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How a 20 year old bug in GTA San Andreas surfaced in Windows 11 24H2

(cookieplmonster.github.io)
1371 points yett | 6 comments | 23 Apr 25 14:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.86s | source | bottom
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db48x ◴[23 Apr 25 14:32 UTC] No.43772686[source]▶
[flagged]
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mschuster91 ◴[23 Apr 25 14:43 UTC] No.43772801[source]▶
To u/db48x whose post got flagged and doesn't reappear despite me vouching for it as I think they have a point (at least for modern games): GTA San Andreas was released in 2004. Back then, YAML was in its infancy (2001) and JSON was only standardized informally in 2006, and XML wasn't something widely used outside of the Java world.

On top of that, the hardware requirements (256MB of system RAM, and the PlayStation 2 only had 32MB) made it enough of a challenge to get the game running at all. Throwing in a heavyweight parsing library for either of these three languages was out of the question.

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Magma7404 ◴[23 Apr 25 14:52 UTC] No.43772895[source]▶
The comment reappeared, and while you're right about using proper libraries to handle data, it doesn't excuse the "undefined behavior (uninitialized local variables)" that I still see all the time despite all the warning and error flags that can be fed to the compiler.

Most of the time, the programmers who do this do not follow the simple rule that Stroustrup said which is to define or initialize a variable where you declare it (i.e. declare it before using it), and which would solve a lot of bugs in C++.

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Yeask ◴[23 Apr 25 15:16 UTC] No.43773146[source]▶
And it did not matter at all. The game shipped and was a success.
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1. ryandrake ◴[23 Apr 25 15:29 UTC] No.43773286[source]▶
This is the thing that drives artists and craftsmen to despair and drink: That a flawed, buggy, poor quality work can be "successful" while something beautiful and technically perfect can fail.
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2. butlike ◴[23 Apr 25 15:42 UTC] No.43773416[source]▶
The job of the artist is to take the years of expertise and distill it down into something "enjoyable." The hardest mental hurdle to get over is that people just don't care about the technicals being perfect. Hell, the final product doesn't even need to be beautiful; it just needs to be arresting.
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3. soulofmischief ◴[23 Apr 25 15:45 UTC] No.43773459[source]▶
San Andreas might be rough under the hood, but on the surface it was nothing short of a masterpiece of game design. The engine was so complex and the cities felt alive, and the game could handle a lot of general nonsense. Still one of my favorite go-to games.
4. RHSeeger ◴[23 Apr 25 15:58 UTC] No.43773594[source]▶
One artist can take months painting a picture of a landscape where everything is perfect. And the next artist can throw 4 colors of paint at a wall. The fact that lots of people enjoy the work of the second artist doesn't invalidate the work of the first. The two artists are focusing on different things; and it's possible for both of them to be successful at reaching their goals.
5. RHSeeger ◴[23 Apr 25 15:58 UTC] No.43773603[source]▶
Heck, sometimes the thing that's most interesting about a work is people arguing over whether or not it's art.
6. Yeask ◴[23 Apr 25 20:25 UTC] No.43776294[source]▶
Some artist also think "is mot music because it has no guitars".

The standars "artist" have are atificial and snoby.

How can Deadmau5/whatever EDM artist sell so much?