minecraftException

[u/pinkvelvetkissyx]

[u/Daniikk1012]

Slay the Spire (The first one), Mindustry, Pixel Dungeon, Unciv

[u/SunshineSeattle → u/Daniikk1012]

Starsector

[u/Saint_of_Grey → u/SunshineSeattle]

Starsector running on an ancient version of java is an active liability for it at this point.

You can see how much memory it requests in process explorer. A solid block of 4 gigs, which windows will instantly virtualize, an OS workaround implemented during the clinton administration.

Edit: I've gotten multiple comments it was updated, guess they finally did something about that!

[u/Inprobamur → u/Saint_of_Grey]

Alex did bump it up like 10 Java versions last patch.

There is a mod that switches it out for Temurin jdk-27+22 and runs a script to set flags and additional optimizations based on processor architecture. Great for running larger sector sizes with a bunch of extra factions in Nexerelin with smooth 240fps.

[u/Kantas → u/Inprobamur]

I may need to look into that.

Starsector is a great game that I suck at

[u/hgwaz → u/Saint_of_Grey]

It also runs a lot better if you update its java

[u/Kcmichalson → u/SunshineSeattle]

Starsector modding is one of the most schizophrenic modding scenes in terms of doing things the game was never intended to do I've seen in a while and I love it.

[u/PegasusPizza → u/Kcmichalson]

Not familiar with Starsector at all. What kind of schizophrenia are the modders up to?

[u/UncleRichardson → u/PegasusPizza]

One that immediately comes to mind is Arma Armatura.

The game's combat takes place on a flat plane where the two fleets of star ships meet roughly in the middle. Top down tactical, pretty simple in basic concepts.

Arma Armatura somehow managed to create missions where you are actually entering a planet's atmosphere, with your reinforcements coming from above and enemy reinforcements coming from below, and enemy defense cannons blasting the entire time. The game was straight up not made with any form of vertical movement, so AA basically created an entirely new system to make these missions work.

[u/TheGrandBabaloo → u/UncleRichardson]

Wtf, did they add that somewhat recently? I had Armatura installed when playing a few years ago but don't recall that at all.

[u/UncleRichardson → u/TheGrandBabaloo]

Sometime last year, I think? They've really focused on the story elements of the mod lately, rather than just the added mechs.

[u/Russian_Bot1337 → u/PegasusPizza]

From waifus to war crimes. Starsector modders are the best.

[u/Mepharias → u/SunshineSeattle]

God I love Starsector

[u/whichwayisgauche → u/Daniikk1012]

Runescape

[u/LBGW_experiment → u/whichwayisgauche]

Surprised you only said this 12 min ago. I almost left a comment saying it.

Company name Jagex -> JaGeX -> Java Gaming Experts

[u/rsnJ3 → u/LBGW_experiment]

For what it's worth jagex has not stood for that for quite a few years.

[u/LBGW_experiment → u/rsnJ3]

That's fine. Why they created the name in the first place that is really the purpose of my comment

[u/shadow9876543210 → u/Daniikk1012]

Wait 780 hours and I had no idea mindustry was made in Java!

[u/SunshineSeattle → u/shadow9876543210]

Theres actually a gir repo for the game  you can read the code and everything 

[u/2580374 → u/Daniikk1012]

I had no idea about slay the spire, that's crazy

[u/WeirdIndividualGuy → u/2580374]

And it worked out so well, the dev decided not to use Java ever again in their games

[u/BrodatyBear → u/WeirdIndividualGuy]

To be fair, for those types of games, devs switch from languages like Java and C#/MonoGame (example: Hades switched to custom C++ engine before release), at least before MS introduced solid, native AOT. Not because the language is problematic (it's fine for this type of game) but because porting them is painful or impossible without rewrite or strange hacks.
There's no official JVM for consoles, and moreover, platforms themselves just disallow JIT compilation due to security reasons. That's one of the reasons why Unity created IL2CPP (their AOT compiler)).

[u/CAPS_LOCK_OR_DIE → u/2580374]

Its actually very cool to poke around in if you have the opportunity. There's some spaghetti, but overall its a pretty clever codebase.

[u/OohBleh → u/Daniikk1012]

StS1 has so many amazing bugs that make speedrunning it so cool. On the code side, AbstractDungeon is basically One Big Class That Does Everything. It's common in single player games when you don't have to think about networking and such and can just store everything in the big pile of lists and flags and RNG states. Not sure if the language is to blame, but Java is an inheritance-heavy OOP language and I'm an inheritance-hater.

I'm kinda sad StS2 is so much better coded for speedrun reasons but really glad they made multiplayer such a well-polished treat right out of the box.

