Re: [Audyssey] Jeremy's incredible programming speed and misc thoughts was Re: Castaways, 1 week milestone reached!

2011-07-19 Thread Thomas Ward
Hi Dark,

That's very true, and that's why languages like Java, C# .Net, Visual
Basic .Net, Python, etc exists. Most developers realise that writing
an application from scratch in a language like C++ is far too time
consuming for the average developer and project. In the corperate
world if a company needs an interface for a new database or a report
writer etc they aren't going to want to take any more time than
absolutely necessary or pay any more money than necessary to have that
program developed. Since languages like Java, C#. or VB already have a
good portion of the low-level stuff done a developer can rapidly
produce the application in question with a lot less time and effort
making his/her corperate bosses happy in the process.

For example, let's take the .Net Framework. Microsoft created the .Net
Framework for three reasons. One, it wraps all of the core Windows
APIs, and puts them under a single API that is now shared by C++, C#,
J#, and VB. Two, it makes it easier to design a program that will
operate on XP, Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server, without requiring
any kind of recompilation when targeting multiple Windows platforms
and CPUs at once. Three, it is fully object oriented, and moduler,
making it extremely easy to take existing classes and code to build
applications rapidly using a common code base. Finally, the .Net
runtime contains a builtin garbage collecter that frequently monitors
when blocks of memory are no longer being used/referenced and cleans
the garbage out of memory making your application run more
efficiently. The best part of the garbage collecter is the developer
can't be a complete slob when it comes to memory management and
cleaning upbecause it takes the issue of memory management out of the
developers hands and does it automatically in the background weather
you do memory cleanup yourself or not. This largely eliminates issues
like memory leaks because its mistakes like that where the garbage
collecter will hand the programmer a safety net to fall back on if
he/she does a poor job cleaning up after shutting down the app.

So, in short, what you say is correct. Over all, it is a good idea to
use a rapid development language if we are talking about a time
sensative application, or the developer is lazy and just wants to get
it done.  However, I'm neither one of those types. I'm something of a
programming purest, and I chose C++ because I have the skills, and in
the long run it is a better language for what I need to do. I'm
willing to spend more time doing it right rather than quickly put it
together and sell it. I'm willing to put the extra effort into making
sure most of my code can be cross-platform compatible so I can produce
Mac and Linux ports in the future. I know that isn't too important to
a lot of people on this list, but it is important to me personally. If
people don't like it that's tough.

Cheers!


On 7/17/11, dark d...@xgam.org wrote:
 Hi Tom.
 Fair enough if you've got precompiled code to use, and also i do see the
 logic with text.

 however it stil seems that in c you need a lot of preparation and things
 written that are done for you in other languages, which adds to the time of
 developement overall.

 Beware the Grue!

 Dark.

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Re: [Audyssey] Jeremy's incredible programming speed and misc thoughts was Re: Castaways, 1 week milestone reached!

2011-07-19 Thread dark

Hi Tom.

Well obviously what code you choose and for what reasons is entirely your 
affair, and if for instance you believe the cross platform compatibility and 
manual memory management is worth all the extra time,  then fair enough.


I freely confess, though i understand the logic of making things cross 
platform, I just do not see those other bennifits myself as an end user when 
i compare the amount of time your games take to develope, even when set 
against something like Entombed.


I'm afraid I'm rather of a proof is in the pudding sort of opinion on 
this, and from where I'm standing it does seem that using something like C 
net takes less time and trouble.


however as Jeremy said, you work with what's comfortable to you, and in the 
end it's you doing the work, so you who needs to be most happy with it.


heck, write the games in assembler if you want,  we just won't expect 
them out any time soon.


All the best,

Dark.


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Re: [Audyssey] Jeremy's incredible programming speed and misc thoughts was Re: Castaways, 1 week milestone reached!

2011-07-17 Thread dark

Hi Tom.
Fair enough if you've got precompiled code to use, and also i do see the 
logic with text.


however it stil seems that in c you need a lot of preparation and things 
written that are done for you in other languages, which adds to the time of 
developement overall.


