Hi Thomas,
Yes, absolutely. The engine is built in such a way so that core components
are linked as little as possible which means that it's very easy to change
one of them internally as long as its public interface remains relatively
unchanged. It would be a bit of a hassle to port the DirectSound code to XNA
but I'm sure I'll get around to it eventually, at least once we get to the
point where not many people are using Xp anymore.
Of course, Bgt being a scripting engine it is not as fast as C++ but the
idea is to keep all the heavy processing such as the internal sound
management and multithreading entirely hidden from the user. In short, all
the CPU critical code is still compiled from C++ and so it has no
performance penalty. To give you an example, the following Bgt script runs
for 1.12 seconds average on my machine.
void main()
{
show_game_window("My Test");
alert("Starting", "Starting loop.");
long x=0;
timer counter;
while(x<1000000)
{
string test="Ha, I'll write to you!";
x+=1;
}
long time_spent=counter.elapsed;
alert("Finished", "Loop finished! It took " + time_spent + "
milliseconds.");
}
This, I think, is pretty reasonable for a scripting language all things
considered.
Kind regards,
Philip Bennefall
----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Ward" <thomasward1...@gmail.com>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <gamers@audyssey.org>
Sent: Saturday, February 13, 2010 7:05 AM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Progress on the Blastbay game creation tool (Bgt)
Hi Philip,
Yes, in deed. I've noticed a big difference in over all performance
and stability since rewriting Mysteries of the Ancients in C++, and
despite the current bugs the C++ version is ultimately going to be
much faster and more stable in the long run. Without a doubt C++ is
over all the best language for game development even if it isn't the
easiest or quickest solution. I can't honestly see myself going back
to Python, C# .Net, or Visual Basic .Net for game development as those
languages just have too much over head to make an effectively stable
and high end game such as I'm looking at creating. Your BGT toolkit is
really the right solution for everyone. It has all of the inate power
of C++ and Microsoft DirectX without all the work involved in learning
and writing a complete C++ application from scratch.
One other thing I can already see as a huge bonus is that you've
designed this thing using common core Windows components that are
already available on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. That gives it a
long term support cycle without need for major upgrades for the next
few years. Other game developers haven't adopted your design strategy,
used a language such as Visual Basic 6, etc and now are facing
uncertainty of how long their software will continue to be supported
on new Windows versions.
For example, the GMA Engine, which was state-of-the-art a few years
ago is really showing its age, and you now need to manually install
the Visual Basic 6 runtime and missing DirectX components to even get
it to work on Windows 7. No one knows how long those libraries will
continue to be supported by Windows, and at what point every game and
program written using Visual Basic 6 will no longer function. So the
GMA Engine has an uncertain future and those games may have to have a
major upgrade to VB .Net or something in the future.
However, your BGT toolkit is written in C++ using common core
components. It is true DirectX 8 is now only provided on Windows 7 as
legacy support, but if Microsoft should remove those libraries in a
ffuture release of Windows I'm sure your toolkit is designed in such a
way you could switch it over to the XNA C++ libraries and keep on
moving along. That's the advantage C++ has over Visual Basic or any of
these other languages. If a certainc component becomes deprecated, is
removed from an operating system, you can just rewrite that part of
the code, recompile your games, and be back in business.
Cheers!
On 2/12/10, Philip Bennefall <phi...@blastbay.com> wrote:
Hi Thomas,
My reasoning is this. Yes, C++ is the best language in which to develop
games in my opinion but it's not necessarily the fastest. With this
approach
one effectively combines the speed of C++ with the flexibility of a
modern
scripting language as all the CPU intensive stuff is actually done in the
engine, or most of it anyway. Thus, I'll be developing my own games using
this engine as well once it reaches a stable enough stage.
Kind regards,
Philip Bennefall
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