[u/ArtOfWarfare → u/OohBleh]

Eh, I think inheritance is hated by most developers in most languages.

It seems like people who design languages and frameworks love inheritance, but then regular developers use the language and tend to avoid it like the plague.

[u/Ma4r → u/ArtOfWarfare]

No, people who design languages loves FP, it's the business people that love OOP because it makes them think they can understand code

[u/Suvtropics → u/Daniikk1012]

Pixel dungeon mentioned! Watabou and Evan 👑

[u/Jhuyt → u/Daniikk1012]

Is STS2 not written in Java?

[u/Daniikk1012 → u/Jhuyt]

It uses Godot cause the devs wanted an editor instead of doing everything from code

[u/Jhuyt → u/Daniikk1012]

Huh, TIL, assumed it was Java as well

[u/sjphilsphan → u/Jhuyt]

It was supposed to be Unity, but then Unity decided to punch itself in the face

[u/CptMisterNibbles → u/sjphilsphan]

The STS devs were one of the first more major folks (iii at least) to immediately and publicly announce “wow Unity, that’s fucked. You know what, we are out” and went and made a test game to see if they wanted to switch to Godot.

[u/Named_after_color → u/sjphilsphan]

What's unity's deal?

[u/Thenderick → u/Named_after_color]

Unity got greedy and changed their ToS to charge based on install instead of purchase. They reverted, but the StS devs had enough and changed engines to godot, which is open source

[u/grandalfxx]

Runescape, project zomboid.

The only reason Java isnt for games is because you'd have to build a custom jdk to run on the consoles and no one wants to do that.

[u/coolraiman2 → u/grandalfxx]

Another issue for 3d rendering performance is that java does not have struct, everything is a class.

On the surface level ot does seems minor but a struct and a class are widely different on how its memory is allocated. Without a struct, calls to 3d rendering api are much less efficient

[u/Lithl → u/coolraiman2]

JDK 28 adds inline classes, which give you the kind of memory allocation you'd expect from a struct.

It's not released yet, but the early access build is available. Build 18 came out last week.

[u/coolraiman2 → u/Lithl]

20 years later but nice

[u/LutimoDancer3459 → u/coolraiman2]

May i introduce you to project Valhallas value classes? Java is going stronger every release. Not long and the missing struct wont be an issue anymore

[u/warpspeedSCP → u/LutimoDancer3459]

If they can get the damn thing released maybe, its been what, a decade?

[u/Cebular → u/coolraiman2]

I'm a C++ dev so struct/class really only differ in that class is private by default. What do you mean that java does not have struct?

[u/mi-figue-mi-raisin]

Mindustry

[u/Successful_Day2479 → u/mi-figue-mi-raisin]

Hell yeah came here to say this

If I ever learn java it'd be to mod this game. And Minecraft.

[u/sup3rdr01d → u/Successful_Day2479]

I learned Java as a kid to mod Minecraft. Which got me to do CS in college

Which has now ended up in me writing AI slop bullshit every day :(

[u/Hattrickher0 → u/sup3rdr01d]

Are you the dude who sits in the cube next to me at work?

WeirdThatItHappenedTwice.jpg

[u/Aethenosity → u/Hattrickher0]

I mean... that is a SUPER common path. It probably describes a significant portion of all CS grads at this point.

[u/Facosa99 → u/mi-figue-mi-raisin]

Beat me to it

Only problem Mindustry has is, you probably need the 'tism to enjoy it. But when you do.... Oh does it feel good to have the most efficient production line

[u/W_Seed]

RuneScape

[u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_ → u/W_Seed]

JAva Gaming EXperts

[u/DmitriRussian → u/W_Seed]

They have moved to C++ a long while ago, which means that it wasn't good

[u/Awes0meEman → u/DmitriRussian]

That was just the client. I'm pretty sure their game engine is still written in Java.

[u/Kovarian → u/Awes0meEman]

The game engine is written in RuneScript (not a joke). Also known as spaghetti (joke, but true).

[u/Awes0meEman → u/Kovarian]

Runescript is a scripting language that they use for actual game scripting and logic, the underlying engine that RuneScript actually interfaces with is all Java.

[u/Apalapa → u/DmitriRussian]

Osrs too? Fairly sure that’s still legacy on Java. Maybe not the client though…

[u/randomjberry → u/Apalapa]

official client has been c++ for a few yeats at least but they maintain java for runelite

[u/Vimda → u/randomjberry]

Just the client though. Game Engine and Server are still Java

[u/Tury345 → u/Vimda]

I think mobile uses c++ otherwise virtually nobody uses the PC c++ client

[u/TohveliDev → u/DmitriRussian]

That's just the client. The game and the engine is still written in Java.