Beware the Grue!

Dark.
- Original Message - 
From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com

To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org
Sent: Sunday, July 17, 2011 2:07 AM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Jeremy's incredible programming speed and misc 
thoughts was Re: Castaways, 1 week milestone reached!




Hi Dark,

Well, not necessarily. Keep in mind that the wrestling game and STFC
will largely be text based. It doesn't make much of a difference one
way or the other if it is written in pure C++ or written in .Net as
the majority of the coding would be fairly similar in practice.

For instance, I might initialize a Window using the Win32 API, and
then use the wprintf() function to write text directly to the window
as follows.

void PrintIntro ()
{
   wprintf (WWE\n);
   wprintf (Ultimate Legends\n);
   wprintf (Version 1.0\n);
}

That's simple enough. However, doing the same thing in VB .Net is just
as equally simple. I might create a simple Window, add a textbox to
the middle of the window, and do something similar to above.

SubPrintIntro ()
   textbox.Text = WWE
   textbox.Text = Ultimate Legends
   textbox.Text = Version 1.0
End Sub

As you might be able to see the VB example in this case doesn't really
save anything in the long run because after all we are just dealing
with text output. This is a fairly straight forward process for most
programming languages. Its the other stuff like loading and playing
audio that makes a difference as there can be a huge difference in how
it is done.

For instance if you take the stock C++ DirectSound 8 library that
ships with MS Windows there is no builtin ability to load sounds and
assign them to a secondary buffer for playback. Therefore the C++
developer pretty much has to write his or her own load functions in
order to use that API. However, com components like dx8vb.dll has
simplified this for Visual Basic developers, because Microsoft has
thoughtfully added an open function which can open wav files for
playback. This is why, I purchased Streemway from Philip, as I have
access to DirectSound without having to write my own load functions
etc just to use the API. With Streemway I have the equal access and
simplicity of a Visual Basic or .Net developer. Make sense?

So even though I might write STFC or my wrestling game without my
engine I still have a huge amount of code that can be reused. I have
Streemway, for audio playback, I've got wrappers for DirectInput, and
I can copy my wrapper for Sapi 5 support to extremely speed up the
process because I have a lot of code in place already.

Cheers!


On 7/16/11, dark d...@xgam.org wrote:

Hi Tom.

thanks for the full explanation. just going on what you've said though, 
I'm

afraid it sounds as if when you next start on a new game outside your
platform engine like the startrek or wrestling one, a different language
from C++ may be better?

I personally don't particularly mind downloading dependencies sinse often
they are useful for other things (for instance other games), and while
security and performance are both important for some programs (I would 
wager
my avg antivirus and tuneup were written in C++), I do find myself 
wondering

how much difference this makes to a game if it makes it so much more
difficult and time consuming to program?

Appologies if this seems hars, I know as a none programmer myself it's 
easy

to sit and make judgements, however I will admit i've noticed a tendency
that some programmers have (rather like logicians), to do something for
reasons of efficiency of code or general structure which makes litle
difference to the main user.

Beware the Grue!

Dark.


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Re: [Audyssey] Jeremy's incredible programming speed and misc thoughts was Re: Castaways, 1 week milestone reached!

2011-07-16 Thread Thomas Ward
Hi Dark,

Those are some very good questions. As with everything there are pros
and cons with either solution so I'll explain each of your questions
below in more detail in a question and answer format.

Q: If we leave aside the cross platform issue and just talk about ease
of developement, I'm just wondering what the reason to use C would be,
sinse from your description it sounds rather like the long way round.

A: Well, there are a number of key advantages to using a language like
C++. besides the cross-platform issue C++ is a low level language that
can be used to write anything from the Windows kernel, which is the
core component of any os, to writing hardware drivers, to more
advanced applications like games from scratch. The high level
languages like Visual Basic can not do this because it depends on a
runtime, a special API, that is most likely itself written in C or C++
which is both a strength and a weakness of languages like Visual
Basic. visual Basic can write games and other applications but can not
write an operating system or write hardware drivers etc.

