On the Topic of "Smart Pointers" and the Factory Create Pattern

This is a topic I have visited a few times over the years: 2016 , 2016 on SDL2 , 2019 , 2023 on control block , and I visited it professionally on the now cancelled AAA MMO Game Engine with Zenimax Online; the specific pattern within which came from my original 2016 post, just with a few tweaks and expansions over the years. Its just one of those things which comes up time and again in the C++…