Gamedev Lounge 0010

[Phaze]

-memory management-

Yes, I am well aware of this too along with the fact that Garbage Collection is a thing that Java has that C/C++ doesn't. I know that if you just keep new/malloc-ing stuff the game's memory usage will eventually spiral out of control, then it can't allocate any more and - crash! Naturally, stuff that is no longer being used needs to be properly freed/deleted, not only to keep the program running but in order to keep it from needlessly chomping down on memory (and possibly even CPU cycles, though obv. this isn't strictly related to memory management) that other programs would probably like to use. I notice that a lot of people, when they develop programs, they simply attempt to throw more resources at the problem instead of actually fixing the underlying problem - or heck, actually seeing it coming and planning accordingly.

I'm by no means an expert but I have made programs in C before, so I do have experience with regards to memory allocation and dancing around arrays and pointers in general, though I realize C++ does handle things a little differently and I need to research the language properly as a result in order to get the best use out of it, since a lot of handy abstractions that Java provides are missing at this point.

There's also the fact that even with Java's GC it's easily possible to run out of memory if you're a clueless ditz and keep endlessly creating Objects and maintain references to them - score 1 for leaky abstractions, eh

Honestly though, despite the potential risk for memory leaks I'll probably go about managing allocated memory, myself.