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Thread: Open discussion: What game devs need from Delphi

  1. #11
    While there are some free to cheap game development tools, many of them are quite expensive. While Unity 3D offers a free version, their full price edition is $4500 if you want to reach iOS & Android. Their offering a free edition is a loss leader to get people to upgrade to the full edition. The full PRO edition offers features to game developers over the free version. A free version of Delphi for game development doesn't have an upgrade path to the full version for game developers, so it doesn't make sense from a business point of view.

    You can get a 30 day free trial, and the Starter edition is really reasonably priced at $199. I used to be a big lobby for a free edition of Delphi until I realized they wouldn't be able to pay the fabulous developers who worked on it.

    Delphi is a good general purpose tool that is heavily focused on line of business applications. It has always had good database access and other features that make it a good business application development tool. I've always liked it for utility application development too. A lot of people like it for game development. That is the beauty of a general purpose development tool. What I was wondering if there were some simple changes that could be made that would make it more suitable for the people who like it for game development. Reinventing Delphi to be just like FPC or Unity doesn't do anyone any good.
    Jim McKeeth
    @JimMcKeeth
    Host of the Podcast at Delphi.org
    Developer Evangelist with Embarcadero Technologies
    My email: Is jim@ at my last name .org
    Delphi.org - McKeeth.org - Embarcadero.com

  2. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by JimMcKeeth View Post
    I used to be a big lobby for a free edition of Delphi until I realized they wouldn't be able to pay the fabulous developers who worked on it.
    Just keep in mind how much Lazarus "devs" get paid for their work. Yeah... nothing. And yet they are doing better job for pascal gaming world, even though a little indirectly. Compiler and IDE are general purpose, they don't decide that it's made specifically for games.

    Borland already lost me as potential buyer. For a few reasons that have propably been mentioned:
    • Open discussion with the people behind compiler and IDE development.
    • Bug tracking system, and frequent software updates.
    • Open source, free and unlimited.
    • Crossplatform.


    As far as gaming related libraries go, many of them work equally on Lazarus and Delphi. It's just that all the work for them is done by the user-base, not compiler/IDE developers. If they want to get into game industry, they would need to create a real game engine in my opinion. Graphics, Input, Sounds, Networking wrapped up easier for developers. I'm not sure if it's wise path to take for them, and how many potantial buyers there would be. That could depend entirely on quality of the engine, and it is not easy to compete with the latest commercial engines.

  3. #13
    PGD Staff / News Reporter phibermon's Avatar
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    I understand. Well trying to keep in line with cheap and easy :

    Strip out all the components. the visual class designer, any documentation features, database features etc. Oh and firemonkey, we don't need that.

    Just keep the 'standard' widgets, buttons and so forth. They're not going to be used, most won't even use forms, there's game ready frameworks that handle windows and we need fine grain control over that process anyway for multi-sampling and context creation. So Ideally get rid of forms and the VCL, but that's probably too much work.

    Just the compiler, debugger, code window and the ability to target all supported platforms. Along with the headers for the respective platform APIs obviously.

    No need to include third party stuff as people know what they're using anyway, don't need out of date stuff bundled in the install. (seriously guys update that OpenGL header, you don't seem to have a problem using third party stuff like FastMM and FPC)

    --

    So it doesn't have to be anything special, just an even more cut down version at some lower price that more people can afford. but multi-platform is essential, that shouldn't be cut from any version of Delphi. It's not a feature, it's a core essential part of what makes a programming language a viable tool. It should of been done long ago, I thought Kylix was the start of something special. I was wrong.

    ---

    Please don't get me wrong, I love Delphi many happy memories of versions 2 thru 7. Avid Turbo Pascal user before that. Brilliant stuff.
    When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie - that's an extinction level impact event.

