Convert codebase to C++?

[tehKaiN]

Most ACE utils/managers are having create/destroy functions, so this could be constructors. Also, some things that will be possible in C++ and aren't in C:

• blitter as a global object - setting regs via method chaining, also add some helper methods. Should be able to make blitter usage a lot easier while also allowing to strip some of current blitter fns bloat/limitations without making code too messy
• constexpr most of constructors
• templated stuff - abiltiy to have byte- or word-indexed tilebuffer without duplicating the codebase
• optimize stuff here and there with std::move
• better memory management - ability to have static allocation for most of things instead of current dynamic-only approach. Should allow compiler for more optimizations. Done with either constructing globals for static alloc or using new/smart pointers for dynamic alloc
• template most of helper fns so that they can be better optimized

Things to figure out:

• what C++ features to use and what to skip to prevent machine code and memory bloat or general slowdowns
• which compiler to officially support - Bartman's offers more recent C++ standard but has no STL/stdlib, Bebbo has those and optimizes better in some cases but doesn't support bleeding edge C++ and it's getting older with each day
• should the C++ be just a wrapper for C code or rewrite it in-place? Some people may want to use C flavor

[timfel]

while on a high level i would like to see that, I'm afraid given how few people work on the optimisation pipeline for 68k in gcc, the performance impact for c++ features that have not been optimised in the 68k backend may be noticeable

[tehKaiN]

From discord discussion:

I kinda need having a tilebuffer draw tile callback to draw stuff over the tile, and that gets in the way of tileBufferContinueTileDraw().

So I'm thinking - I guess we need a flag which tells the tilebuffer whether it can optimize draws this way or not, and I'm thinking whether it should be a tag in tilebuffer or a define similarly to how bob system has its feature locked. Adding ifs in bob system proved to be adding noticeable slowdowns of it could/would be the same here. In cpp world, tilebuffer could be templated and that could be one of template params setting constexpr static field, which could be then constexpr-if'd in code.

EDIT: nevermind - it first batches draws, and then calls callbacks after all tiles are drawn. Nevermind then. But being able to constexpr-specify options would probably open up some performance optimizations.