More importantly because C++ is more low level it is compiled into
binary code, AKA machine language, and can instruct the system what to
do directly without an intermediate piece of software between your
program and your computer. This improves over all performance of the
game or application. Unfortunately, most high level programming
languages are easier but take a hit in regards to performance.

For instance, if I program a game in Java or a .Net language my source
code is compiled into an intermediate language that is interpreted on
the fly by a runtime interpreter. If I write a game in C# .Net, for
example, it creates a *.exe file, but its actually just instructions
for the .Net runtime executable file which is written in C++.
Although, this isn't a major concern for modern machines benchmark
tests still show that .Net or Java apps lag behind in performance
compared to an app written in C++.

Another issue is installing dependencies. Back when I was using C#
.Net for STFC and Montezuma's Revenge a lot of people didn't like the
fact they had to download a 300 MB setup file for .Net, another 300 MB
to upgrade DirecttX to get Managed DirectX for .Net, and then finally
download and install the game itself. We were talking atleast 500 MB
or so in dependencies for Windows XP just to bring the system up to
date in order to play a game.

With C++ you may have to install dependencies, but generally speaking
if the app is using core APIs, native libraries, that come as a part
of the operating system nothing special needs to be installed. This
was one of the factors why I chose C++ to begin with. I don't mind
installing one or two extra dll libraries, which maybe adds an extra
meg or two to the setup file, but asking people to install 500 MB of
.Net dependencies or 50 MB of Java dependencies or whatever is just a
bit rediculous.

Finally, there is the issue of security. C++ apps are compiled to
binary which is not impossible to crack, but more difficult than most
programming languages. Usually a developer can by a tool to encrypt
the executable to make it very very hard to reverse engineer. .Net and
Java don't have these safeguards, because they are compiled to an
instruction language, an intermediate language, that can easily be
decompiled back to Visual Basic, C#, or Java source code. Such apps
need an obfuscator, to rewrite the intermediate language to keep this
from happening, but it is widely known that high level languages are
less secure than C++ for that reason.

Q: Even entombed, was I believe programmed not in C but in in c# or
C.net, and went from initial concept to 10 level monster in less than
18 months, with more floors following very quickly, yet it apparently
uses one of these shortcut languages you mention.

A: Yes, Entombed was written in C# .Net. C# .Net is a rapid
development version of C++, extremely simplified compaired to the C++
language, and a developer can get things done very quickly in C# .Net.

As you might recall when I took over Montezuma's Revenge from James
North I had completely rewritten the game from scratch in like three
months after getting the source. Of course, I updated, changed, and
modified things, but I was on a fast track with that game. It took me
something like 14 months to nearly complete it, and that's when Utopia
landed on me like a house of bricks. If not for that unfortunate
situation I'd have it all done in 15 months from starting date. So C#
.Net or Visual Basic .Net are definitely one way to rapidly design
software for Windows.

Q: Is in fact cross platform compatibility the only reason why you
couldn't write mota in vb6, or another shortcut orientated language?

A: No. As I said above there were other factors to consider as well.
At the time I started writing games .Net wasn't even a core component
of Windows, and .Net games etc weren't that common and a lot of people
were upset at having to 

Re: [Audyssey] Jeremy's incredible programming speed and misc thoughts was Re: Castaways, 1 week milestone reached!

2011-07-16 Thread Jeremy Kaldobsky
Well a while back, I made up my mind never to argue about VB6 with Thomas 
again, so I'll just answer your questions Dark.

Q. firstly, from a purely product orientated point of view, ie, what's in the 
game, is C better than vb 6?
A. That just depends on what you're trying to create.  That's a tricky question 
to answer, because it has been left pretty open to interpretation when you say 
better.

Q. if you today handed jeremy all your sfx, prerecorded speach and music for 
mota and asked him to make a windows only vb6 version, would there be areas of 
fine sound positioning, physics, game mechanics and the like that wouldn't be 
possible in vb6, the way they are in c? I think this might be the case, but I'd 
be interested to know for certain.
A. There would be absolutely no difference.  The physics, game mechanics, and 
and sound are not affected by the language used.