[u/polaarbear → u/DmitriRussian]

Minecraft was also rewritten in C++ for cross-platform compatibility. That's why there is a Minecraft: Java Edition now

[u/Bomberlt → u/polaarbear]

Ironically Java was created to be cross platform

[u/W_Seed → u/DmitriRussian]

Fuck I didn't know that

[u/josHi_iZ_qLt]

Its also not a good choice for minecraft. Its just what it was build on.

The way minecraft came to be is not at all related to "what platform to use for a successfull huge game".

Its like saying "garages arent great to create a billion dollar business" and countering with steve jobs who started in one.

[u/PresidentSkillz → u/josHi_iZ_qLt]

Then they tried to fix it with the bedrock edition which is c++ or c# (forgot which one) but instead they made a buggy mess that people only play bc the Java version is pc exclusive 

[u/josHi_iZ_qLt → u/PresidentSkillz]

Which is kinda funny given java is inherently made to be able to run on almost everything

[u/Fewtex → u/josHi_iZ_qLt]

Having a jdk on a console would make homebrewing it easier, and these companies would rather die then have someone easily crack there personal console.

[u/danfish_77 → u/PresidentSkillz]

Yeah they also let it diverge from the original for some reason instead of focusing on getting it identical so they could retire Java

[u/Fewtex → u/PresidentSkillz]

Its only pc exclusive because consoles dont have JRE, because java is bad for games

Someone would have to make a custom jdk for consoles for java to be a viable option for games

[u/NitronHX]

Osrs

[u/SuitableDragonfly → u/NitronHX]

Didn't the company name Jagex originally come from something like "Java Games [something]" or did I hallucinate that?

[u/TohveliDev → u/SuitableDragonfly]

Java Gaming Experts yeah

[u/ArkoSammy12]

For once I'm glad that Minecraft is written in Java because it makes modding it have such a low barrier of entry compared to games written in compiled languages.

[u/jbar3640 → u/ArkoSammy12]

I get your point, but technically Java is a compiled language.

[u/ArkoSammy12 → u/jbar3640]

Yeah. Just shorthand to "not compiled directly to machine code".

[u/Level0Up → u/ArkoSammy12]

Well, technically it compiles to machine code for the JVM which is known as bytecode.

[u/BlackHatMagic1545 → u/Level0Up]

Bytecode and machine code are not interchangeable. They mean different things. You wouldn't call a Rust binary "x86/ARM bytecode," would you? Would you say Python gets compiled to machine code because it gets parsed into CPython bytecode? No, you wouldn't. Calling something like Java bytecode or a WASM binary "machine code" only serves to confuse things so you can feel smart.

And most implementations of the JVM generally don't transpile Java bytecode to machine code; the only exception I'm aware of is GraalVM. So Java bytecode (usually) never becomes machine code.

[u/BakuhatsuK → u/BlackHatMagic1545]

Semantics about bytecode aside, specifically Java bytecode is pretty high level, which makes it easier for modding. This is not the case with e.g. Webassembly, which is also bytecode, but much lower level and would give you a harder time modding it

[u/CptGia → u/Level0Up]

Which is interpreted by the JVM, until profiling data show that that piece of code is run slowing down the application, and then it gets compiled (twice) to actual instructions 

[u/JangoDarkSaber → u/CptGia]

I think the point yall are missing is that the code is shipped only obfuscated (until recently) instead of compiled which is what has enabled Javas massive mod community. Yes Java uses JIT compilation but that’s irrelevant to the original point being made

[u/Mojert → u/Level0Up]

Bytecode is not machine code

[u/Eruantiel → u/jbar3640]

1. It’s compiled to generic byte code that machine cannot understand
   
2. then it is interpreted (converted to real machine code that is different per machine) by JVM (Java virtual machine)
   
3. then small snipers of code that are frequently repeated such as loops can be compiled as actual machine code and stored in ram for even faster usage until they are not used anymore.

[u/DrStalker → u/ArkoSammy12]

C# compiled to ILCode is just as good for modding.  Easy to view the code, and easy to modify existing functions  using Harmony patching.

This is why Unity games are great for modders, unless the devs compile using IL2cpp.  

[u/ArkoSammy12 → u/DrStalker]

That's alright. Even if C# exists, Java is still a nice option for modding. Wasn't trying to make a comparison between Java and other languages that compile to some sort of bytecode.

[u/Segenam → u/ArkoSammy12]

Yes and no. While java made it a bit easier, it caused all sorts of other problems with the modding community.

