I'm intrigued that nobody has mentioned UnrealScript in this context. I'm pretty sure they haven't dropped that for UE3, and language-wise that's apparently somewhat like Java. Historically, Unreal games have had most of their logic written in UnrealScript.
And yeah, 500000 really isn't much in gamedev. I worked as an engine programmer for the year following graduation and worked on a almost-2-million-LOC behemoth (including tools, so the game was probably nearer 1-1.5m) which wasn't an MMO or even had that much data to look after at run time. (the Wii only has 88MB of RAM)
I can echo the long compile and linking times mentioned elsewhere. Almost none of the code used templates, which would have been an obvious candidate for driving up the compile time. Linking really isn't fast anymore either once you hit a couple hundred compilation units.
Of course, the code was a complete mess. Few people cared much about the quality of the code base, particularly as the game was released about 9 months late and everyone just wanted it out the door. (it was delayed mostly by management pushing for features rather than having bugs fixed for the 2/3 of development and large-scale changes imposed by the publisher late in development) Not a particularly pleasant experience, but boy did I get to practice my skills in understanding and debugging badly written, undocumented code. Typically code that nobody who still worked at the company had ever touched or seen. Or maybe that was the crazy overtime talking.
And yeah, 500000 really isn't much in gamedev. I worked as an engine programmer for the year following graduation and worked on a almost-2-million-LOC behemoth (including tools, so the game was probably nearer 1-1.5m) which wasn't an MMO or even had that much data to look after at run time. (the Wii only has 88MB of RAM)
I can echo the long compile and linking times mentioned elsewhere. Almost none of the code used templates, which would have been an obvious candidate for driving up the compile time. Linking really isn't fast anymore either once you hit a couple hundred compilation units.
Of course, the code was a complete mess. Few people cared much about the quality of the code base, particularly as the game was released about 9 months late and everyone just wanted it out the door. (it was delayed mostly by management pushing for features rather than having bugs fixed for the 2/3 of development and large-scale changes imposed by the publisher late in development) Not a particularly pleasant experience, but boy did I get to practice my skills in understanding and debugging badly written, undocumented code. Typically code that nobody who still worked at the company had ever touched or seen. Or maybe that was the crazy overtime talking.
~phil