{"id":35227,"date":"2025-03-18T13:51:17","date_gmt":"2025-03-18T13:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/?p=35227"},"modified":"2025-03-18T13:52:44","modified_gmt":"2025-03-18T13:52:44","slug":"optimizing-build-times-with-build-insights-how-activision-cut-call-of-dutys-build-time-by-50","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/optimizing-build-times-with-build-insights-how-activision-cut-call-of-dutys-build-time-by-50\/","title":{"rendered":"Optimizing Build Times with Build Insights: How Activision Cut Call of Duty\u2019s Build Time by 50%"},"content":{"rendered":"

Slow build times are a major headache for developers, especially in large, complex C++ codebases like game engines. Every minute spent waiting on a build is time that could be used to refine features, resolve issues, or push development forward. Activision faced this challenge with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, where prolonged build times were slowing down iteration and impeding workflows. By leveraging Build Insights, they identified key inefficiencies, optimized bottlenecks, and successfully reduced build times from 27:49 minutes to just 14:25 minutes\u2014cutting them in half. Read more about their journey in our detailed breakdown on Microsoft Game Dev<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Call<\/p>\n

Build times impact every aspect of development. When builds are slow, valuable engineering time is lost\u2014time that could be spent improving features, optimizing performance, or debugging critical issues. Slow builds also create bottlenecks in our continuous integration pipelines, delaying the verification of every piece of code and content that goes into our games. To keep our development workflow efficient, we need our builds to be as fast as possible, and Build Insights provides that capability to our teams.\u00a0\u2014 Michael Vance, SVP & Fellow Software Engineer, Activision<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Through a collaboration between Activision, the Xbox Advanced Technology Group (ATG), and the MSVC team, optimizations were made to force inlining, linker efficiency, and whole-program analysis, leading to dramatic improvements in build performance. These insights not only benefited Call of Duty but also contributed to broader enhancements in MSVC\u2019s LTCG and linker performance, positively impacting other major projects like Fortnite, Chrome, and TensorFlow.<\/p>\n

To dive deeper into how these optimizations were achieved and how Build Insights can help your own development workflow, read the full article on How Build Insights Reduced Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II\u2019s Build Times by 50%<\/a>. You can also check out our YouTube Video<\/a>, explore our blog post<\/a>, or dive into our documentation<\/a> to start optimizing your builds today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slow build times are a major headache for developers, especially in large, complex C++ codebases like game engines. Every minute spent waiting on a build is time that could be used to refine features, resolve issues, or push development forward. Activision faced this challenge with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, where prolonged build times […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53792,"featured_media":35249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3947,3948,1,3927],"tags":[3953,3954,140,331],"class_list":["post-35227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-build-insights","category-build-optimization","category-cplusplus","category-game-development","tag-activision","tag-build-insights","tag-c","tag-game-development"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Slow build times are a major headache for developers, especially in large, complex C++ codebases like game engines. Every minute spent waiting on a build is time that could be used to refine features, resolve issues, or push development forward. Activision faced this challenge with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, where prolonged build times […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53792"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/cppblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}