Compare Minecraft to games which actually have good mod support:

Vintage Story, Rimworld, Starbound, Factorio (Edit: guess people have issues with this one in perticular)

The trick is to not have to have your mod creators program at all by default. Use a data format that is easily able to be learned and have a patch system so that multiple mods don't clash.

[u/hithroc → u/Segenam]

I haven't played these other games, but I don't think Factorio is a good comparison.

The domain of what is possible in modded Factorio vs modded Minecraft is extremely different, majority of Factorio mods just extend on what the game already does: here are machines, they convert things to other things. Majority of mods fall into this bucket, including many overhauls. Even when mods do something unusual, it's usually very hacky and sometimes half broken. Looking at you Space Exploration spaceships, nav view, space elevators. For another non-gameplay example graphtorio comes to mind (there are actually several different ways to implement graphtorio-like functionality within limits of what you can do with Factorio API, but all of them are kind of terrible).

A lot (majority?) of mods in Minecraft go so beyond what the game fundamentally does. From game optimizations, shaders, to more big stuff. Thinking IC, BC, AE, or for a more modern example Sable/Create: Simulated (or Create: Aeronautics which uses it).

[u/Segenam → u/hithroc]

It does very much depend on what you are doing, yes. But that kinda goes a bit against what I'm explaining here. Though I will admit Factorio is a bit of an odd one out in the group, but it is still designed for modding from the beginning.

---

The a lot of people going "away from the core game" depends more on the number of people playing the game and has less to do with how difficult the game is to mod. The majority of minecraft mods don't actually go against the grain, they add simple things that can easily be done with only a few minor details, however due to it's massive fan base there are a lot of "large scale" mods that go far beyond what minecraft does normally. There is also a bit of survivorship bias as most mods that make it into modpacks tend to be the larger well made mods that change up the game because the default of minecraft is rather boring (hence everyone's 2 week binge).

But the majority of mods are primarally "this block drops something when mined", "put this in crafting grid to make thing" and "magic blocks" (you put item in, get new item out). It wasn't until Create came along that really threw a wrench into that idea and in the grad scheme of minecraft's entire life it's honestly pretty new.

And even then these mods need a core (forge, fabric, etc.) which are all made by a large team to make it even plausible to do such things.

---

A prime example of people will force things to do things they aren't designed to do if there is enough of an audience is Skyrim, which is an absolute pain in the arse to mod, it's not mod friendly at all and you are constantly fighting it every step of the way and is a buggy mess, and yet there are lots of large scale mods for the game that go far beyond what the game was designed for.

Just because something has larger scale mods that go against what it was designed for, on it's own doesn't mean much.

[u/hithroc → u/Segenam]

My point primarily was that for games with modding support you are bound by what is possible within the modding API, thus the domain of possibilities is lower.

It is much less so for cases like Minecraft. But the tradeoff here is that modding at all is a mess compared to a game provided API.

[u/Toutanus]

Wakfu

[u/ajnozari → u/Toutanus]

unexpected Wakfu reference

[u/Aelrift → u/ajnozari]

I legit did a double take

[u/Toutanus → u/ajnozari]

I worked a few years in the same town as Wakfu studio

[u/Alokir]

Hundreds of pre-smartphone mobile games

[u/da_Aresinger → u/Alokir]

Not pre smartphone. Pre kotlin.

Most applications on Android, before 2019 were written in Java.

[u/Tyrus1235 → u/da_Aresinger]

Well, technically you could spin up something in Unity using C# and it’d somehow run on Android and iOS (if you were on a Mac).

[u/r3dm0nk → u/Alokir]

The vast ocean of symbian games

[u/mordacthedenier → u/r3dm0nk]

Symbian supported java through J2ME, which is the same format every non-smartphones ran. There were lots of native Symbian games though, which would've been written in C++.

[u/daniil007a]

Zomboid

[u/Western_Sentence_943 → u/daniil007a]

This is an antiexample tbh Zomboid suffers so much from its own engine

[u/daniil007a → u/Western_Sentence_943]

Still a banger game. But I get it, performance is shit. Can't drive car fast cuz when I do I hit an invisible wall while next chunk is loading. And many zombies tank fps.

From dev standpoint idk if it gives guys any problems

[u/Layton_Jr → u/daniil007a]

Low FPS with zombies nearby is a feature, this way you know when to be careful

[u/conundorum → u/Layton_Jr]

Ah, yes, the Space Invaders difficulty scaling: The more enemies are on screen, the more the game switches into easy-lag mode.

[u/harelzz → u/Western_Sentence_943]

Tbf so does minecraft

[u/Topikk → u/harelzz]

Yep, the mobile version was written from scratch in c++ so it would run on phones, then ported back to PC later where it runs laps around Java to this day. If the versions didn't have so many key differences affecting gameplay, Java likely would have been abandoned long ago.

