Re: [Audyssey] Open G3D Project
I have a site that I've always wanted to host and I need somewhere to put it, can you help? -Original Message- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of David Mehler Sent: 16 July 2010 00:58 To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Open G3D Project Hi Thomas and List, I've already got a subversion server set up for the current web project I'm doing, it is definitely essential for me, and I agree would be invaluable for your endeavor. We can set up branches how you want and can give commit access to whomever. Just let me know what you need and I'll work with you and any other developers to set it up. Dave. On 7/15/10, Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com wrote: Hi dave, Something like subversion for version control would definitely be essential for a project like this. Opening the engine up to public development means that anyone who joins the project can checkout and checkin changes to the engine. Initially I expect Il be the principle developer, but anyone skilled enough in the Open G3D core language will be able to join the project and post bug fixes, updates, etc as necessary. Plus we might have to have special subversion branches for Windows, Mac, and Linux depending on weather or not we need to support platform specific APIs like Sapi, Speech-Dispatcher, and things like that. Il know more about what I need when we figure out language, features, and so on. Thanks for the offer. Il drop you a line off list as soon as I know more. Cheers! On 7/15/10, David Mehler dave.meh...@gmail.com wrote: Hello Thomas and List, I'm not a programmer unless you count web pages, but I'd like to say I think this is a great idea! I've got resources I can make available to game developers for alternative windows platforms, ranging to the ability to compile code on any Linux you might want, thanks to virtual machines, to a dedicated Internet Server I can do as I please with, and would be more than willing to set up accounts, version control, web sites, compile code, whatever. Just my two cents. Dave. --- 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/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- 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/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- 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/gam...@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] Open G3D Project
Hi Thomas, This sounds pretty interesting. At RS Games, we are in the process of beta testing a client that will allow users to play Monopoly (as well as Uno, and several other games) through a protocol we created, written in Python, using wxPython, PyGame, and Pyttsx (which automatically detects and uses Sapi, Speech-Dispatcher, or the NSSpeechSynthesizer.). These tools have really simplified the work necessary to cross-platform game development. This is a fantastic option for games we host on our server, as they will mainly be multiplayer card and board games. But for something like your engine, Python might not be fast enough, and it would require a complete re-write. I've had some experience with the Mono framework, and it has been mainly positive. I'm not sure how hard it is to get speech output on Linux/Mac working, as I haven't spent too much time on it, but it is a must have feature. I should also mention that I think Mono is the best solution here. If you take the C++ route, most mainstream game engines allow Lua scripting. I like Lua, but I've been looking at the AngelScript (which does run on Linux and Mac) documentation, and it might be easier to integrate into your engine. Network support is certainly a nice feature to have, but there are a few things I have to say about it. I don't find multiplayer games appealing where you have to type in someone's IP address. While it wouldn't be that hard to create a simple server to create a lobby (to just transfer IP addresses. The game will still be P2P connection.), this project is aimed at new and experienced programmers. Another thing is that in order to make a fast-paced game, you need to use the UDP protocol. UDP doesn't do anything to ensure datagrams are sent reliably. Therefore, UDP is considered unreliable, as datagrams may go missing, be duplicated, or be out of order. This can pose a serious issue if the programmer isn't careful, as a die datagram may arrive at the destination before a final shot datagram arrives. However, UDP is used in many online games, because it is much faster than the other option, TCP. TCP is slower because it is reliable and the packets arrive in order (if packets arrive in the wrong order, TCP will buffer the data that it out of order until it can be sent reliably again.) We are in luck, because to my knowledge, SDL_Net supports both TCP and UDP. Other things to consider is what license it would be under (I recommended the GPL), and what kind of versioning software will be used (I recommend subversion). Another thing I really like about this project is that it is open source. Assuming you go the .NET route, I'm sure there are quite a few developers who would be interested in improving and helping to get the engine run well. C# is a really great language, and I am definitely excited about this project. -Ryan On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 6:54 PM, Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com wrote: Hi everyone, Since we have been doing a lot of talking about game engines and toolkits like BGT I thought I’d bring up one of the current projects I have in the wings. I’d like to get some end user feedback and suggestions on it as I plan for this to be more or less a community driven project not only to help aspiring game developers to get started with creating games, but also to begin cross-platform development of games for currently unsupported operating systems like Mac OS