On 10/20/2011 12:59 PM, Brian Conrad wrote:
> Problem there is you often have to compile on the target machine.  I
> never found a cross-compiler for Macs.  So Java was a solution for my
> Mac users as well as Linux, that is without them having to use a VM.

Easy enough to buy a cheap Mac, or to create a "Hackintosh" (dual boot
into Mac OS X -- Google for it if you're curious).

> Have you tried RenderScript for C++ code?  I've looked a game ports
> that might work best that way especially when they don't want to pay
> much for the conversion.

I haven't tried it, no. In addition to requiring Honeycomb (and
therefore being 2-3 years before it's on a majority of devices),
RenderScript is C99-like, not cross-platform C++. I don't mind
rebuilding for different architectures -- and the NDK will have an Intel
target stable by the time I need to work on systems that need it.

RenderScript won't help me with iPhone/iPad support, and it won't help
me do 99% of my development on my native Windows, avoiding the emulator
and the rather pathetic tools we have to debug with on Android (compared
to Visual Studio, anyway).

I'm not using C++ because I need that extra little bit of speed
everywhere. I do 80%+ of my code in Lua, which is fast, but not as fast
as a good Java JIT. I'm using C++ because it works on every platform I
care about, and the tools are far more mature, especially on Windows.
Sure you can debug Java on Windows, but I can write code in Lua 100x
faster than in Java -- and not just because I know Lua better than Java.
It also ends up with fewer lines of code to do almost anything.

And I can write code and test it basically instantly when I'm doing my
testing on Windows, and the code is a Lua script that it reloads every
time. When tweaking a game for feel, it's hard to beat a zero-time test
cycle. :)

Tim

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