Yesterday I checked out a 3 year old version of Eressea and compared it to today’s code. In those three years, the game has gotten almost four times faster! The old code took 10:20 minutes to run a turn, and the one I use today was done after 2:50. This had to be done on an old data file, smaller than the one we have today.

I knew I had been doing the occasional optimization – run the code with gprof, fix the worst offenders, rinse and repeat – but I had no idea the gains were that big. I’m sure that 3 years ago I considered the code pretty compact and fast…

I wonder what it will be like in three years.