[u/ForgedIronMadeIt → u/Western_Sentence_943]

They're actively rewriting parts in C++ last I checked.

[u/can_prog → u/daniil007a]

Project Zomboid is the worst game I love. I hate it. The devs are bad, the engine is clunky and it is missing so many features after 14 years of development. Yet it fascinates me and I can't stop playing it.

[u/loufurman → u/can_prog]

The classic Ark: Survival Evolved problem

[u/OneArmedFarmer → u/daniil007a]

I thought that was written in Lua but apparently it's both!

[u/jojos38 → u/OneArmedFarmer]

Lua it's just a scripting langage in itself

[u/Abcdefgdude → u/jojos38]

Balatro is written fully in Lua

[u/Cocoatrice]

I mean, Minecraft is enough to prove that. It's the best selling game in the world. And a lot of people play Java Edition, not Bedrock Edition. If game works great in Java, it means it's possible to make games in Java. It has its limitations, though.

[u/ShakeForProtein → u/Cocoatrice]

You can pry the Java edition from my cold dead hands. I will never use Bedrock edition.

[u/Ma4r → u/Cocoatrice]

Here's the thing tho, Minecraft java notoriously does not run well at all, especially when you want to build more complex contraptions, the you need a LOT of mods optimizing how minecraft runs. Sure it runs well enough for most people, but you can't say that minecraft written in a more suitable language would be capable of so much more

[u/mrderp1212 → u/Ma4r]

Yea but these mods are written in Java, so it's a Mojang issue not java. The JVM and javac have gotten much better in the last few years, it's no longer as slow as it used to be. Tbf idk what version Minecraft runs, but assuming it's somewhat recent there wouldn't be that much of a difference between a java or C/cpp/c# implementation 

[u/Ty_Rymer → u/mrderp1212]

funnily enough a bunch of different optimization mods are really focussed around garbage collection and memory optimizations, calling C bindings instead of doing the same operation in java, or offloading things to other threads so you can spread the load over multiple frames. these optimisations being needed at all is a direct consequence of the jvm

[u/zacyzacy]

Slay the spire 1

[u/Conman636]

Songs of Syx.

[u/LittleMlem → u/Conman636]

That's java? Man's insane

[u/Ok_Confusion4764]

Runesca- oh no wait, they switched to C++ as well because it was so bad...

[u/Lord_Lorden]

Starsector

[u/SupportDangerous8207]

Supreme commander

[u/Metallkiller → u/SupportDangerous8207]

Oh damn really? That's a hell of a game to build in Java.

[u/Peakomegaflare → u/SupportDangerous8207]

The absolutely baller spiritual successor to Total Annihilation

[u/TemporaryFearless482 → u/Peakomegaflare]

For those looking to scratch the original Total Annihilation itch, look up “Beyond All Reason”.

[u/girlfriendsbloodyvag]

RuneScape? One of the longest running MMOs out there?

[u/facie97 → u/girlfriendsbloodyvag]

So much spaghetti it might as well have been written in italian instead of java. I love it though

[u/dodgyhashbrown → u/girlfriendsbloodyvag]

Does the newer versions still run on Java or is that just the old school version?

[u/rsandio → u/dodgyhashbrown]

RS3 client is written in C++. OSRS is also transitioning to C++.

Backends are still Java.

[u/Sol33t303 → u/girlfriendsbloodyvag]

Project Zomboid is great.

Edit: forgot about slay the spire, that's another great one.

[u/Banalian]

Spiral Knights

[u/Cheezyrock]

Architecture and algorithms matters way more than language. A skilled coder knows the limitations of a language they are working with and designs around hiding the rough edges.

[u/Rework_Aramusha]

I wonder how much more efficient a huge minecraft modpack would run if minecraft would be built on like C or so

[u/ashsabre → u/Rework_Aramusha]

minecraft bedrock (consoles, pc, ios and android) is built in c++ though it's modding capabilities isn't as good as java..

[u/GrampaSwood → u/ashsabre]

Question is, is that because of C++ or because they want to sell you mods on the store?

[u/StructureSimilar312 → u/GrampaSwood]

Its cause they want your money. If they wanted bedrock could support mods.

[u/morosis1982 → u/StructureSimilar312]

Yes and no. Because bedrock is native code, modding it would require explicit support from Mojang.

Because java can be decompiled and you can plugin stuff that transforms the original bytecode to add capabilities, literally anyone can create a modding API. That's why we have forge, fabric, bukkit, etc.

