{ return hppbard{}; }

For a long time in C++ was no fast way to deal with return value. They were copied and there was no hope to change it. Some have used return parameters in argument list like: void GetObjectsInArea(Area exactArea, ObjectList& objList); To avoid unnecessary copies and speed up the execution developers were doing a lot of work. Eventually when optimized code were becoming unreadable the developers would abandon it and the code would transform into legacy code at some point.