Tim Sweeney

I'd grown up learning with Pascal as my favorite language. In order to just get maximum performance and get the latest operating system features, I had to move to C for my second game, Joel of the Jungle, a little Nintendo-style platformer. And so when I started Unreal Engine, it was on 16-bit Windows using the C programming language.

I'd grown up learning with Pascal as my favorite language. In order to just get maximum performance and get the latest operating system features, I had to move to C for my second game, Joel of the Jungle, a little Nintendo-style platformer. And so when I started Unreal Engine, it was on 16-bit Windows using the C programming language.

I'd grown up learning with Pascal as my favorite language. In order to just get maximum performance and get the latest operating system features, I had to move to C for my second game, Joel of the Jungle, a little Nintendo-style platformer. And so when I started Unreal Engine, it was on 16-bit Windows using the C programming language.

And over the course of the first year, it moved to 32-bit, using these DOS extenders and then using Windows NT, and I moved to the C++ language, and just because it simplified the code so much, went from a really complicated pile of code to a much simpler one, making that transition. And so almost the entirety of Unreal Engine development, about two and a half years of it, was all on C++, 32-bit.

And over the course of the first year, it moved to 32-bit, using these DOS extenders and then using Windows NT, and I moved to the C++ language, and just because it simplified the code so much, went from a really complicated pile of code to a much simpler one, making that transition. And so almost the entirety of Unreal Engine development, about two and a half years of it, was all on C++, 32-bit.

And over the course of the first year, it moved to 32-bit, using these DOS extenders and then using Windows NT, and I moved to the C++ language, and just because it simplified the code so much, went from a really complicated pile of code to a much simpler one, making that transition. And so almost the entirety of Unreal Engine development, about two and a half years of it, was all on C++, 32-bit.

Completely state-of-the-art then. Like, 32-bit protected mode was kind of a magical thing, having come from the days when computers were much less reliable and crashed all the time.

Completely state-of-the-art then. Like, 32-bit protected mode was kind of a magical thing, having come from the days when computers were much less reliable and crashed all the time.

Completely state-of-the-art then. Like, 32-bit protected mode was kind of a magical thing, having come from the days when computers were much less reliable and crashed all the time.

Yeah, it's because it solves all the problems at scale, often through manual pain, but always solves them. A lot of other languages do better in a lot of theoretical aspects and are better for some usage cases, but you can't do everything, and that's very limiting.

Yeah, it's because it solves all the problems at scale, often through manual pain, but always solves them. A lot of other languages do better in a lot of theoretical aspects and are better for some usage cases, but you can't do everything, and that's very limiting.

Yeah, it's because it solves all the problems at scale, often through manual pain, but always solves them. A lot of other languages do better in a lot of theoretical aspects and are better for some usage cases, but you can't do everything, and that's very limiting.

I went through a big transition there. I started out being pretty lazy. I bought used computers because you'd often get them at half the price of a new one. They'd be good enough. I had this old 486 I was developing on. I guess it was a 15-inch monitor at the time. It was a poor workstation setup, but it was very economical. As we started on Unreal, I realized that I had to write a ton of code.

I went through a big transition there. I started out being pretty lazy. I bought used computers because you'd often get them at half the price of a new one. They'd be good enough. I had this old 486 I was developing on. I guess it was a 15-inch monitor at the time. It was a poor workstation setup, but it was very economical. As we started on Unreal, I realized that I had to write a ton of code.

I went through a big transition there. I started out being pretty lazy. I bought used computers because you'd often get them at half the price of a new one. They'd be good enough. I had this old 486 I was developing on. I guess it was a 15-inch monitor at the time. It was a poor workstation setup, but it was very economical. As we started on Unreal, I realized that I had to write a ton of code.

I had to write at absolute maximum productivity. So I had to rearrange my entire life around delivering maximum output. And so at that point, I realized actually spending money on getting good equipment was a good investment. And we're not talking about millions of dollars here or billions if you're building a GPU farm. We're just talking about buying some basic hardware.

I had to write at absolute maximum productivity. So I had to rearrange my entire life around delivering maximum output. And so at that point, I realized actually spending money on getting good equipment was a good investment. And we're not talking about millions of dollars here or billions if you're building a GPU farm. We're just talking about buying some basic hardware.

I had to write at absolute maximum productivity. So I had to rearrange my entire life around delivering maximum output. And so at that point, I realized actually spending money on getting good equipment was a good investment. And we're not talking about millions of dollars here or billions if you're building a GPU farm. We're just talking about buying some basic hardware.

And so I bought the biggest CRT you could buy at the time because this was a CRT. It was 24 inches. It weighed like 100 pounds. I had back pain for a week after I installed it, but it got me 1920x1200 view in 1996. In 1996, that was pretty cool. So I upgraded to a 90 MHz Pentium and did a lot of programming on that. It was on the 90 MHz Pentium.

And so I bought the biggest CRT you could buy at the time because this was a CRT. It was 24 inches. It weighed like 100 pounds. I had back pain for a week after I installed it, but it got me 1920x1200 view in 1996. In 1996, that was pretty cool. So I upgraded to a 90 MHz Pentium and did a lot of programming on that. It was on the 90 MHz Pentium.