[u/ashsabre → u/GrampaSwood]

I'm thinking it is both since bedrock is the majn cashcow of Minecraft

[u/HolyElephantMG → u/ashsabre]

Didn’t Minecraft deobfuscate a good bit of Java’s code a while back while simultaneously making Bedrock’s much harder to access?

[u/Brickybooii]

If Bedrock was a 1:1 of java just programmed in C++, I'll bet everyone would like it better. The issue is bedrock was built to monetize what modding had made free

[u/userhwon]

It's kinda shit for Minecraft as well.

[u/Revolutionary_Crew80 → u/userhwon]

Not like the version they made in c++ is better

[u/sarcb → u/Revolutionary_Crew80]

It is in many ways, and worse in others. They did not make it in c++ for parity that much is clear..

[u/F3mshep]

Slay the Spire, indie darling of 2019 was written in Java.

[u/LittleMlem → u/F3mshep]

While it's a fantastic game, it doesn't exactly require much performance. They could have written it in python and it still would have ran smoothly

[u/Negitive545]

Minecraft, Zomboid, Starsector

All three of which are bangers. All three of which suffer heavily from the fact that they run on Java.

[u/randomlemon9192]

I thought I was in r/Minecraft for a minute lol.

Anyone know the backstory as to why they chose Java to develop the game in? Odd choice given its non use in industry games.

[u/Cebular → u/randomlemon9192]

Notch was a Java dev and Minecraft was supposed to be a small project that would take couple weeks, Mojang should've switched to C++ a long time ago but Bedrock is a mess so here we are with game worth literal billions that you need to install basic optimization mods for it to work properly.

[u/A_Canadian_boi → u/Cebular]

Mojang should have switched to C# honestly. It's very similar in principle and style to Java, it's used by probably a solid 1/3 of video games out there, it works on console, it doesn't require much installation, and guess what? It's literally developed by Microsoft

edit: It also is extremely moddable, just like Java

[u/21839 → u/A_Canadian_boi]

In most games like Unity games C# only runs the business logic, the game engine being in C++. Minecraft is so unoptimized because everything was coded in Java from the ground up.

[u/atzedanjo → u/randomlemon9192]

It was the language that Notch was most proficient in.

[u/Robocop613 → u/randomlemon9192]

Notch worked with Java at his day job. Java also at the time had web-applets which allowed people to run the game in their browser which helped people play it right away when he posted on TigSource forums.

[u/LatvianCake → u/Robocop613]

Before Minecraft was a thing, he worked on Wurm Online. That game is still around and is also written in Java.

[u/c1e0c72c69e5406abf55]

Puzzle Pirates, written in Java

[u/not_some_username]

You’re clearly too young to know the great Java games era

[u/marvology]

Didn't Java power all those classic Yahoo games back before Marissa Mayer did her Manchurian candidate job on them?

[u/johnnybgooderer]

Garbage collection is bad for games. Minecraft was playable because Java garbage collectors were fast enough to make it playable.

But don’t use any garbage collected language for games.

[u/lastog9 → u/johnnybgooderer]

Can you explain why garbage collection is bad for games? Not challenging the fact just asking because I don't know

[u/captainAwesomePants → u/lastog9]

Most programs need to grab memory to do stuff. A hundred enemy robots just spawned in? We need a spot in memory for each of those robots to remember stuff like where it is, which way it's facing, and what it should be doing. If we could use the same spot each time, that'd be great, but we might get lots and lots of robots, so instead we grab space as we need it. The trick to that is that we also need to let that space go when we don't need it anymore. Otherwise, our program will just use up more and more space each time a robot appears until eventually there's no more space and the game breaks.

In most languages without garbage collection, the program decides when and how to free up space. The robot's been destroyed? Great, tell the system that we're done with that particular bit of memory so it can be reused later. The problem is that we are human, and there are a lot of ways to get this wrong. It's easy to forget to free the memory when it's no longer being used (called a "memory leak"), and it's also easy to accidentally free memory that you're still using.

Java provides automatic "garbage collection," which will automatically frees memory once your program no longer has any references to it. After all, if I don't have a way to reference the robot, we can know that I'm done with it. This is fantastic!

However, to do garbage collection, the system needs to figure out which bits of memory don't have references anywhere. Ancient versions of Java did this by simply pausing the entire program, looking at every reference to anything, and then freeing anything with no reference. This was pretty terrible, and you can imagine how a game pausing for maybe a whole second every so often would suck.

It also sucked for businesses, though, and more than 3 billion devices run Java, and so the Java folks worked hard on better ways to do garbage collection. Modern garbage collection is far, far better. However, ultimately, it still needs to briefly pause things. This is tunable, but there are still occasional hiccups when Minecraft's garbage collection runs. Most garbage collection cycles are < 1ms, but if a whole lot is going on, it can become quite noticeable.

