What is your game development environment? (June 2005)

[Carlos Camacho]

I came across an interesting old poll and I'd like to see if there has been any shifts in our community regarding language/frameworks/APIs of choice. Note that I didn't list everything under the sun (This is directed at the guys who were gonna say, "What, no Oberon?")

First, read the message thread and see the poll at:
http://www.idevgames.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5954

And then vote on the new poll.

Cheers,

[Malarkey]

Ah, I was wondering why I was seeing that poll again.

[sealfin]

What, no Processing (http://processing.org/)? ;)

[Leisure Suit Lurie]

Again they dis Logo!!!

[igame3d]

Multimedia environment is at 22% right now!

This is a poll we should update every 3 months for...ever.

[PowerMacX]

Again they dis Logo!!!

LOL! That was the first language I ever learnt, and by extension, the first in which I made a game*. :)


(*) Actually, a few, including a "getting out of a maze" game and a 2D racing game, both very simple

[Skorche]

3 Ruby developers? Who is the third?

[Shivers]

Logo was my first language also. I had some really really original game designs with logo, all very simple. It was cool because at that point I had played at most 2 different games and didn't know any of the common devices. I wish I could retain some of that 10 year old genius.

[deps]

2 Allegro developers? Who is the second? :p

[Skorche]

Funny that there are more Cocoa devs than Obj-C devs. :???:

[Taxxodium]

Well, since the poll is just for games I won't vote, but my development environment is Xcode writing in Objective C and using the Cocoa framework exclusively.

If I ever do games again, it will most definitly be in Obj C/Cocoa, I don't think I'll touch C/SDL again, but who knows.

[skyhawk]

Cocoa/Objective-C/C/Applescript/OpenGL/Unity

that should cover all the major languages and tools I use right now

[Skorche]

5 Ruby Game developers? Who? Other than myself and OSC, I haven't heard any others mention using Ruby for game development.

[DavidJJ]

Unity. Didn't see it on the list.

[Blorx2]

I use alot, AppleScript/ActionScript/Obj-C/Cocoa/C++/SDL/Lua/Python and yet, I'm not good at any of them :D. I might squirm my way into Ruby if I can figure out how it works

[Skorche]

I might squirm my way into Ruby

You should take a look at my 21 days entry. It's not an example of an elegant or highly reusabel way of using Ruby in a game, but it shows how easily it can be done.

Not that I'm trying to push Ruby or anything... :sneaky:

[Carlos Camacho]

>That was the first language I ever learnt,
PowerMax, So Spanish is your second language?

>This is a poll we should update every 3 months for...ever.
I don't think much would change in 3 months, but I do agree... perhaps twice a year.

>Funny that there are more Cocoa devs
Not really, it could be that the ones who didn't also vote for Obj-C voted for Cocoa assuming it was "Cocoa Kids Programming System by Apple" :lol:

>5 Ruby Game developers? Who? Other than myself and OSC
The other 3 want to be in your cool club. i.e. Coolness by association.

So, in looking at this poll and the last one, are there any trends?

[Blorx2]

I never voted Ruby. I thought about it but, said to myself that I hadn't squirmed my way in yet. I probably will end up using it, though. As for Cocoa, I've used it a few times and confused myself beyond belief...I'm better off just using C++. I think the thing with alot of Cocoa and OpenGL programmers is that the tutorials either don't take 1 month to complete and the books 2 months to read like my C++ book...learn C++ in 21 days? meh, that's a lie...it took me 2 months to read throughall that code and all those quizzes!.

@Skorche: are you suggesting that a look at it? or at the code?

[Skorche]

>5 Ruby Game developers? Who? Other than myself and OSC
The other 3 want to be in your cool club. i.e. Coolness by association.
:lol:

I wish...

[ERaZer]

Cocoa assuming it was "Cocoa Kids Programming System by Apple" :lol:
Haha, I remember that, it was some kind of creation software where you could have sprites and such, but only move them in blocks. I think there is a commercial app which is very much alike, and the name starts in S or something.

Sorry for going a bit OT.

[Leisure Suit Lurie]

http://www.vikingdan.com/TNShootEmUpConstructionKit_alter.jpg

[Blorx2]

@Daniel_Lurie: :lol:
@Erazer: It's not that bad to go off ot, you're no being watched by the mods on the Hyperboy forums or something
@Skorche: I'm probably going to get into Ruby when I get the G4 back to normal...I think it just needs a break from running 24/7 so, be prepared to help out ;)

[noerhcana]

Haha, I remember that, it was some kind of creation software where you could have sprites and such, but only move them in blocks. I think there is a commercial app which is very much alike, and the name starts in S or something.

Sorry for going a bit OT.

I believe you are referring to Sk8, there's a few resources out on the web, found a few screens here: http://www.lemonodor.com/archives/000028.html
There's also a little info here if you scroll down half way: http://monday.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/AppleDylanEulogy

I suppose the modern variant is here: http://www.squeakland.org/ the demo movie shows how useful this is, especially for kids (squeak.org seems to be offline for now, for further information go here: http://swiki.squeakfoundation.org/squeakfoundation).

Reminds me of a variant called Agentsheets: http://agentsheets.com/

Hope this rekindles some neurons...

Cheers,

noerhcana.

