File I/O for Game Developers: Past, Present, and Future with C++ - Guy Davidson - CppCon 2023

https://cppcon.org/
---

File I/O for Game Developers: Past, Present, and Future with C++ - Guy Davidson - CppCon 2023
https://github.com/CppCon/CppCon2023

If you have played a game on a computer in the last few decades, you will most likely have encountered a loading screen. This is used to advertise to the player that, among other things, data is being loaded from a storage device into the game. But why does this exist, why does it take so long, and how can we improve matters for the player?

In this talk we will discover the history of games and their development environments, the relationship between address space, RAM and storage hardware, how C++ abstracts file I/O and why it might not be the best fit for game developers, how a 64-bit address space changes everything, how #embed will change everything, and how C++29 (yes, 29) may upset the applecart yet again.

Although this talk is aimed at game developers who are often Windows programmers, it is relevant to anyone who has to read large amounts of data from local storage. Expect tales of woe, discovery and jubilation as I describe every surprising little thing I've learned about file I/O over the past 40 years and how C++ is heading for a great future in games.
---

Guy Davidson

Guy Davidson (he/him) is the Head of Engineering Practice at Creative Assembly, one of the UK's oldest and largest game development studios.

Guy started writing games over 40 years ago and has spent the last 24 of them at Creative Assembly. He is the co-author of Beautiful C++: 30 Core Guidelines for writing clean, safe and fast code, published by Pearson in 2021. He is a frequent conference speaker and organiser, as well as being a co-founder of #include and a regular C++ committee participant.
---

Videos Filmed & Edited by Bash Films: http://www.BashFilms.com
YouTube Channel Managed by Digital Medium Ltd: https://events.digital-medium.co.uk
---

Registration for CppCon: https://cppcon.org/registration/

#cppcon #cppprogramming #cpp #gamedevelopment