Hi Davy,
A question and a comment;
When you say big bucks for a developer account, you are aware that this is $99
per year, not per month, yes?
This translates to less than $8 per month, -less than $2 per week.
Not sure of your budget but just want to make sure we're all on the same page
here. :)
To your point about not needing XCode when using C++, you do still need XCode
to build for iOS / Mac, regardless of whether you use C++ or not.
Hope this helps and hope you and yours are having a most lovely holiday season!
Smiles,
Cara :)
---
iOS design and development - LookTel.com
---
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On Dec 13, 2013, at 8:30 AM, Davy Kager <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi,
All very interesting points you made.
I tend to agree that C++ is awesome (in an IDE that isn't vendor-specific, with
an opensource toolchain). I'd love to automate my build process on Linux and
do nightlies for beta testers. My main reason for using Java is that I can't
avoid using it in the future, on projects where I don't get to decide what
language to use. I am interested in iOS development in the long run. I
thought of concentrating on Windows for now, using OpenAL or XAudio2 with C++,
and then combining a Mac and iOS project since both use Objective-C and OpenAL.
The most prominent reason for not doing that is that I'm not comfortable
buying a MacBook and spending big money on a developer account just yet, and
XCode is really the way to go for Objective-C. Doing something in C++ would
mostly remove the requirement for XCode, which is a good thing to me as I'd
like to unify the development process as much as possible.
Still, right now I'm leaning towards using Java since I already have a skeleton
engine set up in that language and because it's so easy to debug code on the
JVM. My only problem is with the ease of decompiling. There are solutions,
most notably ahead-of-time compiling, but then you lose not only some
advantages of the JVM, but also a huge heap of money. :)
But then, I also remember how Thomas struggled to find the right language for
MOTA and lost valuable time (I'm told there's still no final version 1 for that
game?). Clearly you need to bite that bullet some day or be obscured in the
fog of indecisiveness.
Cheers,
Davy
-----Original Message-----
From: Gamers [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Draconis
Sent: Friday, December 13, 2013 17:06
To: Gamers Discussion list
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] BGT, Mac and More
Chiming in on these cross-platform topics seems to be a common theme for me. LOL
I have three points I’d like to make.
First, ignoring Mac as a viable platform for blind gamers is a poor strategy.
One year on, and Mac sales are still far exceeding Windows sales, even in
comparison to back in the hay day of audio games, some 10 years ago or so. It
isn’t just about raw user numbers, it is about demographics and the quality of
those users.
Which leads me to my second point.
There is an old saying: “Lies, damn lies, and statistics.”
This could not apply to anything as well as it does to the statement that
Android is more popular than iOS overall. It is technically true that Android
is used in more devices, but that is because many of those devices are not,
strictly speaking, Android devices. That is to say, they are not being used as
portable computing devices like iOS devices are. Kindles, Nooks, many models of
feature phones, and countless other gadgets, all get lumped into the Android
user numbers, even though many of those devices are so limited in scope that
users don’t even know Android was used in their development.
This is why, in the areas that matters, iOS’s numbers are so much better than
Android’s, despite the marketshare numbers that the media likes to quote. iOS
consistently has over 80% of web usage from mobile devices, for example. iOS
users are for more likely to pay for apps, too. iOS users also spend more time
on their devices, showing greater engagement with the platform. And those kinds
of numbers go on and on.
It is the same kind of trick as companies like Samsung use that create
headlines in the news like: “Samsung sells 10 million Galaxy blah blah”. In
reality, they shipped that number to resellers and warehouses. Shipped, but not
necessarily sold to end users. Samsung never actually releases specific sales
numbers. They only ever announce numbers of units shipped. It sounds better
that way.
Apple, conversely, only ever announces sales to end users, and never the number
of units shipped.
All of this, before you even start taking into account the fragmentation of
Android, which is a disaster that Google is continuing to scramble to get a
hold on with nothing to show for it. Less than 2% of Android devices are
running the latest version of the OS, compared with over 70% of iOS devices.
Android is a support nightmare for developers, much as Windows is.
Granted, that 2% number may be slightly skewed, given Google’s continued desire
to artificially inflate the usage numbers of Android, but it is still a huge
problem for the platform.
My final point is a technical one.
We explored a number of options for developing the Draconis Engine, including
experimenting with various languages, techniques, and technologies. We have now
shipped multiple titles on three platforms in the space of eleven months. Three
Mac releases, three Windows releases, and one iOS release. (This assumes you
count the Show Cases for Mac/Windows.)
The Draconis Engine was created with C++ primarily, with very tiny portions
written in Objective-C to cover OS X and iOS GUI, and small portions in C# for
Windows.
While C++, like any language, has advantages and disadvantages, if you are
interested in cross-platform development, particularly game development, we
found that the relatively minor trade offs were worth the huge advantages we
gained by going this route.
Just about all other cross-platform methods, like Java or Python, come with
huge disadvantages, as I believe Tom has mostly already covered.
Hope this is helpful.
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If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected].
You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at
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