[OneSadCookie]

Some simple questions --

To the 28.17% using Carbon, why?! Get with the times, folks!
To the one person using Cocoa without ObjC, which language are you using? Python?
To the 47.89% using Cocoa with ObjC, have you considered Python instead? Mmmm, garbage collection...
To the 46.48% using C++, you do realize C++ is Evil, don't you?
To the 28.17% not using OpenGL, what on earth are you using?!
To the 2.82% using Allegro, why, oh why?!
To the 91.55% not using Ruby, what's your excuse?
To the 4 silent Ruby users, who are you?

[NicholasFrancis]

Just to skew the results a bit, we've got 2 people using Unity full-time going up to 5 in August as part of our next game project.

cheers - the OTEE guys

[Taxxodium]

To the 28.17% using Carbon, why?! Get with the times, folks!

* Mac OS 9 support maybe. Even though that system is dead.

To the one person using Cocoa without ObjC, which language are you using? Python?

* Seems rather odd.

To the 47.89% using Cocoa with ObjC, have you considered Python instead? Mmmm, garbage collection...

Java has garbage collection aswell. But I prefer having control over memory. If you abuse the garbage collection I would think your application would run slow and generally cause a bad user experience.
I don't know Python, though I've heard of it, but it would seem to me that that language is better for scripting and not so good for application development. I may be wrong ofcourse.

To the 46.48% using C++, you do realize C++ is Evil, don't you?

* C++ is not evil if you use the parts that aren't evil, classes for example. If you move to using templates then I agree entirely. That's what I love Objective C. It's a much better language.

To the 28.17% not using OpenGL, what on earth are you using?!

* SDL, but then again SDL may already use OpenGL behind the scenes. Quartz 2D if you are on Panther, in Tiger Quartz uses OpenGL.

To the 2.82% using Allegro, why, oh why?!

* No idea

To the 91.55% not using Ruby, what's your excuse?

Doesn't apply to my domain

To the 4 silent Ruby users, who are you?

*

* = doesn't apply to me

[princec]

Who are the other Java lurkers? (Apart from Sillysoft :P)

Cas :)

[Skorche]

Taxodium.
The advantage of Python over Java is that it's far more flexible. Java is less flexible than Obj-c, and Python is a little bit more flexible. For most of your high-level code, using a slower language like Python wouldn't affect the speed more than a few percent, but would certainly make the programming easier. Once you have something working, profile the code and rewrite the classes or methods that take the most time in Obj-C or C. You can pretty much freely mix Obj-C and Python code. The same is true for Ruby to some extent, but the Ruby-Cocoa module doesn't seem quite as mature.

I wonder how Ruby (or Python etc.) doesn't apply to you. They really do make things easier to write. Unless you're writing some performance intensive blitter or heavy math code, that's a good candidate for C. Using a higher level language simply makes development easier. Why else do you think that writing in assembly has mostly died out? Sure maybe it would be a few percent faster than C for a large program, but it would take forever to write and be a nightmare to debug.

[NicholasFrancis]

We originally implemented the GooBall gamecode in Python... Not Engine, just rolling the ball around updated at 100 FPS

We had GooBall running under python using 60% CPU just for the ball & a few timers. Lack of type safety was a pain, but bearable. We ported to C# in one month and saw our CPU usage drop to .5% for the ball controller.

Never again.

[Skorche]

A lot of people think that not having type safety is a good thing for productivity. (self included)

100 updates a second seems somewhat aggressive for most games, I'd assume you need that because you are using ODE. Admittedly, a high performance game engine running a fancy game is going to take more of an impact from using an interpreted language. Although even C# is higher level and easier to work with than C/C++, so that still helps to prove the point. (unless you picked it for some other reason...)

A couple of friends and I are working on a side-scrolling shooter that currently is still implemented almost completely in Ruby. Only the collision detection is written in C so far. It easily makes tens of thousands of GL calls a second for the lighting and particles. It certainly didn't have any problems running on any of our machines at 60fps. (down to a 1.4Ghz Athalon or 1.25Ghz G4)

(edit: Wait... What kind of timers and ball control were you using that it took you a month to port them? :???: )

[KenD]

Some simple questions --

To the 28.17% using Carbon, why?! Get with the times, folks!


Meaning what? Carbon is perfectly fine for file handling and I definitely prefer it to the C or C++ file functions. Better than Obj-C's file stuff too.

KenD

[Duane]

I have to agree with the file function stuff; cocoa makes it very hard to load any type of binary file, because theyre so stuck on the fact that everything needs to be a class. Other then that, however, cocoa kicks @$$, big time.

[maaaaark]

Well, just abstract OS specific stuff into Cocoa. Just use Cocoa for the GUI/GL setu/etc, and plain C++ for everything else. That's what we do, and we have no hard times with binaries ;)

[OneSadCookie]

Whoa, somebody /prefers/ Carbon's file API?!

/me faints

[Corun]

What's Carbon? ;)

[KenD]

I use Cocoa for UI stuff in the game editors and C++ for the rest. Works out real well.

KenD

[ferum]

wait this poll is confusing me. you can make a game solely with C ? i was under the impression that you needed to used something else aswell to get the graphics. clarification?

[OneSadCookie]

Some of the options are languages and some are APIs. Everyone will be using at least one language and one API ;)

[akb825]

I'm using OpenGL and C++ for my current (and only) game. I'm also using Objective-C and cocoa to set up the graphics context and for events, but that's about it. Since I'm only using it for the convenience of those areas and not as the guts of the game, I didn't mark it.

As for language preference, I definitely like C++. I hate the confines of Java, as well as Objective-C. (to a lesser extent, though) I like the portability and power of vanilla C/C++ with system APIs used only when needed. (such as with my current game with the OpenGL context and event handling)