Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
cppcon.org
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Upgrading Sea of Thieves From C++14 to C++20 Wasn't Easy Here's Why - Keith Stockdale - CppCon 2025
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Rare put in huge amounts of work to bring Sea of Thieves to PlayStation 5 and to upgrade from the old XDK and UWP platforms to the new GDK platform. In this session, Rare will discuss why they made the decision to take this opportunity to also upgrade from C++14 to C++20. It shouldn’t be much harder than changing a 14 to a 20, right? How hard could it be?
Rare will discuss all the work that was involved in upgrading their language standard and share some anecdotes of some of the challenges that were met along the way. They will go through the benefits that they have felt from this upgrade along with some plans for continuing this work in the future.
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Slides: github.com/CppCon/CppCon2025/blob/main/Presentations/Changing_Cpp14_To_Cpp20.pdf
Work at Hudson River Trading (HRT): tinyurl.com/safxfctf
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Keith Stockdale
Keith Stockdale is a Northern Irish senior software engineer who has been working on the Engine and Rendering teams at Rare Ltd for the last 8 years working on Sea of Thieves. At Rare, Keith's main areas of focus are involved in maintaining and creating general purpose simulations that run on the GPU. For example, he is the owner of the GPU particle system that drives the visual effects in Sea of Thieves. Keith is enthusiastic about promoting writing good quality code, whether it is running on the CPU on the GPU. He is driven towards ensuring that the code-bases he works in are enjoyable to work in for all current and future developers on his team.
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CppCon is the annual, week-long face-to-face gathering for the entire C++ community. The conference is organized by the C++ community for the community. You will enjoy inspirational talks and a friendly atmosphere designed to help attendees learn from each other, meet interesting people, and generally have a stimulating experience. Taking place this year in Aurora, Colorado, near the Denver airport, and including multiple diverse tracks, the conference will appeal to anyone from C++ novices to experts.
Annual CppCon Conference - cppcon.org
linkedin.com/company/cppcon
https://x.com/cppcon
facebook.com/CppConference
reddit.com/r/cppcon
https://mastodon.social/@CppCon
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Videos Filmed & Edited by Bash Films: BashFilms.com
YouTube Channel Managed by Digital Medium Ltd: events.digital-medium.co.uk
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#cpp #cplusplus #programming #gamedevelopment #gamedev #seaofthieves
cppcon.org
---
Upgrading Sea of Thieves From C++14 to C++20 Wasn't Easy Here's Why - Keith Stockdale - CppCon 2025
---
Rare put in huge amounts of work to bring Sea of Thieves to PlayStation 5 and to upgrade from the old XDK and UWP platforms to the new GDK platform. In this session, Rare will discuss why they made the decision to take this opportunity to also upgrade from C++14 to C++20. It shouldn’t be much harder than changing a 14 to a 20, right? How hard could it be?
Rare will discuss all the work that was involved in upgrading their language standard and share some anecdotes of some of the challenges that were met along the way. They will go through the benefits that they have felt from this upgrade along with some plans for continuing this work in the future.
---
Slides: github.com/CppCon/CppCon2025/blob/main/Presentations/Changing_Cpp14_To_Cpp20.pdf
Work at Hudson River Trading (HRT): tinyurl.com/safxfctf
---
Keith Stockdale
Keith Stockdale is a Northern Irish senior software engineer who has been working on the Engine and Rendering teams at Rare Ltd for the last 8 years working on Sea of Thieves. At Rare, Keith's main areas of focus are involved in maintaining and creating general purpose simulations that run on the GPU. For example, he is the owner of the GPU particle system that drives the visual effects in Sea of Thieves. Keith is enthusiastic about promoting writing good quality code, whether it is running on the CPU on the GPU. He is driven towards ensuring that the code-bases he works in are enjoyable to work in for all current and future developers on his team.
---
CppCon is the annual, week-long face-to-face gathering for the entire C++ community. The conference is organized by the C++ community for the community. You will enjoy inspirational talks and a friendly atmosphere designed to help attendees learn from each other, meet interesting people, and generally have a stimulating experience. Taking place this year in Aurora, Colorado, near the Denver airport, and including multiple diverse tracks, the conference will appeal to anyone from C++ novices to experts.
Annual CppCon Conference - cppcon.org
linkedin.com/company/cppcon
https://x.com/cppcon
facebook.com/CppConference
reddit.com/r/cppcon
https://mastodon.social/@CppCon
---
Videos Filmed & Edited by Bash Films: BashFilms.com
YouTube Channel Managed by Digital Medium Ltd: events.digital-medium.co.uk
---
#cpp #cplusplus #programming #gamedevelopment #gamedev #seaofthieves