  4. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by WILL View Post
    Free isn't an option. They tried it and it wasn't sustainable. Judging from the conversations I've had with David over a year ago and Jim more recently, they pretty much told me that this is not something that they can do if they want to stay in business.
    I understand that they can't make Delphi compleetly free as they have to pay their employee salaries somehow.
    But they could atract a lot of new developers by offering free versions for students similar as microsoft is offering free editions of Windows to be used by students. More newbies atracted means bigger chances for some of them to actually buy Delphi in the first place. Having 30 day trial is just not enough.
    They could always use custom license for this free editions which would not alow pepole from making any comercial software with it.
    This way they make Delphi afordable for newbies. And when someone becomes confident enough that it can actually make a comercial project with Delphi it would also be prepared to pay some money for it.
    That is how I finally decided to purchase Delphi XE2. I started on Delphi 6 Personal which was available as free then, moved to Delphi 7 which I also got for free and finaly when I become confident enough in my programing skils I bought Delphi XE2. If I would have to buy Delphi from the start I would have never started programming in it.


    Quote Originally Posted by WILL View Post
    And frankly why not pay for something of high value like developer tools if it improves the quality. So buying a set of good developer tools, I don't have a big problem with. (Considering that a lot of free versions of dev tools, esp. those from big companies are crap.)
    The problem is that Delphi just isn't that high value developer tool anymore due to many bugs and poor implementations it has.
    Another problem is lack of third party components and packages for Delphi. There are more and more excelent third party components developed for FPC/Lazarus but most of them doesn't support Delphi. Why? Becouse if someone wants to make their components Delphi compatible they need to purchase latest version of Delphi as trial edition time is just to short to be usefull.

  5. #15
    Co-Founder / PGD Elder WILL's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JimMcKeeth View Post
    A lot of people like it for game development. That is the beauty of a general purpose development tool. What I was wondering if there were some simple changes that could be made that would make it more suitable for the people who like it for game development. Reinventing Delphi to be just like FPC or Unity doesn't do anyone any good.
    Hey Jim! Jumping into hostile waters I see! I appreciate you willing to step in and discuss the issues. That said, brace for impact.

    The status of Delphi in the game development community is dwindling fast. Sad to say that Embarcadero lost a few of it's biggest supporters in recent years. Die hard Delphi users are switching over to Lazarus like bees to honey simply because it didn't offer the cross-platform capability that most indie devs are expected to put out nowadays. We don't get to play 1-OS hero anymore.

    Platform diversity aside, there is not a single offering that is at all that attractive to indie game developers. Delphi is a business tool for the most part. It's strengths lay there specifically. Delphi Starter at $199 sounds nice and all, but it lacks what we really want and champions what we don't need and could care less about. Toted as "what makes Delphi Delphi" by David I. about a year ago, isn't 100% what game devs want from Delphi. This is not how you make sales to a potential target market like us.

    Here is my general impression of the views of an indie game dev...

    What should have been in Starter:


    • Cross-platform cross compiling
      • We choose tools that will give us the platforms that we can make games on and where people will play them. This is not a choice for us, it's the gaming world now.

    • Properly updated headers
      • If the community is offering this to your company to bundle it and it's better than your own older implementation whats the reason not to include it?



    What should NOT have been in Starter:


    • Licensing restrictions based on success of projects
      • Who else does this? Putting such restrictions is unenforceable and makes EMBT look petty and a little greedy.
      • If you want us to spend more money on products them make more for us! Like the next version of Starter for example.
      • This one caveat has scared away the most potential customers out of this community. Sales gone for the same effort it took type it.

    • FireMonkey
      • Useless for making games that would be played and indies don't care!
      • David I. swears that it can be used for games, but I've looked into it. Not on your life.

    • Form designer and/or any components other than the most common
      • Easily validates the cost of a Professional Edition. And indies don't need all the components. Games are not made this way!
      • The VCL isn't going to make my 3D games look better or accelerate my physics calculations or process audio smoother.



    Personally I'd love to see just how well the Starter Edition has actually done. I doubt that EMBT would be willing to tell us, but my guess is that not very many game devs have bought it. When I talked about it with David before it sounded wonderful, but then it was released and I instantly got a bad taste in my mouth.

    And I would love to see the reference to this statement:
    The Starter edition license is an "indie" or independent developer style license. Think indie music, indie artist, indie films, etc. The indie style Starter license allows for freeware and limited "for profit" commercial use. The license is designed specifically as a low cost solution for hobbyists, students, and independent developers to be able to get started building and distributing apps, including commercially for profit, without a significant up-front investment. It is modeled after the self-publishing music and literature models and has become popular within the game and mobile development tools market.
    I'd like to know who does this in the games and mobile tools market and if these libraries or tools are actually used.

