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Is There Life Beyond DirectX?
Zangief asks: "Almost any gamer has, at some point, the idea of making their own game. I am no exception, so I've been playing around with SDL, which appears to be the logical decision over the craziness of DirectX. However I have also noticed that other alternatives, such as ClanLib. There is something else? Are there any other libraries, dev-kits, or tools that would be good for indie developers?"
check out http://crystal.sf.net its good library to start you on the road of game programming in 3D
AZTEK
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Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Here is the mother lode: http://www.flipcode.net/
Really it depends on what sort of game you plan to be developing. If you are going to try out life as a small independant designer, you might want to try out some Flash stuff. I'm serious. Some people crank out a bunch of shareware Flash games. They're fun and easy to distro.
If you are looking at bigger projects, or trying to learn the coding side to things, you can pick apart one of the game engines in the above site. If you want to learn the real technique behind graphics, then you need to learn DirectX or OpenGL. That is where the real stuff gets done at the moment.
GG
As the sourceforge site says:
CG is C for Graphics. You can use it write really awesome graphics directly to DirectX or OpenGL. http://www.nvidia.com/object/cg.html
Still, if you want a unique game, with a unique feel, you'll probably end up writing some assembly, and mostly C/C++ for OpenGL.
Check out Programming Linux Games, by a Loki developer by the name of John Hall.
It goes over SDL in depth, and shows how to integrate OpenGL into it as well. As well, it touches on some other APIs of note, such as SVGALib, GGI, ClanLib, OpenGL, Plib, Glide, Xlib (for video), GTK+, TK, Fltk, Qt, and SDL_gui (for menu widgets), OSS, ALSA, ESD, and OpenAL (for audio), and cl, Guile, and Scheme (for scripting).
No comment.
you might try getting strated with pygame, a wrapper to sdl for python.
obviously if you need every single cpu tick to count, you shouldn't use this. but, it can do 30 frames per second if you write good code.
There are engines already built and out there, completely open for your use. Some of the best-selling games over the past couple years have been Mods built onto existing game engines. Why fuck with SDL/DirectX/ANYTHING when you can start off building a game, instead of an engine?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
SDL seems like the only choice. Unless you specifically want/need DOS support, or a few other platforms other libs will get you, SDL supports a large number and has gone beyond the critical mass of 1) things that use it 2) developers interested in it and 3) employed developers who spend time caring about it (Even if it's in their off time :)
SDL has also of course been used for a number of commercial games, I've used it myself with regard to two ports - One from windows which already used SDL and was extremely easy to port, and the other from Mac OS (not X) that was difficult to port and we added SDL to that so it can just as easily go to windows, BeOS, etc.
Check out ioquake3.org for a great, free, First-Person Shooter engine!
Sun has recently started paying more attention to java as a gaming platform and has been pushing java along with OpenGL as their solution.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
Torque appears to satisfy most of what you are looking for. It's the Tribes 2 engine available to indie developers for $100/programmer.
I haven't worked with it personally, but I have looked over the feature set and demos and it appears to be a very capable game development platform.
Just remember, you need a game design, good artwork, and competent coding. There's more to game creation than "wouldn't it be cool if..." (though that's where good games start!)
Good luck!
What's wrong with DirectX?
From what I understand, it's a pain in the ass sometimes, but it's got some strengths that are hard to ignore:
1.) Well supported. Works across 98, 2k, and XP. That's MILLIONs of machines there.
2.) DirectX not only handles graphics, but sound and input as well. It's just not somethting you get from OpenGL.
3.) It's always growing. Supposedly they always have new features and stuff going into DirectX. Can't say I know how that compares with other API's, but it seems like Nvidia and ATI are always doing something with MS there.
For the record, I really am asking "what's wrong with DirectX", as opposed to using that as a clever way of saying they should be using it. I'm not the most informed person on this topic and I welcome some education on the matter.
"Derp de derp."
Gamedev.net has a TON of resources relating to game development, including a giant reference section which points to a lot of information about anything game-related.
Related to your question, a good compromise between low-level OpenGL and a full game engine (or even a commercial one here) would be GLUT. Instead of giving a piss-poor explanation of what the GLUT library is all about, I'll just point you to their FAQ. For sound there is OpenAL or the ubiquitous FMOD.
Depending on what you're looking for, a library probably is out there just waiting for you to find it. Instead of asking very general questions like this, I highly recommend you check out a little search engine called Google to find libraries or engines that suit your specific needs. Cheers!
There's an SDL port to KOS, a small operating system which runs on the dreamcast. So most of your experience with SDL will translate into an easy path to developing for an actual console.
Everything will be taken away from you.
I'm sure other people have pointed it out, but pygame is an excellent choice to get started. Python is fun and easy (*criminally* fun and easy), and a lot of the wrapper classes will use similar names as the real-deal c/c++ libraries.
...*so* much is taken care of for you already. Don't trust my code, as I haven't untarred my 10gb home directory backup (and I'm not going to) in order to tell you how easy PyGame makes things. :^)
Seriously. I made a graphical mp3 juke-box player (like for drunk people at parties), and my code to keep music playing looked something like:
def keep_music_playing():
if !pygame.sound.is_busy():
song = get_song()
pygame.sound.play( song )
else:
pass
def main():
thread.start( keep_music_playing, 5000 );
--Robert
1) poorly supported; SDL+OpenGL does masses of platforms and targets (e.g. X, framebuffer, aalib) within those platforms that DirectX won't;
2) SDL does more with sound and input than DirectX, and handles stuff like enumerating CD drives, handles events that DirectX knows nothing of, and you can use parts of it (you needn't ship interfaces to all);
3) DirectX grows unpredictably and in directions ordained by Microsoft; SDL is GPL, make of it what you will.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
If you're looking for something better than Direct3D, you should check out the Q engine by Qube Software.
:)
Q 3D Engine
(FREE DOWNLOAD for Windows & Linux)
You may be interested to note that this is produced by some of the same engineers who produced Direct3D. Can't be that bad then eh?
PS I once worked for Qube, so I'm probably biased.
NeHe's site has lots of good tutorials.
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