Re: [Audyssey] USA Games News 9/7/2013
Hi Al, Well, you are welcome. Switching Slam over to a C++ based game using the Evolution Engine was really the best choice. After you and others brought up the issues with Piledriver and Wrestling League Simulator I started to reconsider how relevant a text based interface is in today's gaming environment. Sure, it is simpler to make, but leaves a lot to be desired as we are talking about ignoring all kinds of modern features just for that simplicity such as using DirectInput for key pressed events, SAPI for speech output, and so on. It doesn't make sense to ignore all that when the way I am designing it now is better all around. Cheers! On 9/7/13, Allan Thompson wrote: > Hi Tom, > I am glad your starting to feel better! Bathrooms I think were supposed to > be one of the most dangerous rooms in the house, next to the kitchen. > > I am shocked, but pleased you decided to flaunt your evolution thing with > the new and improved wrestling game! I would have played the other one > too, > but I got to admit, I am super excited to hear this! > > al --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games News 9/7/2013
hI The same here. I'm always happy to hear when someone is back up and running. I almost fell in the shower the other day but my wife was there to catch me, but I'll save that story for a nother site l o l. bfn James -- From: "Allan Thompson" Sent: Saturday, September 07, 2013 5:43 PM To: "'Gamers Discussion list'" Subject: Re: [Audyssey] USA Games News 9/7/2013 Hi Tom, I am glad your starting to feel better! Bathrooms I think were supposed to be one of the most dangerous rooms in the house, next to the kitchen. I am shocked, but pleased you decided to flaunt your evolution thing with the new and improved wrestling game! I would have played the other one too, but I got to admit, I am super excited to hear this! al -Original Message- From: Gamers [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: Saturday, September 07, 2013 6:04 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: [Audyssey] USA Games News 9/7/2013 USA Games News Sep. 7, 2013 Introduction Welcome gamers to the USA Games News. We know that it has been a very long time since our last news letter, and we felt it was a good time to send out a new one. So here we are with news and information about USA Games and our products. First, we would like to thank all of you who participated in our informal survey regarding the USA Games Evolution Engine a few days ago. We really valued your comments and suggestions, and your responses really helped give us some direction regarding our engine. More on that later. Second, I would like to state that I am personally doing a lot better than I have been for a long time. Just to recap last year I had a number of health related issues from the common cold to a more serious situation where I fell down while getting out of the bathtub and seriously injured my neck. After many months of rest and therapy I am now doing better than I have been in months. Although, I am not 100% back to normal I am able to get up and do some programming, and am slowly but surely getting our development back on some sort of schedule. I can not say for sure when any of our products will be ready for release, but it should be enough to know I am once again working on them. Evolution 3D A couple of days ago I sent out an informal survey regarding the future of the Evolution Engine. The basic point of the survey was to figure out if potential third-party game developers wanted it to remain primarily a C++ based engine as it is now, or if they wanted us to branch out into .NET or Python. The majority of you felt keeping it as a C++ library was the best option, and that it was not really in our best interests to put out a .NET or Python based engine at this time. This has really helped us feel satisfied that the direction we are heading is a good one for us and our customers, and for the foreseeable future we will continue to keep the Evolution Engine as a C++ library and will likely license it more as a C++ API rather than an engine as such. There are of course many good reasons to keep it as a C++ based library rather than rewrite it as a .NET library or as a Python module. The main one is we have already put more than two years into development, the engine library is stable, and rewriting it would only delay its release. For that reason alone it makes sense to keep what we have and license that. The other reasons include easier access to libraries and APIs for Mac, Windows, and Linux. Most libraries out there are designed for C or C++, and while there are usually wrappers for .NET or Python that is not always the case. In cases where there aren't available wrappers we would have to spend time writing them to make them available to our .NET or Python engine when they are instantly available to an engine written in C++. Factor in better performance, better security, and less dependencies need to be installed we are pretty sure the community is right. Keeping our engine written in C++ has many advantages and few disadvantages. The only downside to this is that it has a higher learning curve for new developers, but that could be overcome with some decent guides and documentation. After all, one of the purposes of writing the Evolution Engine was to simplify access to things like speech, input, sound, and so forth. All of those things are wrapped using wrapper classes that make it simple to get a basic game up and running in a few ours in C++ as all the low-level code for things like DirectInput, DirectSound, Sapi, etc is wrapped up in quick and easy to use classes. While not quite as easy as BGT, for example, it still would not be nearly as hard as doing it all from scratch. As many of you probably know all of our commercial games like Tomb Hunter and Raceway are written using the Evolution Engine, and it is fairly stable. So I think once we figure out a few things we may