    That's my big chunk of wisdom for the Delphi tool it's self. As for the rest, well Embarcadero has shown that it loves it's licenses and restrictions. All the things that game developers and indie devs in general are all well to be wary of or avoid if possible. So culturally they have dug a hole for themselves with the indies. Borland didn't build a company around dev tools doing business this way. This may be all well and good for big business where everyone farts acronyms and sneezes contracts and reports, but it doesn't go well by future devs that all start as indies.

    Quote Originally Posted by User137 View Post
    Just keep in mind how much Lazarus "devs" get paid for their work. Yeah... nothing. And yet they are doing better job for pascal gaming world, even though a little indirectly. Compiler and IDE are general purpose, they don't decide that it's made specifically for games.
    Keep in mind that it also took about a decade to get to this point. I wouldn't knock a dedicated paid developer over a volunteer when he has the free time. Yes, Free Pascal and Lazarus has become quite the wonderful tool for game development (on the desktop primarily), but it didn't happen over night. It took a long time.

    Why Delphi has sunk as a game dev tool has more to do with the mentality of the company that steered it's developers and their motivations than how "good" or "talented" they were as developers. It would seem that the new company has similar motivations, as new and hip as they want to sound. It's more about their core clients than reaching out to all markets evenly. And that has been and is right now big business that need a nifty new app that can connect to a database and give them data. Not compile a hardware level graphics driven interactive entertainment experience across multiple platforms from a single code-base.


    I don't care about free as much as I do affordability. I'm willing to invest into tools so long as they give me what I want.

    The best things that Embarcadero can do to get indies buying products is to make them something that they want to buy. Make us want to buy the next version. It's like the whole used games thing; if you don't want people to be buying the used version of your game instead of a new copy then make games that people want to keep playing. This is honest business and it's how developer tools should be made and sold.
    Jason McMillen
    Pascal Game Development
    Co-Founder





  6. #16
    Co-Founder / PGD Elder WILL's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by SilverWarior View Post
    But they could atract a lot of new developers by offering free versions for students similar as microsoft is offering free editions of Windows to be used by students. More newbies atracted means bigger chances for some of them to actually buy Delphi in the first place. Having 30 day trial is just not enough.
    Microsoft's dev tools are shit. I know, I use the damn thing every day much to my begrudgery. I miss the days I coded intently in the Lazarus IDE, but it doesn't do what I need it to, so life goes on.

    Free is not a viable option and I don't want a free version. I like tools that I can make games to sell. And I like software that has dedicated developers not volunteers that slowly make their way to a new version on their free time. It's that nice guarantee that tells me that I'm getting something of quality that will pay me back later for my hard earned cash.

    That said, if I threw some free candy at a crowd of people you always have someone running after it. Doesn't mean there is a lot of value in cheap dollar store candy.

    Quote Originally Posted by SilverWarior View Post
    Another problem is lack of third party components and packages for Delphi. There are more and more excelent third party components developed for FPC/Lazarus but most of them doesn't support Delphi. Why? Becouse if someone wants to make their components Delphi compatible they need to purchase latest version of Delphi as trial edition time is just to short to be usefull.
    Game developers don't need components. This is a concept for old Windows GUI applications so that any shmoe can make one with little to no code. Game programmers need to know how to program.
    Jason McMillen
    Pascal Game Development
    Co-Founder





  7. #17
    PGD Community Manager AthenaOfDelphi's Avatar
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    This isn't necessarily just linked to game development, I have a number of thoughts about the product as it stands and particularly the pricing model currently employed by Embarcadero.

