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PopCap Games Releases Open Source Framework
2d is the new 3d writes "PopCap Games has Open Sourced the framework used to make their hit downloadable web games. From the press release: 'The PopCap Games Framework provides developers a quick and easy way to get their projects off the ground, allowing more time to be spent on game design instead of compatibility bugs and multimedia programming issues. For the first time, casual game developers will have access to a refined, reliable framework that has been tested in dozens of games played by millions of customers. ...The PopCap Games Framework is available now at developer.popcap.com. It currently supports Windows 98, ME, 2000, and XP operating systems."
The cynic in me wants to find "the catch", so I looked up the license agreement and its the shortest, easiest to read most legitimate license agreement I've seen for something like this.
Basically you can do whatever you want with their toolset and even charge money for the games you make, as long as you say it was made with their toolset. They're up front in saying that while they would encourage you to publish your game through them, it isn't necesary.
Hopefully we'll see some good independant games come from this.
I can't wait to get off work now so I can go home and investigate this further... and from the looks of it, they aren't requiring anything outrageous to use it either.
Windows isn't the answer... it's the question. NO is the answer!
May I be the first poster to say thanks to PopCap for their contribution.
Yeah, there is an excuse.
Downloadable games are a business. There is no market for game on linux, or even the mac right now (this may change)
So if you are running a business, and need to make money to keep said business alive, there is no reason to develop on anything else but Windows, and waste money on linux or mac.
Sorry, the world would be better with more platforms, but in the PC game world, only one exists right now, the one the vast majority uses.
Pop-Cap's web based games run just fine on OS X, or is this source for the "enhanced" engine that runs outside of a web browser? (Though, the Omni Group also made that engine work on OS X, as well...)
Those who complain about affect & effect on
*There is no market for game on linux, or even the mac right now (this may change)*
I dont know about that, there is definitely a market for Linux games. Cedega survives through a subscription model ($5/mnth) selling a compatibility layer that enables some Windows games to run on Linux. It's a niche product, but there are obviously people who want to play games on linux, and are even willing to fight through all sorts of technical issues to do it.
The question isnt whether the market is there, but whether it's big enough to sustain a business. Could you develop a AAA title and survive only on Linux sales? No, not likely. Could you develop a cross-platform version (ie use OpenGL instead of DX) and have the Linux sales cover the porting costs and even turn a small profit? Quite possibly...
Linux and Mac have something Windows doesnt; a captive audience. When you release a Windows game, you are competing with hundreds of releases a year. With the dearth of high quality commercial linux and mac games, you arent fighting for the attention of your market. If you release a high quality game (like NWN, for example), then anyone using that platform who is interested in that type of game is much more likely to buy it.
Except that Wine (Cedega) serves to insure that any Linux game (whether a port or one released natively) is competing directly against every other Windows game released.
Wine is killing any chance for (native or ported) Linux games.
If it's open source (as in you can look at the source code) then why couldn't it be proted to Linux? Or are they just giving away a free IDE?
Java, Flash, ActiveX... ?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
The docs specify that it's a C++ framework targeting VC++6 and VC++.NET. DirectX 6 is used for graphics, and the BASS library is used for music and sound.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
Bingo.
For supporting evidence, I invite you to compare the PC and Mac top 25 weekly downloads sections at Download.com.
Pay particular attention to the "Number of weeks on chart" statistic--nealy half of the titles for the Mac have been on the "top downloads" list for over two years, whereas nearly half of the titles for the PC have spent under three months on the list.
The Mac is gaining ground in the gaming department, but there are still pretty hefty opportunities there. If you make a Pretty Good game for PC, odds are it'll disappear beneath Even Better games; with the Mac, you've got a lot better chance of getting some traction...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Wow. All of the top 50 for Windows have more downloads this week than the #1 for Mac, and it looks like PCs have about 8x the market of Mac.
An example:
Snood for PC (#2): 228 weeks, 20,729 this week, 2,575,891 total.
Snood for Mac (#1): 88 weeks, 2,584 this week, 292,788 total.
p.s. I have a Mac and a PC, so this is just an observation of facts.
Since PopCap got their start with a great bunch of Java games, I went to PopCap's site hoping for a Java toolkit. I was disappointed to see it's the Windows-only C toolkit.
Hats off to PopCap for giving something to the budding game developers out there. The industry is so cutthroat (especially the segment that PopCap's in) that you don't see things like this often enough.
"is killing"?
