I would like to have a go at making some simple games for personal/learning purposes. By simple games I mean games like platform, maze, arcade games for example. I would also one day like to create a platform game with a simple editor to allow others to edit and design their own game levels.
I am not sure if Delphi is the way to go though, I don't see or hear many people writing games in Delphi, but Delphi is the only language I understand on an intermediate level.
If Delphi is acceptable to create simple games as I mentioned, am I right in thinking that I would require some libraries that would help me do this, maybe Direct X for example?
I am using Delphi XE, I wish I had waited and upgraded to Delphi XE2 instead as it seems that includes some built in Drawing libraries.
I look forward to hearing your responses on this.
Thanks.
Check out Asphyre
And to encourage you; Soldat, C-evo and many more quality games were built with Delphi, Game Maker too.
There are to many options ...
If you are really new to this take a look at this site and get some good examples from children that try to make games Pascal programming for schools ...
If you are one level up here some library's that give you the a great start for small and big games... this is for new and very advance pascal programming...
GLScene just get the svn version... (Windows,MacOsX,Linux and hear for android and iphone ;) ) -- 2D,3D,isometric........
CastII Great engine (Windows,MacOsX,Linux) -- Mostly 3D....
Asphyre Sphinx 2 One of my favorite i allready start a big big game with that library... NOW (Windows32-64,MacOsX,Linux,and IOS) with DelphiXE2
ZenGL Fantastic and quite easy to use (Windows,Linux,MacOsX and i hear android too) --Mostly 2D but i hear 3D is in way out...
Castle Great library for me not to easy... (Windows,Linux,MacOsX) compine great with freepascal and lazarus...
Andorra 2d This is going to be the best but suddenly stops ... 2d programming at its best...
there are many other libraries and i here a few of them come out before the new year...
But if you go deeper you can try the hard way... the headers so ...
for opengl use the header from here delphigl
for SDL use the Jedi-SDL header (great by the way)...
for directX use the clootie and good luck...
But the most important thing in the game programming is the paper...
Every think write in the paper is the most value object in object programming...
Hope that helps...
Delphi is great for games! Here is a very good resource to get you started: http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/
It has a friendly forum where you can ask questions.
I have personally used Delphi for graphics programming for many years and written a free open source game engine in Delphi called ZGameEditor.
azrael11
GLScene doesn't support Android(work in progress as I know)
Cast II works only on Windows
Asphyre Sphinx 2 doesn't support Linux
ZenGL supports also iOS. Android - work in progress. 3D - I'm not interested in it currently, so only fast 2D is main goal.
Related
I was working on updating a D6 media library to XE over the weekend. I got it working with a surprisingly low number of Unicode-related errors, but there are a few things I'd like to try to improve.
Unfortunately, the core of the player is cbDSMixer, which isn't all that flexible, and the author has stated that "Now with a family of wife and 2 kids I can't find the needed time to play around doing extra development so all those components are pretty old by now and mostly deprecated." So I wonder if there are any alternatives.
So does anyone know of an alternate media player library that will work properly under XE, and support the same or most of the same mixing and effects functionality as cbDSMixer?
You could try the Audio Component Suite from Andrei Borovsky. Not sure how much this lib is maintained, but it looks very promising (cross platform apparently, which may become even more important in the future)
I have started working on Corona SDK.As you all know it uses Lua as the programming language,i wanted to know some good links or ebooks which i can refer to begin development.I am an iPhone developer and working on objective C since last 1 year.
Any suggestions,help would be appreciated.
Thanks
Aditya
I've been using this: Programming in Lua, first edition (FREE online edition of the book)
The Corona SDK forums are also good for specific issues related to the SDk itself. It seems it is having a few database problems just right now, but you might want to check it later.
Edit: just for completeness, here is the link to the Lua Bookstore # amazon (not an affiliate link).
You can also check out http://learningcorona.com/ which has a huge listing of tutorials for Corona.
Here's a great resource for learning Lua, it's aimed towards beginner programmers (doesn't sound like you), but it does a great job at introducing Lua and most of the basic concepts:
Lua for Beginners:
http://lua.gts-stolberg.de/en/index.php?uml=1
That, as well as the "Learning Corona" section of the Ansca docs should be plenty enough to get you up to speed in a very short amount of time:
http://developer.anscamobile.com/resources/docs/
TIP: Start working on a project, or converting an existing app using Corona and you'll learn it blazing fast! That's what I did, and I learned it quickly enough to have one of my games fully converted in about 8 days.
For understanding basics of CORONA SDK I will prefer "Corona.SDK.Mobile.Game.Development.Beginners.Guide"
book from Packtpub publication.
and You can also check out http://www.learningcorona.com/ for tutorial both video and audio.
The Lua Reference Manual is also an excellent read: Concise and complete.
Lua Gems is also worth looking at (at least the freely available snippets).
I found the Beginning Lua Programming book to be pretty good as a complete reference for Lua with good example code.
My very personal advice is just take a look at great books (Programming in LUA is covering everything) and switch as soon as possibles to samples / tutorials in order to learn all the API functions.
There are several Corona sdk video tutorials on YouTube. One demonstrates how to create a simple balloon game in a few minutes. You can have Your Lua editor in one window and YouTube in another, and click on the video to start/stop and switch to the editor and type in the code. Some tutorials provide links to download the code.
hello you can use their website they have good documentation you will find it here
http://docs.coronalabs.com/api/
I have used PyGame for a while now, and quite enjoyed doing so, but only 2D experience is not going to cut it when I apply for video game jobs, and besides, I have a number of ideas I want to try out in 3D. What 3D library should I go into first? I was considering Irrlicht, which will also force me to work on my C++ again, but I was also looking towards XNA, as it would be cool to write 360 games. Any suggestions?