    Firstly, my minor gripes:-


    • Auto-increment build number - This is a common complaint from what I can see... it disappeared in XE2 and quite frankly what's replaced it stinks. It is so common to have Major.Minor.Release.Build with an ever increasing build number and now that's not an option without using thirdparty tools. I can't speak for others, but this has the potential to cause me an administrative overhead... our ISO processes specify how these fields are used, now they've changed and I have to think about having processes changed to suit the new compiler. This will sound basic and super picky to a lot of people, but I've been using the version numbers as described above for years, and now they've gone. Why? Was it an important change? Was there a good reason for it?
    • Cross platform - Make it easy for people to make truly cross-platform apps (this is what Sascha was saying). The only true cross platform graphics library is OpenGL and yet FM uses DirectX on Windows. This actually makes it difficult for people like me who aren't as competent at OpenGL as say Sascha to do the basics... I'm still struggling to get an OpenGL rendering context working in a Firemonkey app which is the only way you can get to target Windows, MacOS and iOS. This was one of the reasons I bought XE2 in the first place, so I could start writing the next version of my game targetting iOS, MacOSX and Windows from one codebase with no hassles, but alas you have to have one for Windows and MacOSx and another for iOS... I can't say about XE4 but if this could be sorted out so there are no differences that I as the dev have to worry about (other than the obvious ones such as screen size etc.), just another build target it would be great.
    • Access to OpenGL - Again, this is in-line with what Sascha was saying about access to API's like OpenGL. Why not include something like Sascha's headers and provide a template app that creates a window, generates the rendering context etc. that is supported on Windows, MacOSX and iOS (Android too when the compiler is there). You could say this is an extension of the cross platform gripe.


    Now my major gripes:-


    • Pricing - It's too dammed expensive. I currently have RAD Studio XE2 and I'm looking at upgrading to XE4. To avoid the continued cost, I'd like to buy maintenance but I object to paying for the compiler AND maintenance... I should get 12 months with the compiler, then at the end of those 12 months, allow me to buy maintenance. I'd probably buy Delphi XE4 Enterprise (so I can get the mobile development tools rather than have to pay extra) if I could buy it now and then renew my maintenance in 12 months time. I hate to use the word despicable, but this is a despicable practice. I have tons of software development tools and pretty much all of them don't require you to pay maintenance until your 12 months is up.
    • Environment Stability - My favourite environment was Delphi 5, it was supremely stable (unless you were doing silly things like implementing 5 or 6 levels of form inheritance). Delphi 7 was good, BDS 2006 not so much, RAD Studio 2009, the stability returned with a vengeance. I own XE2, but unfortunately I upgraded to version 4 and that screwed my compiler stability, I could downgrade to version 3 by reinstalling everything, but at the moment I do most of my work in 2009 so it's not worth the hassles. I manage a team of 4 devs at work, 3 of them are working with XE2 on a daily basis and they have all had to downgrade to version 3 but even then they complain on nearly a daily basis. Adding all the new cross platform stuff is great, but only if there are no detrimental affects... at the moment, there appear to be detrimental affects with overall stability of the platform. Has this improved with XE4?


    Now my positives:-


    • Pricing - If you compare what you get out of the box with what you get in say Visual Studio... I bought VS2010 and was truly shocked at just how bare my tool bar was in terms of form components etc. Delphi is amazing value for money in that respect. There is already a comment in this thread about things like advanced database support only being available in Enterprise... so buy a library... in my experience the third party libraries for such tasks are better than the Delphi offering anyway (sorry guys, but I've done quite a bit of testing in this area and found there are some serious performance advantages to using third party elements).
    • Ease of use - Having tried to get Lazarus and FPC going, I'm not impressed, I've always found it a real bind. Speed wise I think it's one of the fastest IDEs, certainly it outstrips Visual Studio in almost every way in the performance department. It's layout is quite clean and well, to use the phrase I normally use when talking about Apple products, it just works.


