What tools are you currently using to makes games with these days? - 2013

[paulfjeld]

I use FPC only and in a "barebones" old school, Turbo Pascal, pre-Object Pascal way. I have an iMac running Mountain Lion with FPC 2.6.2. I have all my projects in BBEdit (nice syntax coloring for OP) and evoke scripts for making, building, running, etc. It is FAST and a very pleasant environment to code in, especially since I write code in itty bitty steps and run often - feels just like an interpreted environment.

I don't know if this is a good thing but FPC makes it possible for me to write simple code w/ SDL and do what I need it to do but I am stuck with old style API stuff like OpenGL 2.1 and the old Jedi SDL headers. I am trying to use 2.1 in a modern style (eg: VBOs not display lists) and hope it stays relevant for a while longer. I don't see any upside to "Delphi on the mac" but I do worry that FPC remains just a hobby for Florian and his cohorts of exceptional programmers. I love the clarity of Pascal. C (++,#,Objective, etc.) just bugs the hell out of me, but I can see a future where I have to spend months getting my C chops back and running "p2c" on all my code. Hope it doesn't happen...

[WILL]

I don't know if this is a good thing but FPC makes it possible for me to write simple code w/ SDL and do what I need it to do but I am stuck with old style API stuff like OpenGL 2.1 and the old Jedi SDL headers. I am trying to use 2.1 in a modern style (eg: VBOs not display lists) and hope it stays relevant for a while longer. I don't see any upside to "Delphi on the mac" but I do worry that FPC remains just a hobby for Florian and his cohorts of exceptional programmers. I love the clarity of Pascal. C (++,#,Objective, etc.) just bugs the hell out of me, but I can see a future where I have to spend months getting my C chops back and running "p2c" on all my code. Hope it doesn't happen...

You are going to have problems with JEDI-SDL which uses SDL 1.2.x headers on the Mac. Mainly you will not be able to go fullscreen. I know from experience using the older SDL 1.2.x for one of my projects that does compile and run for both Windows and Mac under Lazarus. If you can update the headers or (re)write a new set of headers for the 2.x specs that would offer you a solution, but I'm afraid that my old friend's SDL based library project has seen better days.

It is and still remains a great library to learn game programming though! Esp. on Windows!

As for VBOs, weeeelllll I thought those were depreciated in favour of older and possibly even some newer methods? Can someone chip in on this? Sascha, Luuk, Yuriy?

I myself stuck to Display lists on my own Win/Mac projects and the performance boost from immediate mode was still very nice. Of course this all depends on what type of graphics you are doing I would assume.

FPC is what it is. That's what makes it both great and not as great as it "could be." Very east to talk to guys though. Even more so if you speak German.

[Sascha Willems]

As for VBOs, weeeelllll I thought those were depreciated in favour of older and possibly even some newer methods? Can someone chip in on this? Sascha, Luuk, Yuriy?

Nope, it's the contrary VBOs are actually the preferred way (together with VAOs) of storing vertex data in OpenGL 4.x, while old stuff like immediate mode and display lists can't be used anymore (for some years now display lists have been torn down into VBOs by the graphics card drivers anyway).

[Ñuño Martínez]

WILL,

thank you for sharing your experiences with Oxygene. Currently I'm wondering to buy a license of Oxygene or Smart Mobile Studio and reading your text helped me to compare them.