Want GCC's cleanup attribute in Visual Studio? Here's what to do.

A common pain point for people writing cross platform C code is that they can't use GCC's cleanup attribute and by extension GLib's g_auto family of macros. I had a chat with some Microsoft people and it turns out it may be possible to get this functionality added to Visual Studio. They add features based on user feedback. Therefore, if you want to see this functionality added to VS, here's what you should do:

1. Create a Microsoft account if you don't already have one.
2. Upvote this issue.
3. Spread the word to other interested people.

Proposal for a computer game research topic: the walk/game ratio

I used to play a fair bit of computer games but in the recent years the amount of time spent on games has decreased. Then the lockdown happened and I bought a PS4 and got back into gaming, which was fun. As often is the case, once guy get back into something after a break you find yourself paying attention to things that you never noticed before.

In this particular case it was about those parts of games where you are not actually playing the game. Instead you are walking/driving/riding from one place to another because the actual thing you want to do is somewhere else. A typical example of this is Red Dead Redemption II (and by extension all GTAs). At first wondering the countryside is fun and immersive but at some point it becomes tedious and you just wish to be at your destination (fast travel helps, but not enough). Note that this does not apply to extra content. Having a lush open sandbox world that people can explore at their leisure is totally fine. This is about "grinding by walking" that you have to do in order to complete the game.

This brings up several interesting questions. How much time, on average, do computer games require players to spend travelling from one place to another as opposed to doing the thing the game is actually about (e.g. shooting nazis, shooting zombie nazis, hunting for secret nazi treasure and fighting underwater nazi zombies)? Does this ratio vary over time? Are there differences between genres, design studios and publishers? It turns out that determining these numbers is fairly simple but laborious. I have too many ongoing projects to do this myself, so here's a research outline for anyone to put in their research grant application:

1. Select a representative set of games.
2. Go to speedrun.com and download the fastest any-% glitchless run available.
3. Split the video into separate segments such as "actual gameplay", "watching unskippable cutscenes", "walkgrinding" and "waiting for game to finish loading".
4. Tabulate times, create graphs

Hypothetical results

As this research has not been done (that I know of and am able to google up) we don't know what the results would be. That does not stop us from speculating endlessly, so here are some estimates that this research might uncover:

• Games with a lot of walkgrdinding: RDR II, Assassin's Creed series, Metroid Prime.
• Games with a medium amount of walkgrinding: Control, Uncharted
• Games with almost no walkgrinding: Trackmania, Super Meat Boy.
• Games that require the player to watch the same unskippable cutscenes over and over: Super Mario Sunshine
• Newer games require more walkgrinding simply because game worlds have gotten bigger