Do you have evidence of a company considering a Linux port, but opting not to because of the existance of Wine?
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Do you have any evidence for the number of games being ported to/being released for Linux increasing despite Wine?
Valve explicitly stated that they did not consider making Half-Life 2 for Linux, because of Wine.
Source?
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"If you make a Pretty Good game for PC, odds are it'll disappear beneath Even Better games; with the Mac, you've got a lot better chance of getting some traction..."
Wow! So if even if your games suck more than the top tier PC games, the Mac users will love it!
Sounds like an excellent benefit to being a Mac gamer. You get to be all excited about less than stellar games everyone ignored on the PC platform since the PC had better games to play!
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Anything is possible, but what's the point? It probably heavily relies on directx, you might as well rewrite the thing. then again I haven't looked at it, so maybe it is worthwhile. Are there any other comparable kits available for Linux? I know there are 3d engines, but what about a simple 2D game framework?
The point would be to encourage developers to port their games to Linux, BSD, OSX, etc. Writing a good game framework, even a 2d one, takes an awful lot of work. Take window management under the Windows API as an example. Publishing a downloadable game on the major shareware sites (Real.com, Yahoo, etc.) typically requires that the game's main window be full-screenable upon double clicking on the title bar, that desktop resolution changes not crash the game, that right clicking on the app's button in the taskbar and selecting Maximize will full screen the game without showing corrupted video memory. It's stuff like this, and there's a lot of it, that game developers try to avoid, especially when they're trying to make a living.
Porting PopCap's framework would undoubtedly take a fair amount of engineering work, however their design and implementation do appear to abstract almost all of the platform-dependent calls from gameplay code. DirectDraw code is hidden away behind an abstract Image class, DirectSound code in a series of Sound* classes, etc. Still, this doesn't mean that porting would be an overnight task, at least not likely, but it gets things a good percentage of the way there, arguably less time than it would take to design and implement a stable framework from the ground up.
Your mistaken,
Section 2 is referring to "end-user documentation" whereas section 3 refers to "promotional material"
Unfortunately, it is quite risky to develop and market a downloadable (under 15mb or so) Windows game using OpenGL, at least for the time being. A significant portion of the marketplace has computers that do not have working, hardware-accelerated OpenGL drivers. [1] They have decent enough video cards, ones that have reasonable OpenGL drivers written for them, however they haven't been installed. Furthermore, Windows Update does not seem to update one's OpenGL stack. This has caused a lot of downloadable developers to either use the better supported Direct3D API, or stick to software rendering (with DirectDraw, and more increasingly, with SDL.) [2]
_ 02.shtml . More info on using OpenGL in downloadable games can also be found on the http://indiegamer.com/ message board.
[1] Reflexive attempted to use hardware-accelerated OpenGL in their downloadable game, "Wik: Fable of Souls", however they switched over to full software rendering after encountering numerous driver issues. More information on this can be found in the game's postmortem, available at: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050214/hallam
[2] PopCap's framework uses both Direct3D and DirectDraw-based software rendering.
Man, I remember Popcap's really, really old days. Before there was such a thing as "Popcap". Two of the main programmers had formed Hoopy software, IIRC, which made a free top-down shooting online game named ARC. Fun times, and I've been nothing but gratified to see them become the Internet Puzzle Game Superstars.
Wait a second.
I like Linux and the Mac as much as the next guy, but they're just developing to the biggest market, and the biggest market that will actually PAY for the games.
I'm not saying that some Linux users would pay, but I am saying that the number of Windows users in their market that will pay are significantly higher.
The thing is, if people think there's a big market for Linux games like Popcap makes, they should create a website like Popcaps and try it out. For all I know, someone's done it already.
Popcap's made their decision on this by doing this all via ActiveX though; they used to use Java, but since MS dropped their JVM (that's what Popcap said on their website), they only support ActiveX now. Damn shame.
You've given no source for your statement, and I've looked around and asked elsewhere, and I can't seem to find the statement you're referring to.
In fact, it seems quite unlikely that Valve ever seriously considered porting to Linux, since the basis of their engine is DirectX 9. I'd say it's more likely that they saw the Linux market as too small to justify writing an OpenGL rendering option.
Wine may have added a small tidbit of justification in hindsight (Cedega wasn't a viable option until only very recently), but I doubt anything that made them change their mind.
Of course, if you actually have a source stating that Wine was the major reasoning behind some decision to go Windows-only, please share.
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