and Linux as well as the latest Windows releases too. The project is named Open G3D. That basically stands for Open Genesis 3D. A purely open source and free version of the Genesis engine that will be cross-platform as well as uses open source APIs such as SDL for game development. That’s the basic overview. However, before I begin releasing beta versions of the engine it would be helpful to know what features you potential game developers would like to see in the engine. For example, I have two different versions of the Genesis Engine. The first is the newer C++ version of the engine that is currently written in pure C++ which could be ported to Mac OS and Linux via SDL, OpenAL, and other open source libraries, but would be more difficult to program/use since it is written in pure C++. The Disadvantage here is that you would have to manually compile it on every single operating system and platform you intend to support. So if you wanted to support Mac OS and didn’t have a Mac, for example, you couldn’t support the Mac platform until you purchase a Mac and use the Mac C/C++ development tools. This is, in my opinion, the principle problem with using C or C++ for serious cross-platform development. The other issue is at this time I haven’t added a user friendly scripting engine to the game, such as BGT has, so at the current moment if you don’t know C or C++ you can’t easily use the engine. I could easily fix this by creating a self-contained core like BGT and then use an open source script language like Lua to give the
Re: [Audyssey] Open G3D Project
Hi Ryan, Yeah, That’s pretty much why I was thinking of using C# .Net with the Mono Framework rather than port the C++ version of the engine to Mac OS, Linux, etc. Mono seems to be fairly stable, and I’ve used it myself a number of times for cross-platform projects between windows and Linux. It is not perfect, but is probably the easiest solution in terms of developing cross-platform applications without a lot of overhead. Plus I know that C# .Net is a fairly straight forward and simple programming language to use. It borrows some concepts as well as the C-Style syntax from C++, but without all the extra overhead, complications, and headaches to go with C++. I know the moment I began converting Genesis from C# to C++ it took quite a long time to do the code conversions just because of all the extra little steps involved in getting something done. For example, in the .Net Engine I had a simple Speech class that wrapped the SAPI 5 library Speechlib.dll. That was pretty easy to do because the String class automatically can convert ascii strings into Unicode on the fly so no conversions had to be done on my part. Of course, with C++ nothing is quite that simple. In my C++ speech class I basically had to create a Speak() function that wraps the SAPI library and converts a standard C-style ascii string into Unicode before passing it to the SAPI speak function. I can’t remember but it was a good 10 to 12 lines of code to take a standard character string, get the length, create an Unicode string variable of equal length, convert the string from multibite to wide char, pass the converted string to the Unicode string variable, and then finally give it to SAPI to speak. In my opinion that’s just a bit ridiculous and a lot of unnecessary work just to give one of Microsoft’s com based libraries a simple string of text. However, that is the way it is since Windows XP on up are all heavily Unicode based so we are stuck with doing those kinds of lengthy code conversions from ascii to Unicode in C++. Fortunately, .Net languages using Mono or the .Net Framework don’t have to mess with that hassle. As far as Python goes I just don’t know. I am sort of bias towards the language primarily because I like C-style languages like C++, C#, and Java as I like the C-style syntax. I’ve never gotten use to Python’s loose free style format where you just use spacing to keep track of blocks and statements. I always get lost without some kind of comment to tell me where a block of code ends and where a new one begins. It is just things like that which irritate me when working with Python so that’s not really my first choice that’s for sure. However, as for network programming I agree that UDP would be my first choice. To my knowledge SDL supports UDP so that’s not a big deal. I imagine we can look at that aspect of the engine when and if we get that far with it. I’m glad you are excited about this project as I was beginning to think that people weren’t that interested in it. I know that the Linux and Mac user base is way smaller than the Windows user base, but I thought those users would be happy to hear about an engine being aimed at those platforms. So far response has been pretty much limited to a couple of Mac users and a couple of programmers like yourself. Everyone else appears not to care to much about it. It is a bit discurraging not to have much feedback on this project. Cheers! --- 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/gam...@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] Open G3D Project