[u/Jim_skywalker → u/captainAwesomePants]

So that’s why modded Minecraft can have reoccurring lag spikes.

[u/trash-_-boat → u/Jim_skywalker]

It's also why you don't want to give Minecraft TOO much RAM. Because then it will do the GC in bigger chunks, which will cause an even longer pause.

[u/FabioTheFox → u/trash-_-boat]

I feel like this is more of a Java specific quirk, I've not seen this with other languages

[u/rocket_randall → u/captainAwesomePants]

Ancient versions of Java did this by simply pausing the entire program, looking at every reference to anything, and then freeing anything with no reference.

This really shows how understanding the implementation and what's going on in the background is still vital. I point this out because back in the late 90s/early 00s the C++ greybeards liked to tell us newcomers and learners that classes/OOP/STL meant that we could focus on writing code and that we didn't need to concern ourselves with the implementation. That was not correct. C# has/had some of the same issues with its scheduled tier 2 GC (I think that's what MS calls them? I can't remember offhand).

There were ways around it, like pre-allocating arrays of whatever objects you needed and then "freeing" them meant clearing state without sending them to the GC to be reused again. Of course this could mean allocating a bunch of memory that could lay fallow for a large portion of the runtime and thus unavailable for other needs, and if you're actively trying to work around the GC then perhaps a language without GC is a more straightforward solution.

[u/lastog9 → u/captainAwesomePants]

Thanks for the explanation!

[u/exhaustedcheese → u/lastog9]

my educated guess: garbage collections keeps track of unused/lost data and removes it. However the amount of processing power used to keep track of is enough for developers to do manual garbage collecting. But that can lead to memory leaks? some correct me please

[u/Bubbaluke → u/exhaustedcheese]

Pretty much nailed it. Garbage collection runs periodically, often without being told to, which could cause hitches.
It can also be turned off and run manually, or not run at all. At least in python.

[u/Lyshaka → u/lastog9]

Because GC is unpredictable and runs at random times and can causes frame hitches which can hinder the experience. Also you should clean after yourself.

[u/DuploJamaal → u/Lyshaka]

Without any configuration they are unpredictable and stop the world.

But in time-critical applications you would use a low-pause GC like ZGC or Shenandoah.

You can regularly call them manually and they'll do their work in another thread without causing any noticeable drops on performance.

[u/SmuJamesB → u/lastog9]

performance overhead, mainly

games need to run a lot of complex logic many times a second. the fewer the bottlenecks on the speed at which that logic can run, the better

[u/Drugbird → u/SmuJamesB]

It's not even the net performance issues that's the issue with garbage collectors. It's the irregular timing of it.

Basically, the garbage collectors runs when it wants to.

So you can easily get into situations where your program starts stuttering (dropping frames) whenever the garbage collectors decides to run.

In non garbage collected languages, the programmer and/or the language itself controls explicitly when memory is cleaned (deallocated), so it's much easier to make sure that doesn't cause excessive stuttering.

That said, there are ways to control the garbage collector too in garbage collected languages so it doesn't interfere too much. But this is generally a lot more finicky than explicitly controlling the memory yourself.

[u/Tyfyter2002 → u/SmuJamesB]

And that performance overhead is possible to reduce substantially as long as you remember to avoid heap allocations and garbage creation when possible.

[u/ComputerWhiz_ → u/johnnybgooderer]

cough Unity uses C# cough

[u/im-a-guy-like-me → u/ComputerWhiz_]

No it doesn't. Unity uses C++. It just let's devs use c# as a scripting language.

[u/ComputerWhiz_ → u/im-a-guy-like-me]

Still uses garbage collection though

[u/potzko2552 → u/ComputerWhiz_]

When your engine is cpp and most of your mem is chandled in cpp, having a scripting language that is GCed doesn't change the majority of the project's behaviour. Like adding lua embedding doesn't mean your project is no longer strongly typed

[u/kondorb → u/potzko2552]

Tell it to KSP devs - that thing freezes for GC every 5 seconds even with barely anything spawned.

[u/cpt_melon → u/kondorb]

Unity developers' habit of attaching a million scripts to everything instead consolidating their code and building larger systems wouldn't work any better even if the language used was C++

[u/3131961357 → u/ComputerWhiz_]

And the code you write is most un-C# C# you'll ever see.

https://i.imgflip.com/b2xjwp.jpg

[u/cbehopkins → u/johnnybgooderer]

Dyson Sphere Program is c#

(A massive open world/universe factory game)

[u/rosuav → u/cbehopkins]

DSP suffers from a bit of a weird problem whereby the game makes itself more frustrating long before performance truly becomes an issue. You basically have to build out large blueprinted sections of factory, except that the way the grid works, you have to micromanage and microadjust to fit things onto the spherical surfaces of celestial bodies. I suspect that, if the grid issues could be solved (which is unlikely since that's kinda core to the game's whole schtick), slowdowns from extremely large factories would become more relevant.