You can try Unity3D http://unity3d.com/. In the fall they released their engine for free that is cross platform (Mac, Win and possible Linux) and it can also be targeted for iPhone and web browser and is starting to build an open community and looks promising.
I've done some XNA stuff and the Unity tools look pretty good in comparison making it easier to get content into your games.
In my opinion, going with Irrlicht or OGRE is a good idea. It will help you get back in touch with C++ and experiment with 3D without making it too easy. It is a good idea to learn XNA as well and build a few 3D game prototypes there.
Summary: Do both, eventually. Learn OpenGL/DirectX later.
All the best.
XNA Game Studio is a fantastic framework and let's users jump into creating games quite quickly if you are comfortable with the .NET Framework.
However, if you decide that you want to move to the 3D world, you have 1 more dimension to take into consideration and it makes things exponentially harder. Simple collision detection, isn't so simple anymore. However, with the vast amount of information available for XNA Game Studio, you should find yourself getting to grips with the 3rd dimension quite quickly.
If you haven't done the whole Nehe type tutorials, it's probably best to play with the API, so that you get comfortable with it.
Create a Triangle
Spin the Triangle
Color the Triangle
Load some assets (models and textures) and render them
Try your hand at Alpha Blending
Take into consideration that XNA Game Studio does not have a fixed function pipeline and you will have to use Shaders (HLSL).
I have personally used Irrlicht, Ogre3d, Unity & Xna. Because you want to do this to help for when you apply for jobs in the game industry in my opinion I would suggest Irrlicht as you will want to work on your c++ skills. I also suggest Irrlicht as it is a 3D engine not a specific game engine which will allow you to work on your physics and maths skills as well which are highly sought after in the games industry.
I would suggest avoiding Unity if you are looking for experience to take to industry as it is a package that handles a lot for you and as such could limit your learning.
Ogre3D is a viable option as it is similar to Irlicht, maybe look into the tools available to help you make a choice between those two.
Xna is another interesting choice, it will give you a lot of chances to learn as Irrlicht could and there are a huge amount of resources to help you learn but at the same time you lose the c++ experience that comes with irrlicht.
This is a pretty basic question. I am wondering if the Unreal Development Kit can be used for something other than games, specifically a light show simulator and editor. The site says:
Unreal Engine 3 has been used by game developers, researchers, television studios, machinima directors, artists and students. If you have an idea that needs to be brought to life in a game engine, UDK is for you.
But I have the feeling that it is more game oriented. For my hobby project, I would like to be able to create light show simulations with rotating/moving lasers/lights of changing color, synchronized to sound/music. I would also like to develop an GUI editor for this, preferably in C#, but if it's not possible to access the rendering functionality of the engine from C#, then C++/Qt should suffice. The editor would be used to design the simulation, which would then be rendered/played out in real time.
I guess my base, general question is: can the Unreal Development Kit be used for something like this, not necessarily game related? Or should I go with my original option of Ogre3D, which just focuses on rendering and 3D graphics as far as I know.
EDIT: Just saw this page which again mentions:
Can I create any kind of game with UDK?
Absolutely. UDK is the perfect solution for any kind of virtual world you wish to create, from racing games to simulations.
So my question is now simply: Would I be able to access the renderer or other functionality of my resulting code to integrate it into an editor for my simulator? I guess a simpler, more relatable analogy would be, if I wrote a game, would I be able to write my own level/character/etc. editor for it? And how would I do so? Yes, I know that the UDK comes with editors already, but I mean if I want to make my own.
Thanks! I appreciate any answers :)
The UDK only permits you to play with script (Unreal Script) and not with native code (c++). So more complicated projects or integrations are very difficult without the full c++ source code. But if you will re-use the editor (UnrealED) for your project and make you simulation based upon unreal you can do it.
I'm pretty well oriented in what Unreal Engine can do, and answer to your question is yes and no ;)
Yes, you can create your own actors that will be rotating/moving and emitting light. But won't be able to create your own custom editor around UE's rendered. Frankly I don't see why you would need one - Unreal Editor has all the tools needed to design and execute light show simulation (and much more) - all you need to do is to get familiar with those tools.
One thing you could do in external editor (except, of course, for textures, sounds, models, etc) is create some custom setup in saved to text files, and later read in those files in unreal script - it allows it.
"I guess a simpler, more relatable analogy would be, if I wrote a game, would I be able to write my own level/character/etc. editor for it?"
Yes, you can make your own characters and maps. You shouldn't have any need to make your own editor though, the given editor should be enough.
Although you might not have access to the C++ source code, there is a lot that can be done using Unrealscript. Check out all the entries to the Make Something Unreal contest, they were all done using tools available in the UDK.
My zune just updated to 3.0 (didn't even realize they were releasing something new!) and the update came with two games, but the Zune marketplace does not have games.
Where do I go to get started, and what are the capabilities of the Zune in terms of games/apps?
Well, first, you must download the Microsoft XNA 3.0 CTP. Read the documentation, which will explain the capabilities. But, from memory:
No hardware accelerated 3d (obviously, you can create a software 3d engine and then render the result to a 2d sprite, but... Don't expect much in terms of performance ;))
No XACT, you must use a new sound API
Just an update but note that XNA 3.0 has been released. It requires some flavor of Visual Studio 2008.
I downloaded it and coded & deployed "hello world" to my Zune in no time at all. Very easy.
You should check out the blog of Rob Miles. He has a few chapters of his book on his site. Great place to start.
I was hoping someone here would have better resources, but as this seems to be a new area of development, here's one resource that appears to give all the steps for a newbie to get started (too many assume you already have Visual studio, etc).
I'm really interested in a better in-depth overview of the capabilities as well, though.
-Adam