tom do what ever you think is best! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thomas Ward" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 6:29 AM Subject: [Audyssey] Future USA Games product designs.
Hi everyone, As all of you know back in December 2006 USA Games made STFC 1.0 available for public distribution. What we did not anticipate prier to that release is how difficult it would be to get all users up to date running the .NET Framework and the current version of DirectX. For most users we were able to quickly resolve the issues and make STFC operate properly. However, there were a few cases which were without any hope of solving easily, and at this moment still remain open as unsolved cases of unknown error. Recently, on the Audyssey list I had made a suggestion that as a developer I should design a 3D engine similar to the Quake engine, but with all the access features built in. I'm thinking of starting over with the USA Games engine and instead of basing it on the .NET Framework and switching to C++ with the standard Windows win32 API and MFC which comes installed on every Windows system. Even better I can package MFC updates with my installer to update them were they needed. I see many advantages of this switch such as greater security, better performance of games, a wider availability of security tools to protect USA Games commercial games,and no dependence on the .NET Framework for any games designed under the new engine. The final reason I might consider this route is simply that C++ support for game devices, graphics, and sound is first rate. Since it is widely used by pro game developers there are often more features for DirectX available to a C++ dev than say for VB such as force feedback support for game controllers. The VB support for game controllers doesn't seam to work well with feedback devices as both Che and I found out the hard way. James north had created the initial Raceway engine in VB, and I won't be able to get ff device support using VB or VB.NET. However, in a language like C++ it wouldn't even be an issue. However, using C++ isn't going to be all roses. I've gotten a bit rusty with C++, and would probably take some time brushing up my skills, finding out what changes were made in the SDKs I'd need, and so on. Game production could potentially be slower since C++ isn't the easiest language to work with, and I'll admit can be complex at times. Certainly not a cinch like C#.NET is. Not only that it would take me quite a while to read through my engine code, and begin converting it from C#.NET to C++. On the other hand, I do have a good thing going with C#.NET. Other than the bumps in the road with end users not always having the correct versions of the framework etc games like STFC and Montezuma's Revenge are doing well. On a fairly modern system with all the latest service packs and patches those games should play reasonably well for the audio gamers community. I'd kind to hate to switch just when USA Games is beginning to get this show on the road you might say. There are some reasons about the .NET languages I am beginning to dislike such as having to encrypt my binaries every time I compile them for distribution, end users having mismatched versions of programs which causes conflicts, and a few other miner limitations. Otherwise, like I said, I am ok with what I am doing. What do you all think. Are you happy with the way USA Games is doing things, having to install the .NET Framework, etc, or would rather us move to something more generic like the C++ Win32 API which is pretty standardized across MS Windows platforms. Thanks. _______________________________________________ Gamers mailing list .. [email protected] To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. _______________________________________________ Gamers mailing list .. [email protected] To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
