 \* 16 + 8, y \* 16, BlackRecluse, 0, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, (int) byte.MaxValue); else NPC.NewNPC(index1 \* 16 + 8, y \* 16, WallCreeper, 0, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, (int) byte.MaxValue); }
- ramesh31 5y ago
  >Having looked at a few games' source code, are there really any complex games with pretty code? Games don't have the same maintenance requirements as a web application. They are made, shipped, played, and forgotten. So code cleanliness is generally an afterthought. And honestly, most indie game developers are not great programmers. But making a great game has very little to do with programming nowadays. The tooling has come so far that many hit indie games are now built using "no-code" solutions like Unreal Blueprints. And advertising that you hand coded the entire game in C with immaculate coding standards wont make it any more fun.
  - autarch 5y ago
    > They are made, shipped, played, and forgotten. Terraria was released in 2011 and is still getting updates.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - ramesh31 5y ago
wyldfire 5y ago
If it's decompiled, then it seems like the decompiled output is a derived work from the binary. And to distribute that derived work on github with a license "Only for educational use" seems like it's infringing. GH should probably take it down.
- alternatetwo 5y ago
  The Terraria devs don't care and actively encourage modding. Otherwise they'd have used an obfuscator.

38 points by tentacleuno 5y ago

tentacleuno 5y ago

Posted this because I remember seeing it a few years back and was like 'woah, thsi is bad.'

Longhanks 5y ago
Why is it bad? It fulfilled all purposes: It made the developer some (a lot of?) money, a bunch of people very happy, Terraria shares among the most positive reviews of all games on steam (also meaning there can't be too many critical bugs, as that would piss off gamers pretty easily), was/is frequently updated since years, and is generally considered "a good game". What would a metric such as "clean code score" help with any of this?
- perttir 5y ago
  The code looks bad. I guess it has been refactored later. The repo says this code is only for educational purposes. This spaghetti can be still a good example for the reasons you mentioned. Or maybe it is a good example for an ugly prototype version of an game. This could be even better if people could see a refactored version of this codebase.
- hesdeadjim 5y ago
  This 100%. You are doing a great job if you maintain clean code for 50% of the project, because that last 50% will be a mad dash to get to ship. Source: 12 years in gamedev ;P
CodeGlitch 5y ago
Games don't optimise for "clean code" or maintainability - they optimise for speed and cost. Of course in a perfect world it would be all of those. - Former game developer
- thi2 5y ago
  I'm really wondering why clean code or maintainability imply higher cost or lower performance for you.
  - CodeGlitch 5y ago
    Because game code is "throw away" = don't assume you are making a sequel = there's no reason to make it maintainable. You write it as fast as you can to fulfil the requirements. Stuff like unit/system tests are a waste of time because it's cheaper to hire people to manually press buttons. Yes I know this sounds bad - but that's how the games industry works. And is one of the reasons I left. Note that if you are working in engine code, then you want all the automated tests, proper architecture, etc.
slingnow 5y ago
Are you not aware that decompilers exist and that is likely the reason this code looks the way it does?
- tentacleuno 5y ago
  Hmm, no? It says nothing about decompilation in the repository, from what I can ascertain. How have you deduced that the code is decompiled?
  - crossworth 5y ago
    From the Repo: https://github.com/TheVamp/Terraria-Source-Code/issues/1#issuecomment-714304110 https://github.com/TheVamp/Terraria-Source-Code/issues/1#iss... And: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30347289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30347289
tuckerpo 5y ago
It's pretty clearly reverse engineered from bytecode by some sort of tool. It's full of `goto IL_label` statements. Would a programmer write a goto in C# at all, let alone call their procedures "intermediate language xyz"?

kaszanka 5y ago

if (num9 + num7 >= num6) { num8++; num7 += num9 - num6; This looks a lot like decompiler output.

