Garbage collection is a lazy process that lets you not be too concerned about where your memory goes and what objects are made. This doesn't really mesh well with games. In games you have to keep close track of everything. You can't risk say having some particle system going crazy and running in the background when you thought it was deleted a long time ago (dumb example but you get the idea).

Usually you want to do something like read a world file and precache every object the world file needs, then delete them if you close it, then separately handle dynamic stuff - which you will usually also want to delete whenever you change a world.

Reference counting is OK in general especially for something like GUI which you are likely to leave hanging around to pop up quickly without reloading. I don't think it's got much use in games though.

If you're doing garbage collection in games you can work around the lack of control if you implement the system yourself and keep control of when gc occurs.

For example you can do collection when you call a collect() method of your memory object. You can do this at points of your own choosing, e.g. when the player is in your "corridor" between two level sections and not much is going off, or during your loading screen.

You can have even more control by dictating what types of objects to free and when. e.g. It's usually O(1) to free plain old data but potentially more to free an object instance with destructors.

Plan it out carefully and you should be OK...

:rolleyes:

What's the point though? In a game you must manage things carefully. So there is no point to bother with GC (if there ever is in C++). GC can cause a lot of finicky bugs. It's arguably a bad practice in an circumstance, let alone in games.

What's the point though? In a game you must manage things carefully. So there is no point to bother with GC (if there ever is in C++). GC can cause a lot of finicky bugs. It's arguably a bad practice in an circumstance, let alone in games.

Why do you keep posting about things you clearly know nothing about? Garbage collection is really nothing more than making sure memory is disposed of properly and not only has use in games, but has been used in games for decades. Are you enjoying this death spiral?

Ah, the irony.

Yes GC is very easy to implement in C++. I think every newly minted game programmer should give that a try and nothing bad will happen.

You must be same staffer who argued with me about memory management before and had no idea what he was talking about. With the bad advice you give, you should not be posting at all, let alone trying to correct me. You really are delusional.

What's the point though? In a game you must manage things carefully. So there is no point to bother with GC (if there ever is in C++). GC can cause a lot of finicky bugs. It's arguably a bad practice in an circumstance, let alone in games.

Both xna and monogame use a garbage collected memory model as does unity via mono.

In all instances you can write quite performant games in these frameworks and engines by planning carefully. When the engine and language collects and what it collects are very well documented and so long as you don't just dive in without thought you won't have problems. To say garbage collection isn't worth it is backwards and such sweeping statements don't really apply. You can't just get out the brush and paint an opinion across every type of game.

What about java games too? They seem to have worked well in a lot of instances. Minecraft anyone?

What is your point?

There is a difference between using GC in a lnaguage that already has it, and implmenting it yourself. Think 2 seconds before you post, especially if it's aimed as a flame at me.

All two of them?

I thought that's what GDNet+ red label meant, I guess not.

Well, if you implement reference counting GC some day, you will eventually curse to high heaven when things don't clean properly. I can't think of a worse idea than recommending to an apparent noob to implement their own reference counting.