Q. Is in fact cross platform compatibility the only reason why you couldn't 
write mota in vb6, or another shortcut orientated language?
A. This one is hard to answer because it is directed specifically at Thomas' 
coding proficiencies with different languages, but no, cross platform is the 
reason.  Technically, this also only applies to Linux users, since we already 
know that Mac users play my games using VM fusion.

Ok, I think I'll avoid getting myself involved with this topic, any more than 
this.  I think Thomas is feeling a little left out people.  Please think of his 
feelings, and pay him a bit of attention!  Hehe.

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Re: [Audyssey] Jeremy's incredible programming speed and misc thoughts was Re: Castaways, 1 week milestone reached!

2011-07-16 Thread dark

Hi Tom.

thanks for the full explanation. just going on what you've said though, I'm 
afraid it sounds as if when you next start on a new game outside your 
platform engine like the startrek or wrestling one, a different language 
from C++ may be better?


I personally don't particularly mind downloading dependencies sinse often 
they are useful for other things (for instance other games), and while 
security and performance are both important for some programs (I would wager 
my avg antivirus and tuneup were written in C++), I do find myself wondering 
how much difference this makes to a game if it makes it so much more 
difficult and time consuming to program?


Appologies if this seems hars, I know as a none programmer myself it's easy 
to sit and make judgements, however I will admit i've noticed a tendency 
that some programmers have (rather like logicians), to do something for 
reasons of efficiency of code or general structure which makes litle 
difference to the main user.


Beware the Grue!

Dark. 



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Re: [Audyssey] Jeremy's incredible programming speed and misc thoughts was Re: Castaways, 1 week milestone reached!

2011-07-16 Thread Thomas Ward
Hi Dark,

Well, not necessarily. Keep in mind that the wrestling game and STFC
will largely be text based. It doesn't make much of a difference one
way or the other if it is written in pure C++ or written in .Net as
the majority of the coding would be fairly similar in practice.

For instance, I might initialize a Window using the Win32 API, and
then use the wprintf() function to write text directly to the window
as follows.

void PrintIntro ()
{
wprintf (WWE\n);
wprintf (Ultimate Legends\n);
wprintf (Version 1.0\n);
}

That's simple enough. However, doing the same thing in VB .Net is just
as equally simple. I might create a simple Window, add a textbox to
the middle of the window, and do something similar to above.

SubPrintIntro ()
textbox.Text = WWE
textbox.Text = Ultimate Legends
textbox.Text = Version 1.0
End Sub

As you might be able to see the VB example in this case doesn't really
save anything in the long run because after all we are just dealing
with text output. This is a fairly straight forward process for most
programming languages. Its the other stuff like loading and playing
audio that makes a difference as there can be a huge difference in how
it is done.

For instance if you take the stock C++ DirectSound 8 library that
ships with MS Windows there is no builtin ability to load sounds and
assign them to a secondary buffer for playback. Therefore the C++
developer pretty much has to write his or her own load functions in
order to use that API. However, com components like dx8vb.dll has
simplified this for Visual Basic developers, because Microsoft has
thoughtfully added an open function which can open wav files for
playback. This is why, I purchased Streemway from Philip, as I have
access to DirectSound without having to write my own load functions
etc just to use the API. With Streemway I have the equal access and
simplicity of a Visual Basic or .Net developer. Make sense?

So even though I might write STFC or my wrestling game without my
engine I still have a huge amount of code that can be reused. I have
Streemway, for audio playback, I've got wrappers for DirectInput, and
I can copy my wrapper for Sapi 5 support to extremely speed up the
process because I have a lot of code in place already.

Cheers!


On 7/16/11, dark d...@xgam.org wrote:
 Hi Tom.

 thanks for the full explanation. just going on what you've said though, I'm
 afraid it sounds as if when you next start on a new game outside your
 platform engine like the startrek or wrestling one, a different language
 from C++ may be better?

