[Freeciv-Dev] Re: OO model for Freeciv?

[Jules Bean <jmlb2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Apr 30, 2000 at 09:45:03AM -0400, Cameron Morland wrote:
> On 30 Apr 2000, Falk Hueffner wrote:
> 
> > Well, nevertheless I think we should stick to C :-) It's just that the
> > arguments here seem silly. For example, execution speed is pretty
> > irrelevant for FreeCiv IMHO, as long as it isn't twice as slow or
> > something.
> 
> I must disagree, myself. Sid's Civ on DOS was nice on a 286, and crazily
> fast on a 386. I have a Sparc 2, and FreeCiv is acceptably fast with a
> normal map, and painfully slow with a large one. Making it significantly
> slower would make it unplayable for me. If Sid can do it with a 286, we
> should be able to do it with a slow Sparc. You can, of course, tell me I
> ought to upgrade. But this is not a good way of encouraging new users; one
> way to get people to start using Linux is to say "got a spare 386? I'll
> set up a sandbox for you to play with it a bit." So requiring a recent
> machine is IMHO a mistake.

Oh, absolutely.  If freeciv doesn't run on your sparc (and my sparc
;-) we've badly screwed up. But C++ should bring clarity to our
algorithms and make them easier to optimise. There are some bits of
code currently so opaque no one understands them ;-) 

Just because C++ makes some things slower, it needn't make freeciv's
current bottlenecks slower, I mean.  Since the STL gives us easy
access to nice containers with fast access algorithms (e.g. hashes) it 
could enable us to easily improve some areas.

Jules

-- 
Jules Bean                          |        Any sufficiently advanced 
jules@{debian.org,jellybean.co.uk}  |  technology is indistinguishable
jmlb2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx              |               from a perl script