Hi there, Well, I am excited on that project as well. I will be buying myself a mac, probably next year. I would love to play, and program games on there, and make them publicly available. So, I am really looking forward to it. Kevin - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2010 15:56:49 -0400 Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Open G3D Project Hi Ryan, Yeah, Thats pretty much why I was thinking of using C# .Net with the Mono Framework rather than port the C++ version of the engine to Mac OS, Linux, etc. Mono seems to be fairly stable, and Ive used it myself a number of times for cross-platform projects between windows and Linux. It is not perfect, but is probably the easiest solution in terms of developing cross-platform applications without a lot of overhead. Plus I know that C# .Net is a fairly straight forward and simple programming language to use. It borrows some concepts as well as the C-Style syntax from C++, but without all the extra overhead, complications, and headaches to go with C++. I know the moment I began converting Genesis from C# to C++ it took quite a long time to do the code conversions just because of all the extra little steps involved in getting something done. For example, in the .Net Engine I had a simple Speech class that wrapped the SAPI 5 library Speechlib.dll. That was pretty easy to do because the String class automatically can convert ascii strings into Unicode on the fly so no conversions had to be done on my part. Of course, with C++ nothing is quite that simple. In my C++ speech class I basically had to create a Speak() function that wraps the SAPI library and converts a standard C-style ascii string into Unicode before passing it to the SAPI speak function. I cant remember but it was a good 10 to 12 lines of code to take a standard character string, get the length, create an Unicode string variable of equal length, convert the string from multibite to wide char, pass the converted string to the Unicode string variable, and then finally give it to SAPI to speak. In my opinion thats just a bit ridiculous and a lot of unnecessary work just to give one of Microsofts com based libraries a simple string of text. However, that is the way it is since Windows XP on up are all heavily Unicode based so we are stuck with doing those kinds of lengthy code conversions from ascii to Unicode in C++. Fortunately, .Net languages using Mono or the .Net Framework dont have to mess with that hassle. As far as Python goes I just dont know. I am sort of bias towards the language primarily because I like C-style languages like C++, C#, and Java as I like the C-style syntax. Ive never gotten use to Pythons loose free style format where you just use spacing to keep track of blocks and statements. I always get lost without some kind of comment to tell me where a block of code ends and where a new one begins. It is just things like that which irritate me when working with Python so thats not really my first choice thats for sure. However, as for network programming I agree that UDP would be my first choice. To my knowledge SDL supports UDP so thats not a big deal. I imagine we can look at that aspect of the engine when and if we get that far with it. Im glad you are excited about this project as I was beginning to think that people werent that interested in it. I know that the Linux and Mac user base is way smaller than the Windows user base, but I thought those users would be happy to hear about an engine being aimed at those platforms. So far response has been pretty much limited to a couple of Mac users and a couple of programmers like yourself. Everyone else appears not to care to much about it. It is a bit discurraging not to have much feedback on this project. Cheers! --- 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/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- 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/gam...@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] Open G3D Project
Hi Kevin, Yeah, I’ve been seriously looking at buying a Mac myself. That’s where a good game engine would come in handy for quickly creating games for the platform via mono and the C# .Net language. My only question would be how speech friendly the Monodevelop IDE would be on Mac. I know it works fine on Windows and on Linux, but have no idea how Mac’s screen reader, Voice Over, handles it. I suppose worst case scenario is a Mac developer could use the Mac text editor to write the code and then compile the code in the terminal with the mono commandline tools. Not as user friendly, perhaps, but certainly doable if Monodevelop turns out to be not as speech friendly on Mac OS as on Linux or Windows. Cheers! On 7/18/10, weis...@googlemail.com weis...@googlemail.com wrote: Hi there, Well, I am excited on that project as well. I will be buying myself a mac, probably next year. I would love to play, and program games on there, and make them publicly available. So, I am really looking forward to it. Kevin --- 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/gam...@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] Open G3D Project
Hello Thomas and List, I'm not a programmer unless you count web pages, but I'd like to say I think this is a great idea! I've got resources I can make available to game developers for alternative windows platforms, ranging to the ability to compile code on any Linux you might want, thanks to virtual machines, to a dedicated Internet Server I can do as I please with, and would be more than willing to set up accounts, version control, web sites, compile code, whatever. Just my two cents. Dave. On 7/15/10, Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com wrote: Hi everyone, Since we have been doing a lot of talking about game engines and toolkits like BGT I thought I’d bring up one of the current projects I have in the wings. I’d like to get some end user feedback and suggestions on it as I plan for this to be more or less a community driven project not only to help aspiring game developers to get started with creating games, but also to begin cross-platform development of games for currently unsupported operating systems like Mac OS and Linux as well as the latest Windows releases too. The project is named Open G3D. That basically stands for Open Genesis 3D. A purely open source and free version of the Genesis engine that will be cross-platform as well as uses open source APIs such as SDL for game development. That’s the basic overview. However, before I begin releasing beta versions of the engine it would be helpful to know what features you potential game developers would like