    And now some comments about earlier comments:-


    • Complaints about having to use Windows - Let's be clear about this one, having to compile on one platform whilst targetting another is an everyday occurrence. I can't be 100% sure, but I doubt very much you can compile your Android apps on an Android device. You can't build iOS apps on iOS, and for things like embedded devices and games consoles, building on another platform is a way of life. Windows may not be your ideal platform, but the variability in Linux platforms can make it very difficult to target complex tools like Delphi for them. Maybe when they get the cross platform compilers 100% they'll build a MacOSx version. As for Linux, I can only hope they have a better crack at it than Kylix (nice attempt, just a shame about the performanceof the IDE - and yes I did use it to build a piece of critical infrastructure software that is still running to this day). It should also be remembered that whilst many of us on here can appreciate alternative platforms, in the wider commercial world, Windows is still the number one operating system. We may not like that fact, but that's how it is, and so logically, you're going to target your biggest audience (I'm planning on targetting Windows and MacOSx - Why? Because they are the most popular OS's for gamers at the moment - based on a Steam survey in May), Embarcadero are only really doing the same. To do otherwise just doesn't make commercial sense.
    • Profiling - I use ProDelphi for this, it's a great product, doesn't cost the earth, is easy to use and it's been developed specifically for profiling. Don't waste time and money putting such features into the IDE. 99% of the time they aren't needed. I bought ProDelphi and have used it a handful of times (probably totalling 40 man hours in about 10 years) and that was 10 years ago when I was fine tuning my web server software.
    • IDE Programmer Stupidity Detectors - Don't waste time and money adding things that aim to prevent us making mistakes. I turn off all the automatic tools that are designed to make our lives as devs easier. I bought CodeRush back in the day because it claimed to enhance productivity... trash.. the only thing I used from it on a regular basis was bracket highlighting (IDE now has), it's advanced templates (IDE now has) and it's statistics. Including tools in the IDE that will detect, I think the example was misplaced { } for block commenting, why? How does the IDE know you didn't mean to do it? I'd rather the devs spent time on fixing things that are broken in their product, not things that are clearly my fault. We've all made that sort of silly mistake. The IDE already tries to help me out and much of it gets in the way.
    • IDE Enhancements - Other examples given are visualisation tools such as flowcharting etc. Buy ModelMaker it integrates with the IDE and it is designed for designing. There have already been attempts to include such functionality (and I think the more expensive versions include them to this day)... they were poor compared to third party tools, so again, don't waste time trying to make the IDE all things to all people. It does a great job already, having tried numerous design tools (Enterprise Architect, ModelMaker to name two) I still find myself drawn to the classic analogue Pencil and Paper.


    Over the years sitting on these boards reading various posts about Delphi vs. Free Pascal etc. the overriding theme seems to have been cross platform support and price. The cross platform support is coming and this is nice to see. Price wise, yes it's expensive, but overall I think it's still reasonably good value if you're serious about development. I'm looking to go the XE4 route, possibly just Pro with maintenance at this time... target Windows and MacOSx only for the first release of my next game project and then see how the finances pan out... if I'm making money, buy the mobile stuff and port to iOS and Android. Jim has already mentioned Unity... I did consider this at one point and then coughed at the price. Visual Studio is expensive. xCode is free but the platform is expensive, but again, if you're serious about this stuff, serious tools cost serious money (i.e. amounts you have to think about).

    But what about comparing this to something else... how many of you are serious musicians (by that I mean you take it seriously, not necessarily that you make money from it)? I suspect quite a few... how many of you have expensive guitars, keyboards, synths, software? They are just things that you use in your hobby (if you're not making money from it, it's a hobby), just like my software development is when I'm not at work... I'm not making any money from it so at the moment, it's a hobby. Do you complain about paying say £1000 for a Gibson guitar? Or say £500 for the latest DAW? What about £500 for say an XV-5080? I've spent more money on my musical interests and my personal study in the last 4 years than I've spent on Delphi in the last 10. And yet here I am quibbling about price... just to bring some perspective to the pricing issue. I know I'm contradicting myself to some extent about pricing, but my biggest gripe is maintenance and the up front cost of buying the product AND maintenance.

    Overall, I'm fairly happy with the current product offering. I'm not happy about price, I'm not happy about the fact I have to buy maintenance up front and I'm not happy that as a Pro user, I now have to buy the mobile add on. That sucks, but I can appreciate the commercial drivers for making that choice. I have no intention of moving away from Delphi, it has for many years been my go to tool and I have no reason to think that will change any time soon (besides... AthenaOfC# or AthenaOfPHP just don't have the same ring to them )

    These are all my own personal views as a long time (since version 1) user.
    :: AthenaOfDelphi :: My Blog :: My Software ::

  8. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by WILL View Post
    I like tools that I can make games to sell. And I like software that has dedicated developers not volunteers that slowly make their way to a new version on their free time. It's that nice guarantee that tells me that I'm getting something of quality that will pay me back later for my hard earned cash.
    I also like software that has dedicated developers instead of just volunteers that is why I have bought Delphi XE2 even thous many pepole advised me othervise. I'm also anually paying for "Support & Maintenance for Delphi" which gives me acces to all the latest updates for Delphi.

