On: Ask HN: Good C++ code bases to read?

[arriu]

Games might be an interesting one to look at because they have a little bit of everything going on (physics, math, rendering, cross platform abstractions, window management, system calls, file management, memory management, etc...)

Take a look at these:

https://github.com/FrictionalGames/AmnesiaTheDarkDescent

https://github.com/FrictionalGames/PenumbraOverture

[crocodiletears → arriu]

I can't speak Frictional's code quality, but historically released titles tend to be a tangle of hacks and short-term decisions that hammer things into working or being performant, coming at the expense of future developers and correctness.

I do agree that the field is full of great code to reference, though.

I'm a huge fan of Godot's codebase. It's well written, and easily understood both architecturally, and in-method. https://github.com/godotengine/godot

[Ace17 → crocodiletears]

You can't have a unified opinion here.

There are some pretty good public game codebases (Penumbra/HPL, Quake I/II/III, Doom I/III), there are some okay ones (RedAlert), there are also pretty awful ones (Duke3D, Descent).

Note that this seems to be completely independent from whether the game is good or not!

[ncmncm → crocodiletears]

When I looked at Godot I saw all pre-C++11, and everything done the hard way. Did I look in the wrong place?

[crocodiletears → ncmncm]

I wouldn't call it the hard way, but it's certainly pre-C++11. My understanding is that the project's lead programmer insists on using older standards for the sake of portability.