to see in the engine. For example, I have two different versions of the Genesis Engine. The first is the newer C++ version of the engine that is currently written in pure C++ which could be ported to Mac OS and Linux via SDL, OpenAL, and other open source libraries, but would be more difficult to program/use since it is written in pure C++. The Disadvantage here is that you would have to manually compile it on every single operating system and platform you intend to support. So if you wanted to support Mac OS and didn’t have a Mac, for example, you couldn’t support the Mac platform until you purchase a Mac and use the Mac C/C++ development tools. This is, in my opinion, the principle problem with using C or C++ for serious cross-platform development. The other issue is at this time I haven’t added a user friendly scripting engine to the game, such as BGT has, so at the current moment if you don’t know C or C++ you can’t easily use the engine. I could easily fix this by creating a self-contained core like BGT and then use an open source script language like Lua to give the open source game developer something easier to tackle as well as speed up development time However, on the good side writing the Open G3D engine in C/C++ you have full access to native libraries such as Speech-Dispatcher on Linux, Sapi 5 for Windows, and the Mac OS Speech API. Not to mention access to the default graphical toolkits like GTK, Win32, or Cocoa. All are things that would probably be a good idea to have, but not exactly cross-platform friendly. SDL has its own GUI to use instead so supporting individual graphical interfaces isn’t necessary most of the time. With C/C++ you can get better game performance, but usually at the cost of doing your own memory management or clean up. As pointers etc are an advanced programming technique and this is intended to be a community project I see this cutting both ways. Good in a way but bad for newbies in a big way. The other version of the engine is the .Net version of the game engine which MOTA used clear up to beta 10. It was written in C# .Net and is more or less stable except for Managed DirectX which could be removed and replaced with an open source API like SDL easy enough. It is already fairly along in development and with perhaps a month or so of work could be ported over to the open source Mono Framework and SDL which is cross-platform. This is in my opinion probably the best choice and solution for something like this. For one thing since Mono is open source and is supported on Mac, Linux, and Windows you don’t need to recompile your application to run the game on Mac, Linux, or Windows. You create it in the Monodevelop IDE, compile it for either 32bit or 64bit mono, and that’s it. Someone downloads and installs your game and runs it provided they are using the same version of Mono for their platform you are. This makes the task of creating open source games that you build once run anywhere is why runtime environments like this are important for software developers. It simplifies the task a lot. The other reason I think this is a good idea is the .Net languages like C# are very newbie friendly and are far simpler to learn and use than C++. You don’t really need a scripting language when using C# as the language is pretty simple in of itself. Plus having something like the Mono Framework it wraps the core libraries of Windows, Mac, and Linux
Re: [Audyssey] Open G3D Project
Hi dave, Something like subversion for version control would definitely be essential for a project like this. Opening the engine up to public development means that anyone who joins the project can checkout and checkin changes to the engine. Initially I expect I’ll be the principle developer, but anyone skilled enough in the Open G3D core language will be able to join the project and post bug fixes, updates, etc as necessary. Plus we might have to have special subversion branches for Windows, Mac, and Linux depending on weather or not we need to support platform specific APIs like Sapi, Speech-Dispatcher, and things like that. I’ll know more about what I need when we figure out language, features, and so on. Thanks for the offer. I’ll drop you a line off list as soon as I know more. Cheers! On 7/15/10, David Mehler dave.meh...@gmail.com wrote: Hello Thomas and List, I'm not a programmer unless you count web pages, but I'd like to say I think this is a great idea! I've got resources I can make available to game developers for alternative windows platforms, ranging to the ability to compile code on any Linux you might want, thanks to virtual machines, to a dedicated Internet Server I can do as I please with, and would be more than willing to set up accounts, version control, web sites, compile code, whatever. Just my two cents. Dave. --- 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/gam...@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] Open G3D Project
Hi Thomas and List, I've already got a subversion server set up for the current web project I'm doing, it is definitely essential for me, and I agree would be invaluable for your endeavor. We can set up branches how you want and can give commit access to whomever. Just let me know what you need and I'll work with you and any other developers to set it up. Dave. On 7/15/10, Thomas Ward thomasward1...@gmail.com wrote: Hi dave, Something like subversion for version control would definitely be essential for a project like this. Opening the engine up to public development means that anyone who joins the project can checkout and checkin changes to the engine. Initially I expect I’ll be the principle developer, but anyone skilled enough in the Open G3D core language will be able to join the project and post bug fixes, updates, etc as necessary. Plus we might have to have special subversion branches for Windows, Mac, and Linux depending on weather or not we need to support platform specific APIs like Sapi, Speech-Dispatcher, and things like that. I’ll know more about what I need when we figure out language, features, and so on. Thanks for the offer. I’ll drop you a line off list as soon as I know more. Cheers! On 7/15/10, David Mehler dave.meh...