Guild Wars 2

I’m starting my compsci major in college, and looking through all the different languages and stuff, I was randomly curious, what language was GW2 written in? Or is it a collection of different languages for different parts of the game, held together though proprietary stuff?

like most games, it’s probably coded in c/c++, the latter being the most common and therefore most likely.

note: i am referring to the client itself. the internal tools may be done in c#/python since the optimization isn’t needed and internal tools can be cranked out faster/easier (cheaper) with those languages.

C++ with tools being written in C# and python. They also use the Havok engine with Umbra from what I recall.

Ultimately assembly language when compiled. All else is window dressing.

I’m pretty sure its written in a combination of COBOL and binary punch cards and runs on servers powered by thermal turbines powered by bruning money and expired content punch cards.

not entirely windows dressing. the language is an import factor as well as the compiler to get the most efficient assembled result. garbage in garbage out.

also “written in” and “resolved to after it’s written” are different.

PopeUrban.2578:

I’m pretty sure its written in a combination of COBOL and binary punch cards and runs on servers powered by thermal turbines powered by bruning money and expired content punch cards.

Binary punch cards would explain why content updates take so long.

BrooksP.4318:

PopeUrban.2578:

I’m pretty sure its written in a combination of COBOL and binary punch cards and runs on servers powered by thermal turbines powered by bruning money and expired content punch cards.

Binary punch cards would explain why content updates take so long.

If we all pitch in maybe we can buy them some reel-to-reel magnetic spool drives!

PopeUrban.2578:

BrooksP.4318:

PopeUrban.2578:

I’m pretty sure its written in a combination of COBOL and binary punch cards and runs on servers powered by thermal turbines powered by bruning money and expired content punch cards.

Binary punch cards would explain why content updates take so long.

If we all pitch in maybe we can buy them some reel-to-reel magnetic spool drives!

They’re probably already on it, hence the presale of HoT and the timeframe it has taken them. Though expect high prices in the gem store, I hear the tape for those can get expensive.

awwww… and here I was thinkin it was vb6!

The servers are a room full of specially trained monkeys with abacuses and switches on the walls to toggle when they finish calculating. That the game runs this smoothly on such hardware is a miracle.

Serious answer:
Client side: Most likely C++, like said before tools written in C# or python (I’d go with C# this day and age). I’d expect a custom game engine based off the GW1 engine. Client is DirectX9, that should give you a lot of clues for that.

Server side: Solidly C++ on Linux. You don’t really do any other language on Linux with exception of maybe python. And you don’t do python if you want any serious performance out of the application.

Data storage: Most likely proprietary storage mechanism rather than a database engine like MySQL.

PopeUrban.2578:

I’m pretty sure its written in a combination of COBOL and binary punch cards and runs on servers powered by thermal turbines powered by bruning money and expired content punch cards.

Heh.. that’s exactly what I learned in the 10th grade back in 1979. Punch cards and everything.

Its written in all 1’s and 0’s so I win

https://www.arena.net/ scroll to the bottom then look at the job requirements.

https://m.reddit.com/comments/11mz4k/i_am_a_programmer_for_guild_wars_2_amaa

Side note: I got my BS in CS. I am now getting masters in ee/ce. I wish I got that degree first. If you have the opportunity, consider switching for your bachelors, especially if you are going to a top state school

Trading Post UI basically is a html page. Probably adding regular web stuffs like Javascrift and Python to the list.

The core game client looks to be C++, with a DSL (domain specific language) built on top of it for handling things like AI and such. There are several options for DSLs, but most games these days seem to go with C# as a basis. I haven’t tried examining their VFS like DAT file so I can’t say for sure what thy use for scripting.

The back end could be a number of things. Someone earlier said that it has to be C++ on Linux, but it certainly doesn’t have to be. Linux is almost certain, but there really isn’t any reason why the server itself needs to be written in C++. The bottleneck for performance in a game servers is I/O. Any language with a half decent JIT and threading can handle the throughput (I’ve written Java applications that required processing millions of messages and GBs of data for enterprise systems and the language was never the performance problem).

For the amount of data this game needs to track and the number of connections, your talking distributed databases. Most modern DB’s support clustering of one form or another, including Postgres and Oracle. I don’t think there using something like Mongo on the back-end as cool as that would be.

That being said, anything we say is just speculation about the back-end. Unless a dev comes on here and says “Here’s what we used…” there’s no way to tell.

I should learn/practice more C#/Python , that is the main reason I didn’t send my CV for the Data Engineer spot, I’m focused in VB6 and VB.NET (besides the SQL Server stuff obviously)

question though ? is the server engine 64 bit based or it still 32bit

Hofulu.7325:

I’m starting my compsci major in college, and looking through all the different languages and stuff, I was randomly curious, what language was GW2 written in? Or is it a collection of different languages for different parts of the game, held together though proprietary stuff?

If you are interested in GW2 behind the scenes I would recommend you watch at least these GDC presentations.

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016640/Guild-Wars-2-Programming-the
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1013691/Designing-Guild-Wars-2-Dynamic
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021848/Building-a-Better-Centaur-AI (more of general AI)

There are probably few others but I don’t recall them off the top of my head.

Also, this is just my personal opinion, but if you can manage it, start with a slightly more complex language and move towards a language with more automation rather than going in the opposite direction. Namely to learn memory management, don’t become another programmer that calls a language “brittle” because it doesn’t have garbage collection, simply on the basis that you are used to relying on it.

Blimey! A dev dropped in… Lucky OP!