Mediocre game technology

Prior to the latest update of Granny Smith, we ran into memory problems when loading levels. This was due to the unfortunate choice of using XML and TinyXML for level data. I'm generally very positive to both XMl as a data format (as opposed to most game developers) and TinyXML as a library. However, since we don't use instancing, a level can easily be 500 kb or more and TinyXMl will parse the entire file into a DOM structure before it can be read. This results in a myriad of small allocations ranging from a few bytes up to about 100 bytes. I'm not sure exactly what the per-allocation overhead is on iOS and Android, but I suppose it's at least 16 or 32 bytes. In addition the LUA library also makes a fair amount of small allocations. So far I had not bothered using a custom allocator for anything since I usually try to avoid allocations alltogether. Strings, dynamic arrays, stream buffers, etc, all have a templated built-in storage, so you can reserve a specific amou

Something that annoyed me for many years now is how the games industry (well, software development community in general) treat individual developers as "resources" in a project schedule. It doesn't just sound awful and is a direct insult to the profession, it's also plain wrong, stupid and counter-productive. Yeah, I know what you're thinking.. but yes I would argue programming is a creative line of work, you are designing and building something. Do you think a car manufacturer talks about "designer resources" when coming up with a new model? Does a TV show producer have "screenplay writing resources" (well maybe they do, I don't have a clue). Of course it matters who designs and builds something. You can throw hundreds of bad composers on a soundtrack, but it still sounds horrible. How many weeks does task X take to complete? The answer should always be the same - it depends on who does it . There are no man-hours, man-weeks or man-m