crossworth 5y ago
Yeah, Im not sure why we are talking about decompiled code. "I know that this is a real mess. But back in the days the decompiler was not so good to create super fancy code and I was to lazy to rewrite thousands lines of code." - https://github.com/TheVamp/Terraria-Source-Code/issues/1 https://github.com/TheVamp/Terraria-Source-Code/issues/1
fantyoon 5y ago
It is. The author of the repo wrote about it here in German: https://thevamp.cc/2013/10/12/terraria-1-2-decompiling-und-source-code/ https://thevamp.cc/2013/10/12/terraria-1-2-decompiling-und-s... From what I can tell this was originally motivated by bugs in the German version of the game. Back then 1.1.2 was to be the last version of Terraria (a running joke at this point, they announced 1.4.4 a little while ago) and so decompiling seemed like the best option to get those bugs fixed. This might be a more interesting blog post on that topic: https://thevamp.cc/2012/07/16/terraria-1-1-2-zu-terraria-1-1-3-bug-hunting/ https://thevamp.cc/2012/07/16/terraria-1-1-2-zu-terraria-1-1...
taddeimania 5y ago
this looks like a decompiler's take on the "why was 6 afraid of 7" joke. it would seem decompilers are not that funny.

junon 5y ago

100% this is decompiled output. There's no way this would be a single file. There's no way there'd be `String.concat(new object[] { "Some", '\t', "strings" })` written by a real human. This is reversed from some bytecode and the decompiler had to make some guesses as to what the original code was. Don't judge the developers based off of this.

capableweb 5y ago
> Don't judge the developers based off of this. I'd go further and say "never judge a developer by the code they write without knowing 100% of the context". So many times developers trash each other for shitty code quality without knowing anything about why the code was written the way it was. There isn't always good reasons for "excellent code", sometimes good enough is perfect. We like to think we all live in a vacuum where there is no reason for code to not be perfect, but we forget we live in an environment which is not perfect, and the code is meant to contribute to the this environment, sometimes leading to less-than-perfect code. So before you judge your fellow developer based on code, ask them first to explain the context around the code, before jumping to any conclusions.
- kylegill 5y ago
  > we live in an environment which is not perfect, and the code is meant to contribute to the this environment That's a really delightful take! Makes me feel like the code I throw at the wall to see what sticks does make a difference in my corner of the world. When you add that the definition of perfect can be subjective, one person's definition of perfect might have evolved into it by passing through what is now their good enough definition.
- lordleft 5y ago
  Amen. Even the best coder can write trainwrecks if given sufficiently little time and subject to enough pressure.
- WalterGR 5y ago
  So many times developers trash each other for shitty code quality without knowing anything about why the code was written the way it was. In a perfect world, that context would go right into comments next to the code.

mac-chaffee 5y ago

This version is more up-to-date and has a readme: https://github.com/UTINKA/Terraria https://github.com/UTINKA/Terraria Having looked at a few games' source code, are there really any complex games with pretty code? With as many subsystems, items, and enemies as Terraria has, it feels almost inevitable that you'll have complexity like this snippet for determining when to spawn the hair stylist NPC: else if ((int) Main.tile[index1, y].wall == SpiderUnsafe | flag10) { if ((int) Main.tile[index1, y].wall == SpiderUnsafe && Main.rand.Next(8) == 0 && (!flag6 && (double) y >= Main.rockLayer) && (y < Main.maxTilesY - 210 && !NPC.savedStylist && !NPC.AnyNPCs(WebbedStylist))) NPC.NewNPC(index1 \* 16 + 8, y \* 16, WebbedStylist, 0, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, (int) byte.MaxValue); else if (Main.hardMode) NPC.NewNPC(index1 \* 16 + 8, y \* 16, BlackRecluse, 0, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, (int) byte.MaxValue); else NPC.NewNPC(index1 \* 16 + 8, y \* 16, WallCreeper, 0, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, (int) byte.MaxValue); }

ramesh31 5y ago
>Having looked at a few games' source code, are there really any complex games with pretty code? Games don't have the same maintenance requirements as a web application. They are made, shipped, played, and forgotten. So code cleanliness is generally an afterthought. And honestly, most indie game developers are not great programmers. But making a great game has very little to do with programming nowadays. The tooling has come so far that many hit indie games are now built using "no-code" solutions like Unreal Blueprints. And advertising that you hand coded the entire game in C with immaculate coding standards wont make it any more fun.
- autarch 5y ago
  > They are made, shipped, played, and forgotten. Terraria was released in 2011 and is still getting updates.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ramesh31 5y ago

wyldfire 5y ago

If it's decompiled, then it seems like the decompiled output is a derived work from the binary. And to distribute that derived work on github with a license "Only for educational use" seems like it's infringing. GH should probably take it down.

alternatetwo 5y ago
The Terraria devs don't care and actively encourage modding. Otherwise they'd have used an obfuscator.