    Now this is acceptable to me since I have a regular job and earn neough money for this.
    But what about students for instance? They have no jobs to earn mone for this.

    Embarcadero would say there is a Starter edition which is viable option for this. I have to strongly disagree with them on this. Why?
    For the price of Starter edition they are offerin way to less:
    - Only 32 bit Windows compiler
    - FireMonkey components which have much worse perfomance than VCL. And since you don't have need to use FM on windows as you have on other platforms, probably only few pepole will even use them on Windows
    - no code formater and and beutification for source code
    - no class explorer
    - no live code templates
    - no symbol insight
    - no code folding
    - no class completion
    - no resource DLL wizard
    - no refactoring
    - no UML modeling
    - limited integrated debugging
    - no database support
    - and many other things stripped out
    In short the starter edition even have some features stripped out even thou they were available in Borland Delphi 6 Personal edition which was in the end offered for free.


    Quote Originally Posted by WILL View Post
    Game developers don't need components. This is a concept for old Windows GUI applications so that any shmoe can make one with little to no code. Game programmers need to know how to program.
    True we don't need components we need libraries. These two concepts are quite similar.
    So tell me how many Pascal based Graphical engines do we have available and how many of them have full support for the Delphi?
    How many Pascal based Sound libraries do we have available and how many of them have full support for Delphi?
    How many Pascal based Network libraries do we have and how many of them have full support for Delphi?
    How many other Pascal based gaming libraries are available and how many of them have full support for Delphi?

    So as you take a look closely you will see that most of them doesn't support Delphi or have verry limited support for Delphi. I know since I'm having dificulty finding suitable gaming libraries for Delphi since I'm using Delphi for game development.
    Now why is that? Most of them are being developed by FPC/Lazarus and their developers just don't have enough money to go and buy Delphi for making them Delphi compatible.
    Now you might say 200€ for starter edition isn't much but when you take into acount that Starter edition only supports 32 bit compiler you realize that you need athleast Proffesional edition if you wan't your library to have 64 bit support. But that means you will have to pay 1000€ for it. And nowadays you will definitly want 64 bit support if you want to do any serious game so you can make use of more than 3GB of ram.
    This results in the fact that more and more pepole are literally abandoning Delphi support for their libraries.
    And without Delphi compatible gaming libraries noone will use it for game development.


    Another thing that bothers me greatly is how Embarcadero is "evolving" the Delphy syntax by implementing features present in other programming languages.
    Now don't get me wrong I'm not against the implementation of theese features, but I'm mostly against the way they are implemented. I don't like when some feature gets implemented almost the same way it is implemented in some other programming language.
    The reason why Objective Pascal or Delphi was so popular in the past and the reason why it is still poplar as it is is becouse it always have certain feature implemented differently than other programming languages (better implementation in many times). That is what has been atracting pepole to use of Objective Pascal.
    But what Embarcadero is doing now is simply copy-cating features from other programming languages and therefore turning Delphi into crosbreed of other programming languages. ANd this by my opinion is not caled "maturing" of programming language.
    What they need to do is learn how theese features work in other programming language and then implement them in new uniqe way, preferably better way.
    But I'm afraid that guys at Embarcadero might not be capable of doing this. Why? As some computer scientist once sad:
    "Most of the greatest discoveries are not discovered by scientists, but instead they are being discovered by stuedents, hobbyist. Why? Expirienced scientist already learned some path of how things are being discovered and they usually keeps folowing that path. But students, becouse they still didn't learned any particular path, still expiriment in serching of good path and have therefore better cahnce of finding compleetly different path which can lead to great discoveries. Same goes for software development. When you program long enough you develop some patern you folow when developing your application. And the more you stick to your pattern and less you expiriment, the less cahnce you have to discover something new and uniqe."

    So that is why most of my suggestions are biased to atracting as many new pepole to Pascal development as posible becouse I hardly belive that only by new blod we have chance for something new to be discovered.
    Take a look at big software companies like Microsoft, Google, Aple, etc. All of them are reagulary organizing varous "taletn sercing" events like "Imagine cup" where pepole are given some task and they must find best solution for it. Most often the winners are students and not some expirienced programmers.