 I personally don't particularly mind downloading dependencies sinse often
 they are useful for other things (for instance other games), and while
 security and performance are both important for some programs (I would wager
 my avg antivirus and tuneup were written in C++), I do find myself wondering
 how much difference this makes to a game if it makes it so much more
 difficult and time consuming to program?

 Appologies if this seems hars, I know as a none programmer myself it's easy
 to sit and make judgements, however I will admit i've noticed a tendency
 that some programmers have (rather like logicians), to do something for
 reasons of efficiency of code or general structure which makes litle
 difference to the main user.

 Beware the Grue!

 Dark.


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[Audyssey] Jeremy's incredible programming speed and misc thoughts was Re: Castaways, 1 week milestone reached!

2011-07-15 Thread Yohandy

Jeremy,
You can't be human man. nope. you're some kind of robot or something. how on 
earth can you possibly program complex games so quickly? It's totally 
ridiculous. in a good way of course :D. have you realized the business 
potential? I'm scared to imagine what you'd whip up if you start working on 
a commercial audio game for like 6 to 8 months. I bet the game would be so 
good that you'll be able to sell it for around $60 with no problems. and 
most people will buy it! look at your games right now? everyone's 
downloading and playing them. that's what I call a successful developer! 
selling games is definitely something for you to consider I think. anyone 
else agree? Also, since you're fully sighted, it wouldn't necessarily need 
to be audio-based only. you could whip up some graphics and sell it to 
everyone! ok I'm getting a bit excited here haha. one thing we desperately 
need I think are beat-em-ups. or fighting games in general. not every blind 
person is willing to try something like Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter no 
matter how much those of us that play try to convince them that they're 
accessible enough. Also thing with these fighting games is many of them 
are console based. I personally would love to play something like Streets of 
Rage online with other audio gamers.










- Original Message - 
From: Jeremy Kaldobsky jer...@kaldobsky.com

To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org
Sent: Friday, July 15, 2011 9:39 PM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Castaways, 1 week milestone reached!



Boy I wish I didn't have to work, lol, I wouldn't have to stop coding!  :D

If you do end up donating, believe me, it will be greatly appreciated.  In 
fact, you would be my first donater!  I don't think donater is actually a 
word, but oh well.


Well sadly I'm heading out, have fun guys!

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Re: [Audyssey] Jeremy's incredible programming speed and misc thoughts was Re: Castaways, 1 week milestone reached!

2011-07-15 Thread Thomas Ward
Hi,

No kidding. Jeremy seems to program new games with inhuman speed.
Speeds I myself can't even match without a lot of time and energy.

Actually, that said, Jeremy has a number of factors in his favor that
allows him to produce these games faster than someone like myself.
Which makes all the difference, and those of you who aren't
programmers probably aren't aware of these factors.

First, Jeremey is programming in Visual Basic. From the start the
language was designed to be easy to learn, easy to program, and was
designed for rapid development and deployment. Although, Visual Basic
6 has now been completely fazed out in favor of languages like C# .Net
and Visual Basic .Net they both were designed for rapid development
and deployment as well. In short, what I'm saying is that the ability
to get things done quickly and simply is in large part do to the
language Jeremy is using.

For someone like myself it takes a lot longer because I've taken a
more traditional programming route and base my code on C++. Compared
to a rapid development/deployment language like Visual Basic or one of
the newer .Net languages C++ is something on par with climbing a
mountain, or so it seems to me. C++ is more technical, and certain
libraries are more bare bones requiring some extra steps in developing
software.

Second, issue is Jeremy largely relies on third-party speech support
like Jaws, Window-eyes, NVDA, or Sapi. This obviously speeds up the
process because he can send text to whatever speech service is
available and speak it. It is in its own way as easy as printing text
to the screen once you have the speech services initialized and
running.

However, many accessible game developers llike GMA, PCs Games, and
myself use prerecorded speech for our games. You have no idea how long
it takes to first record, edit, and then write the code to load/speak
the message. i'd say it takes three or four times longer to do that
alone.

