• Recent Tutorials

  • PGD News Round-up for March 2011

    Hey everyone! Thanks for stopping by PGD to read the latest goings-ons in the (Object) Pascal game development world.This is our third News Round-up which started just this year in 2011. All you site members, please leave a comment with feedback and whatever follow-up information you feel needs to be said. This month we will be talking about...





    Lazarus 0.9.30

    Finally the next version of Lazarus has arrived. Recent versions of the IDE designed around the Free Pascal compiler have had stability issues especially regarding the GNU debugger it uses on various platforms. Lets hope that this next stable release will help to solve some of our recent Lazarus woes in versions past.

    Some of the new features & highlights for this version are:

    • Updates to the LCL for Qt, GTK1 & 2, added GIF reader and Windows CE
    • IDE can now be made dock-able.
    • Improvements to the stability and control of the Debugger
    • Delphi converter has improved a lot
    • Folding /Hiding of comments in Pascal source
    • Various designer visibility issues
    • When opening a project, only those forms are opened
    • Allows multiple source editor windows and multiple views of the same source


    For a more detailed list of features and information about Lazarus 0.9.30 check out the announcement at lazarus.freepascal.org. Get the new version at lazarus.freepascal.org!


    App Wave Store

    Embarcadero surprisingly has created it's own App Store concept for Windows / PC users. What seems to be a bold idea, and yet possibly a super-smart move, could bring the same App style games and applications purchasing trend that currently exists for mobile devices and Mac OS X to the, still most common OS, Windows platform.

    So far on the Windows platform only has such stores as Steam and the like, which could arguably have kick-started the concept of such an "App Store." It should be interesting to see how well such a much more robust concept of an App store would fare on the Windows platform.

    Read some of what Nick Hodges thoughts were to say about the App Wave Store on his blog site at www.nickhodges.com. Also if you'd like to hear what Marco Cantu's weight in is visit him at blog.marcocantu.com.

    If you would like to read more about the App Wave store visit the website at www.appwavestore.com.


    PGD Site Content

    We've spruced up the content here at PGD a bit, in case you haven't noticed by now. We have the very cool RSS Feeds page, which allows you to see multiple RSS feeds from around the Pascal / Delphi, game dev and competition events communities collectively on one page. We are looking out for more sites we can add to give you a better scope of events and information available around the web. Please take note that the speed of which it takes to load this page may vary depending on the external sites providing the RSS content.

    Another section that we are also very happy to show you is the Video Tutorials section. We have started off with some of Matt Shaffer's GIMP tutorials along with some very handy Free Pascal / Lazarus and Delphi tutorials for those just learning to program in Pascal and Object Pascal. We plan to post more programming videos in the weeks and months ahead. For now you can check out the great ones we have now right on the Video Tutorials page.


    iPad 2

    On March 11th, and March 25th in Canada, the iPad 2 was released for purchase in Apple stores around the world. The second generation iPad out-does the first in every way. In summary; 9x the graphics speed, 2x the CPU speed, forward and rear facing cameras, slimmer, lighter, flat back, newly designed magnetic covers, same 10-hrs battery and even same price. With the exception of the introductory price has dropped slightly to $519 in Canada and $499 in the US.

    This new version of the platform should make for a unique, yet wonderful mobile 3D gaming experience. Those iPad / Pascal pioneers out there should be very excited at what they will be able to do now.


    Cool New Projects

    We've been very excited about some of the cool new projects that have surfaced this month thanks to the hard work and creativity of the forum members. Andru has just started to add support for iOS in his game library ZenGL. He has been working on getting his Free Pascal setup working with the iOS Simulator which you can follow as he continues to pave the way for Pascal game developers into Apple's iOS platform. Nice job Andru!

    Also Luuk van Venrooij has shown us how he created his own edge filter to highlight game objects in the Genesis Device game engine here. Rodrigo Robles has released a new version of Project Mundo 3D, his MMO game project in the thick of it's development. Improvement have been made to the graphics as well as additions to the game world. Read about the announcement in the forums here or try it out at www.sourceforge.net. Paul Nichols has shown us how he is putting together his editor for his lately project, The Probe. You can get the details about his very cool game project in the forums here.




    Delphi Prism & Other RemObjects Products

    RemObjects has just announced that they have finished their part of the next update to Delphi Prism. Embarcadero should make the announcement any day now. It'll be a free hot-fix type release for all those existing Delphi Prism XE users adding some new editor and error handling features. Also they are making their Spring 2011 releases available immediately. These include Data Abstract, RemObjects SDK, RemObjects Script 2.0, Hydra and Oxfuscator. Read the announcement at blogs.remobjects.com.


    That's it for this edition of the News Round-up. Thanks for reading. Check back for more cool announcements and details on everything that matters to Pascal game developers!
    Comments 6 Comments
    1. code_glitch's Avatar
      code_glitch -
      Sweet, I am beginning to rely on these to keep up to speed with everyone deciding to roll out their libraries and expand support... Times sure are competitive now so yay for PGD and its developers.
    1. Andru's Avatar
      Andru -
      Quote Originally Posted by WILL View Post
      Nice job Andru!
      Thanks

      Quote Originally Posted by WILL View Post
      $519 in Canada and $499 in the US
      And as always over $1000 in Ukraine without normal availability for buying...
    1. chronozphere's Avatar
      chronozphere -
      Nice wrapup. I'm installing lazarus 0.9.30 right now.

      Update: YEAH.. I fixed the external SIGSEGV bug that was causing big problems when debugging with lazarus (I simply killed the HsMgr.exe process, which is part of my sound driver). Now working with lazarus has become 3 times more comfortable.
    1. farcodev's Avatar
      farcodev -
      is it me, or there's a lot of news these weeks ?

      more, more ! MORE !
    1. dazappa's Avatar
      dazappa -
      Also tip: the docking components for Lazarus .9.30 on Windows are a bit buggy It seems I either have to lose the Messages or Object Explorer or the SynEdit will expand way beyond the form's height. (So just close one of these two before maximizing, and all works well for me)
    1. WILL's Avatar
      WILL -
      Mason Wheeler's Blog: http://tech.turbu-rpg.com/306/appwav...iduals-allowed (Be sure to read fully!)