    So if Embarcadero truely wants to evolve the Delphi as programming language and prevent Delphi comunity to simply fade away they need to start atracting new pascal programmers fast. And yes making Delphi game development friendly is good choice since gaming development is far more popular than buisnies application development and gaming industry is making much more money. So it is no wonder that about 70% of all new programers wants do develop a game first.

    Also Embarcadero mist not forget about keeping existing developers in using Delphi. Why? If they lose existing developers from the comunity, there will be noone to teach the very basics to newbies, there will be noone to encourage newbies to reach their boundaries.
    And here the Embarcadero isn't doing verry good. Lately I have seen many Delphi developers switching to other programming languages. And main reason doesn't seem the lack of features of the Delphi programming language itsef but the lack of atention of Embarcadero to listen to complaints and suggestions of theese pepole.
    Now the rumor for this is that on top of Embarcadero sits Marketing guys and not programmers so they don't view thigs the same.
    If that is the truce could someone please remind theese marketing guys of this cruicail marketing saying: Customer is always right!
    And yes we developers are your customers, so why are you refusing to listen to us?


    I'm sorry if my post has turned into rant.
    What I want is best for Delphi wich in turn would be best for me.

  9. #19
    PGD Staff / News Reporter phibermon's Avatar
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    Complaints about having to use Windows - Let's be clear about this one, having to compile on one platform whilst targetting another is an everyday occurrence.
    It certainly is and I'd like to do that from Linux.

    Edit : that sounded a bit confrontational wanting to avoid any comparisons between platforms best used for a development workstation, there's a myriad of reasons why you'd want the IDE to work across multiple platforms. Maybe you've got a mac and you don't want to buy a PC, maybe you work in a certain government department (certainly in our country Athena) and you can't even run Windows. Maybe you simply don't have the available hardware making dual-booting just to test your builds a hassle.

    The top reason however is debugging (I retract this if Delphi supports remote debugging on every platform). Whilst it might be acceptable to say if it works on A then it works on B, that's under the provision that you're only using officially supported abstractions.

    Even if remote debugging *is* supported, unless you can afford multiple machines in which to run concurrently with your windows development environment (Virtual machines not being acceptable as you require direct access to the GPU or at least some people do) you're again stuck.

    Mobile phones, game consoles, arcade cabinet hardware - Remote debugging or 'virtually assured' operation is the only viable alternative because those devices are not suitable for use as workstations. Em. expect Mac owners to buy PCs to dev? virtual machines? Windows licences?

    Yes their primary market are development studios that have tons of hardware but this is a thread regarding what game devs like us need from Delphi.

    I happen to multi-boot various windows versions, Linux and OSX Lion on hardware I selected for that purpous, I purchased my copy of OSX etc and happily run FPC+Lazarus on all envrionments. It's a perfectly valid setup that many people choose.

    I could not do that with Delphi in it's current state. It'd take me half a life-time with all the re-boots just to debug my Cocoa framework interface and Linux isn't even supported.

    That really doesn't seem like a good thing to me, I'm not buying it am I? I don't see how that makes good business sense, I mean who's choosing not to buy something because it *does* support other platforms?

    And if it's just a case of time + money and they can't afford to do it? well I'm not jumping on a sinking ship. And if it's for technical reasons that can't be overcome? well then Lazarus+FPC is superior (for my needs) and there's no reason to switch.

    Now I don't really believe that those suggestions are the case, there's many factors at play I simply don't know anything about.

    But the question what game devs need from Delphi?

    The answer is simply : What we already get from FPC+Lazarus plus a ton more that will justify the cost.
    Last edited by phibermon; 28-07-2013 at 02:47 PM.
    When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie - that's an extinction level impact event.

  10. #20
    Im too lazy atm too read whole topic fully, but i agree with some opinions here about free Delphi version.
    Why they killed Turbo's? Im thinking about buying starter edition but many people say its a cr*p, what to do then?
    I would use Lazarus, but there are too many components yet which do not work in Lazarus.
    I use D7 Personal, but im lucky, since i dont mess with DB, so personal is fine for me.
    I have the license for it.

    But this is OT already.

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