But look at Kerbal Space Program and its spiritual successor Kitten Space Agency. They're both also written in C#. KSP definitely does suffer from issues when you get bajillion part vehicles going, though I suspect that's more of a physics question than garbage collection. KSA is rock solid. As long as you can load up the universe (on an older graphics card, going max graphics quality might run you out of VRAM), nothing else is ever an issue. Vehicle part counts haven't come close to causing issues.

[u/mrianj → u/johnnybgooderer]

I mean, if you really don't like garbage collection, nothing stopping you from defining a 4GB byte array and managing your memory yourself. Like a psychopath.

[u/gallyroi → u/johnnybgooderer]

This is... straight up not true, and bad advice.

Almost every game engine has a garbage collector, optimized specifically for games, with various controls on how they work and how your code interacts with them.

Unreal Engine, Unity, GameMaker, and more all have garbage collection.

A lot of the non-engine library frameworks for langs like C++, C#, Rust etc. also make use of garbage collection, whether by natural language features or as part of a framework.

There wouldnt be garbage collection in all major game engines and libraries if it wasn't useful for games and game developers.

Modern GC is designed to help optimize your game in real time, not hinder it. It only becomes a hinderance if your game is poorly made and you're otherwise trying to fight the GC rather than work with or around it.

[u/Teanut → u/johnnybgooderer]

Isn't C# used in a lot of games?

[u/grandalfxx → u/johnnybgooderer]

Garbage collection is not bad for games, Java 6 gc was bad for games. Modern Java garbage collection is state of the art and most game engines copy it for memory management systems

Its shocking reading essays in these comments from people that have clearly not done any serious work with Java in seemingly 20 plus years

[u/johnnybgooderer → u/grandalfxx]

If you’re going for 60fps, then you have 16ms to update state and produce a frame. 16ms is less than the 20+ms gc pauses that frequently occur in g1gc.

It works well for web servers, but for games where you want 60 or even 30fps, it’s a problem.

[u/TheStatusPoe → u/johnnybgooderer]

Using g1gc when trying to minimize pause times goes to the point of u/grandalfxx is making that people aren't familiar with modern Java. The ZGC garbage collector has sub millisecond max pause times.  https://inside.java/2023/11/28/gen-zgc-explainer/

[u/Eastern_Equal_8191 → u/johnnybgooderer]

> Java garbage collectors were fast enough to make it playable.

So like, the exact opposite of the point you're trying to make?

[u/rosuav → u/johnnybgooderer]

That's a bit of an overgeneralization. "Games" includes a vast number of things of all different types. JavaScript is a garbage collected language, and it's actually a very *good* choice for a lot of games, because it means they can be run directly in a web browser. (And I love being able to make a nostalgic reference to Sleuth, look for it, and find that someone's ported the entire game to JS so that it can run on modern systems.) "Bad for games" is a terrible overgeneralization.

[u/SupportDangerous8207 → u/johnnybgooderer]

Supreme commander and Dyson sphere program disagree

[u/FabioTheFox → u/johnnybgooderer]

GC isn't inherently bad for performance ngl

The performance modern .NET cranks out is insane, still gets beaten by C++ but this bit of extra performance isn't necessary for most games I'd argue (especially if you program with composition and entities in mind rather than classes and inheritance chains)

[u/anoppinionatedbunny]

online games using the Java browser runtime were a dime a dozen back in the day. nowadays, with all these new engines, WASM and WebGL, Java went back to being almost exclusively a backend language. It's fine for most games. If we're honest, most programming languages are fine for most games. the biggest difference is developer skill.

[u/Heavy-Ad6017]

Hey dont forget my Snake game I wrote in Java with Swing UI

[u/Feuzme]

Binding of Isaac

[u/LordOmbro]

Project Zomboid is written in Java :)

[u/Iyxara]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Java_platform_games

[u/Wolf_Of_Hearts556]

Starsector

[u/MentalFS]

At least we got a more secure Log4J now

[u/wokan]

Runescape

[u/amopeyant]

RuneScape

[u/thejokerofunfic]

Hey Java is excellent for game dev! I always drink a fresh cup before I sit down to code in Python

[u/BI00dSh0t]

runescape my guy. one of the ogs

[u/WaffleWalk]

Protect Zomboid

[u/SidNYC]

Slay the spire was also written in Java