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games News 9/7/2013
Hi Tom, I am glad your starting to feel better! Bathrooms I think were supposed to be one of the most dangerous rooms in the house, next to the kitchen. I am shocked, but pleased you decided to flaunt your evolution thing with the new and improved wrestling game! I would have played the other one too, but I got to admit, I am super excited to hear this! al -Original Message- From: Gamers [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: Saturday, September 07, 2013 6:04 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: [Audyssey] USA Games News 9/7/2013 USA Games News Sep. 7, 2013 Introduction Welcome gamers to the USA Games News. We know that it has been a very long time since our last news letter, and we felt it was a good time to send out a new one. So here we are with news and information about USA Games and our products. First, we would like to thank all of you who participated in our informal survey regarding the USA Games Evolution Engine a few days ago. We really valued your comments and suggestions, and your responses really helped give us some direction regarding our engine. More on that later. Second, I would like to state that I am personally doing a lot better than I have been for a long time. Just to recap last year I had a number of health related issues from the common cold to a more serious situation where I fell down while getting out of the bathtub and seriously injured my neck. After many months of rest and therapy I am now doing better than I have been in months. Although, I am not 100% back to normal I am able to get up and do some programming, and am slowly but surely getting our development back on some sort of schedule. I can not say for sure when any of our products will be ready for release, but it should be enough to know I am once again working on them. Evolution 3D A couple of days ago I sent out an informal survey regarding the future of the Evolution Engine. The basic point of the survey was to figure out if potential third-party game developers wanted it to remain primarily a C++ based engine as it is now, or if they wanted us to branch out into .NET or Python. The majority of you felt keeping it as a C++ library was the best option, and that it was not really in our best interests to put out a .NET or Python based engine at this time. This has really helped us feel satisfied that the direction we are heading is a good one for us and our customers, and for the foreseeable future we will continue to keep the Evolution Engine as a C++ library and will likely license it more as a C++ API rather than an engine as such. There are of course many good reasons to keep it as a C++ based library rather than rewrite it as a .NET library or as a Python module. The main one is we have already put more than two years into development, the engine library is stable, and rewriting it would only delay its release. For that reason alone it makes sense to keep what we have and license that. The other reasons include easier access to libraries and APIs for Mac, Windows, and Linux. Most libraries out there are designed for C or C++, and while there are usually wrappers for .NET or Python that is not always the case. In cases where there aren't available wrappers we would have to spend time writing them to make them available to our .NET or Python engine when they are instantly available to an engine written in C++. Factor in better performance, better security, and less dependencies need to be installed we are pretty sure the community is right. Keeping our engine written in C++ has many advantages and few disadvantages. The only downside to this is that it has a higher learning curve for new developers, but that could be overcome with some decent guides and documentation. After all, one of the purposes of writing the Evolution Engine was to simplify access to things like speech, input, sound, and so forth. All of those things are wrapped using wrapper classes that make it simple to get a basic game up and running in a few ours in C++ as all the low-level code for things like DirectInput, DirectSound, Sapi, etc is wrapped up in quick and easy to use classes. While not quite as easy as BGT, for example, it still would not be nearly as hard as doing it all from scratch. As many of you probably know all of our commercial games like Tomb Hunter and Raceway are written using the Evolution Engine, and it is fairly stable. So I think once we figure out a few things we may begin licensing it to potential third-parties sometime in the not too distant future. Tomb Hunter It has been several months since we have released a beta or any news on the progress of this game, and we decided to just give everyone a quick update on the progress of this game. We are in the process of updating the games story line, adding some new levels, but we would prefer to keep certain aspects quiet until we have something final for everyone to download and play. What we can say