@gmail.com wrote: Hello Thomas and List, I'm not a programmer unless you count web pages, but I'd like to say I think this is a great idea! I've got resources I can make available to game developers for alternative windows platforms, ranging to the ability to compile code on any Linux you might want, thanks to virtual machines, to a dedicated Internet Server I can do as I please with, and would be more than willing to set up accounts, version control, web sites, compile code, whatever. Just my two cents. Dave. --- 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/gam...@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- 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/gam...@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] Open G3D Project
Hi Travis, Actually, I've tried SFML before and it is a pretty nice open source API. I was actually considering it for the Genisis 3D engine initially, when I was thinking of going cross-platform, but I was under the belief that the Mac OS X SFML binaries were not being regularly maintained like the Linux and Windows versions were, but I can see that they have just released a version of SFML 1.6 for Mac, Linux, and Windows so I guess they found a Mac dev to take over that part of the project. Also while developing the early C++ port of Genesis 3D I did find some disadvantages in the API itself. For starts while the sfml-audio library supports OpenAL it is incomplete. There are a number of OpenAL functions and features it didn't completely wrap which means someone else would either have to upgrade sfml-audio themselves or just use OpenAL directly to get full functionality. That's one drawback I noticed right off. The other disadvantage is that most Linux distros ship with SDL 1.2. That's kind of the default API for the platform. It is not the best, SFML is better over all, but that is what the Linux comunity has chosen as default. As I am looking at Open G3D primarily from a Linux point of view I'm wondering if sticking with SDL might be the better choice in terms of not having to install a bunch of extra libraries like SFML when SDL comes with the OS already. The other I just don't know about. I know they have a version of SFML for .Net developers, but according to the docs it appears it is a Windows only library. they don't make any mention of Mono for cross-platform development. If I decide to upgrade and use the .Net Genesis 3D engine for cross-platform development compatibility with mono would be essential and I know SdlDotNet 1.6 could do that as the docs specifically give directions for monodevelop, and I have written a few sample projects with SDL and Mono and it works fine together. Of course, if we decide C/C++ and then this issue would be pretty mute. As for using VMWare etc I know all about that as I have done it many many times for cross-compiling projects etc myself. Still if writing it in C# .Net and basing it on the Mono Framework, SDL, etc I could save the game developer a lot of time and effort having to use VMWare, Cloud, etc to virtualize a bunch of operating systems just to cross-compile games etc. That makes it too much effort when with Mono you can easily build once and run anywhere provided you don't have to make changes like path variables and so on. With save game files etc the developer would likely have to change some variables etc, but that isn't too hard. P.S. SFML uses OpenGL for graphics. As that is the best graphics toolkit out there for open source games that only makes sense. Cheers! On 7/15/10, Travis Siegel tsie...@nfbcal.org wrote: One cross-platform library you should take a look at is sfml (simple fast multimedia library) it's license is such that you can use it for anything at all, freeware, opensource, commercial, and anything in between, without even the need to mention it in the docs, though of course, the developers would appreciate a mention nonetheless. It works really well on osx, though I've not tried it on any other platforms yet. It has 3d audio functions, so no wrapper would be necessary, it supports joysticks, mouse, music, sound, graphics, (though I don't know how accessible the graphic outputs are) I think it uses openal for it's graphical output, but I could be wrong on that, since osx comes with both open gl and openal built in, it's of course not included with the sfml distribution for the mac, so not positive which it uses. But, in any case, I know folks are using it for some rather hefty projects, and the nice thing there is that you need to compile the c++ code for each platform, but you won't need to change the code when doing so. To me, that's a huge plus. There's ways of getting access to virtual machines (such as through amazon's cloud interfaces) so a developer need not actually own machines with the target os on them just to do a compile of some code. I'm sure there's places where sfml falls down, but I'm only using it for simple stuff at the moment, and so far, it's handled everything I've thrown at it, including voice chat in your games, which comes as a sample client/server app with the sfml libs. Quite the nice touch there. It of course requires modifications to be a full-blown client/ server model and usable in realtime games, but it's really not all that difficult to mod for that purpose, so even new developers can get up and running with some pretty sophisticated stuff in their apps pretty quickly. Anyway, don't know if you already know about sfml, but just in case, there it is, it can be found at www.sfml-dev.org. Enjoy. --- 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