Third, Jeremy is targeting a specific platform and target group.
Obviously since his games are only intended for MS Windows platforms
he has lots of options and choices when it comes to programming APIs
etc. It takes less time to create software for one target environment
and considerably more if a developer wants to target Mac or Linux.

This imho is one area where I myself lost considerable time. I spent
months looking at various cross-platform APIs, experimenting with
potential cross-platform betas, which only ended up delaying the
process. If I had skipped the cross-platform research altogether
Mysteries of the Ancients would have been completed long ago.

Finally, the time it takes to create a game largely depends on the
type of game being produced. Castaways for example seems more complex
than it really is from a programming standpoint.  Were I to write
something similar given the same factors above I could probably
produce something equal in a weeks time period too.

One of the things that speeds up development in this type of game is
Jeremeyhas very minimal sounds and music. He hasn't had to deal with
loading, playing, and processing hundreds of sounds in real time.
Producing a soundscape as complex as Tank Commander or Shades of Doom
takes lots more time. Writing a good high qualityaudio environment is
in its way like adding graphics and animations to a video game. That
is where a large majority of programming takes place in initial
development.

Another thing is Mysteries of the Ancients both 2d and 3d are actually
more complex from a programming perspective. We have hundreds of
items, monsters, etc all operating in real time. Just to move the
character alone requires a number of separate actions like running,
jumping, walking, climbing, swimming, not to mention opening doors,
picking up items, and fighting monsters. Basically, the scope of the
project has far more underlying code than you might expect, and I'm
betting Castaways isn't nearly as big as MOTA in terms of how many
lines of code it takes to operate.

I don't know how many lines of code are in Castaways but i can say
MOTA beta 21 is closing in on 50,000 lines of code. So that's
something like 833 pages of closely typed text. I'm pretty sure Jeremy
hasn't written more than 800 pages of code in a week. Now, you know
why Mysteries of the Ancients is taking forever and Castaways is being
produced at inhuman speed. :D

Cheers!

On 7/15/11, Yohandy yohand...@gmail.com wrote:
 Jeremy,
 You can't be human man. nope. you're some kind of robot or something. how on
 earth can you possibly program complex games so quickly? It's totally
 ridiculous. in a good way of course :D. have you realized the business
 potential? I'm scared to imagine what you'd whip up if you start working on
 a commercial audio game for like 6 to 8 months. I bet the game would be so
 good that you'll be able to sell it for around $60 with no problems. and
 most people will buy it! look at your games right now? everyone's
 downloading and playing them. that's what I 

Re: [Audyssey] Jeremy's incredible programming speed and misc thoughts was Re: Castaways, 1 week milestone reached!

2011-07-15 Thread dark

Hi tom.

I do take the point about the sfx, music, multiple sound files an speech 
api's (though as I've said before certainly on the production side of these 
there are people who can help,  in most graphical projects afterall it's 
not the programmer who actually draws the graphics, even indi games have a 
graphic designer for that, and many have a sound designer and musician too).


However I do have a couple of questions about the programming end.

firstly, from a purely product orientated point of view, ie, what's in the 
game, is C better than vb 6?


if you today handed jeremy all your sfx, prerecorded speach and music for 
mota and asked him to make a windows only vb6 version, would there be areas 
of fine sound positioning, physics, game mechanics and the like that 
wouldn't be possible in vb6, the way they are in c? I think this might be 
the case, but I'd be interested to know for certain.


If we leave aside the cross platform issue and just talk about ease of 
developement, I'm just wondering what the reason to use C would be, sinse 
from your description it sounds rather like the long way round.


Even entombed, was I believe programmed not in C but in in c# or C.net, and 
went from initial concept to 10 level monster in less than 18 months, with 
more floors following very quickly, yet it apparently uses one of these 
shortcut languages you mention.


Is in fact cross platform compatibility the only reason why you couldn't 
write mota in vb6, or another shortcut orientated language?


I'm genuinely quite curious about this, sinse even if we leave aside 
personal factors, it does seem the amount it takes different people to make 
games can vary wildly, and it'd be interesting to know from a purely 
programming perspective the reasons why.


Beware the Grue!

Dark. 



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