[Audyssey] USA Games News 9/7/2013
USA Games News Sep. 7, 2013 Introduction Welcome gamers to the USA Games News. We know that it has been a very long time since our last news letter, and we felt it was a good time to send out a new one. So here we are with news and information about USA Games and our products. First, we would like to thank all of you who participated in our informal survey regarding the USA Games Evolution Engine a few days ago. We really valued your comments and suggestions, and your responses really helped give us some direction regarding our engine. More on that later. Second, I would like to state that I am personally doing a lot better than I have been for a long time. Just to recap last year I had a number of health related issues from the common cold to a more serious situation where I fell down while getting out of the bathtub and seriously injured my neck. After many months of rest and therapy I am now doing better than I have been in months. Although, I am not 100% back to normal I am able to get up and do some programming, and am slowly but surely getting our development back on some sort of schedule. I can not say for sure when any of our products will be ready for release, but it should be enough to know I am once again working on them. Evolution 3D A couple of days ago I sent out an informal survey regarding the future of the Evolution Engine. The basic point of the survey was to figure out if potential third-party game developers wanted it to remain primarily a C++ based engine as it is now, or if they wanted us to branch out into .NET or Python. The majority of you felt keeping it as a C++ library was the best option, and that it was not really in our best interests to put out a .NET or Python based engine at this time. This has really helped us feel satisfied that the direction we are heading is a good one for us and our customers, and for the foreseeable future we will continue to keep the Evolution Engine as a C++ library and will likely license it more as a C++ API rather than an engine as such. There are of course many good reasons to keep it as a C++ based library rather than rewrite it as a .NET library or as a Python module. The main one is we have already put more than two years into development, the engine library is stable, and rewriting it would only delay its release. For that reason alone it makes sense to keep what we have and license that. The other reasons include easier access to libraries and APIs for Mac, Windows, and Linux. Most libraries out there are designed for C or C++, and while there are usually wrappers for .NET or Python that is not always the case. In cases where there aren't available wrappers we would have to spend time writing them to make them available to our .NET or Python engine when they are instantly available to an engine written in C++. Factor in better performance, better security, and less dependencies need to be installed we are pretty sure the community is right. Keeping our engine written in C++ has many advantages and few disadvantages. The only downside to this is that it has a higher learning curve for new developers, but that could be overcome with some decent guides and documentation. After all, one of the purposes of writing the Evolution Engine was to simplify access to things like speech, input, sound, and so forth. All of those things are wrapped using wrapper classes that make it simple to get a basic game up and running in a few ours in C++ as all the low-level code for things like DirectInput, DirectSound, Sapi, etc is wrapped up in quick and easy to use classes. While not quite as easy as BGT, for example, it still would not be nearly as hard as doing it all from scratch. As many of you probably know all of our commercial games like Tomb Hunter and Raceway are written using the Evolution Engine, and it is fairly stable. So I think once we figure out a few things we may begin licensing it to potential third-parties sometime in the not too distant future. Tomb Hunter It has been several months since we have released a beta or any news on the progress of this game, and we decided to just give everyone a quick update on the progress of this game. We are in the process of updating the games story line, adding some new levels, but we would prefer to keep certain aspects quiet until we have something final for everyone to download and play. What we can say right now is that one of the reasons we have been slow to release this title is there are a couple of long standing bugs we have been trying to resolve. As these are definite show stoppers they must get fixed before we can release the game to the public. We are hoping that it won't take too long to get these bugs fixed and we can put out a new beta in the next couple of months or so. We definitely plan to release the new updated beta sometime this fall if at all possible. Something else we will mention here is we have finally decided to switch to SAPI output once and for all. In our prio
