←back to thread

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

(cookieplmonster.github.io)
1371 points yett | 2 comments | 23 Apr 25 14:00 UTC | HN request time: 0.432s | source
Show context
amenghra ◴[23 Apr 25 18:08 UTC] No.43774928[source]▶
IMHO, if something isn’t part of the contract, it should be randomized. Eg if iteration order of maps isn’t guaranteed in your language, then your language should go out of its way to randomize it. Otherwise, you end up with brittle code: code that works fine until it doesn’t.
replies(11): >>43774993 #>>43775199 #>>43775210 #>>43775344 #>>43775361 #>>43775510 #>>43775759 #>>43776084 #>>43776311 #>>43776598 #>>43778608 #
1. mras0 ◴[23 Apr 25 18:30 UTC] No.43775210[source]▶
Not really the ethos of C(++), though of course this particular bug would be easily caught by running a debug build (even 20 years ago). However, this being a game "true" debug builds were probably too slow to be usable. That was at least my experience doing gamedev in that timeframe. Then again code holding up for 20 years in that line of biz is more than sufficient anyway :)
replies(1): >>43777280 #
2. mabster ◴[23 Apr 25 22:19 UTC] No.43777280[source]▶
When I was doing gamedev about 5 years ago, we were still debugging with optimisation on. You get a class of bugs just from running in lower frame rates that don't happen in release.