Creative crisis, need advice.

[Ñuño Martínez]

Currently I'm in a creative crisis. I'll try to explain it.

After finished the first stable version of Allegro.pas (a limited wrapper for the wonderful Allegro game library) I discovered that it wasn't what I was looking for. I spent more than a year in this project so to discover that I need something different is a big pain.

I think Allegro is a great library, greater since they announced it will support OpenGL natively next major release, but it's way too complex for me. Something similar than good old MSX2 or Amiga is enough for me since I love classic 2D games, I love good 3D games too though so 3D support would be great too.

I had some experience with lo-level graphic programming in DOS and I learned a lot using and reading the sources of Allegro itself so I was planning to create my own Pascal cross-platform game library (FreeDOS, Win32 and GNU/Linux) but then I thought that somebody should do it yet so I start to look for it, but I didn't found nothing that satisfies me: they're too complex, don't support 3D or 2D is a pain or can't compile in FreeDOS (a FreeDOS based Live CD with games would be great ;))...

I want something simple: just two or three 2D modes, keyboard, joystick and mouse input, VOC/WAV and MIDI output and someday an OpenGL/MESA (even software!) 3D mode that I can use to create simple games and compile them on FreeDOS, Windows and Linux. That's all.

Do you think it's worth of? May be this library exists but I didn't find it?

[cronodragon]

...can't compile in FreeDOS (a FreeDOS based Live CD with games would be great ;))...

I want something simple: just two or three 2D modes, keyboard, joystick and mouse input, VOC/WAV and MIDI output and someday an OpenGL/MESA (even software!) 3D mode that I can use to create simple games and compile them on FreeDOS, Windows and Linux. That's all.

I have experience programming pure x86 assembly and pascal+asm low-level code for 2D graphics (EGA, VGA, VESA), input (BIOS keyboard, BIOS mouse, BIOS joystick) and audio (Soundblaster), and I don't remember it being something simple at all :P BTW, I still have all of those units in case you need them :D

Indeed, after finishing that work, of more than a year, I had to drop all that and move to 3D technologies, starting from zero once again!! I don't think it was a waste of time, since I learned lots of things from doing that.

Maybe you just need to redefine your goals. Use the "divide and conquer" idea of programming, and select which goals you can complete, and which ones you could save as "future enhancements". Or, completely drop what you did, and take your time to meditate what do you really want to do in your "game programmer's" life :D I had to do that at least two times in my life, and the last time I didn't programmed any personal projects for about 6 months, later on I designed and started a game engine that I consider will be my ultimate project, and hope to continue developing it as long as I can.

[savage]

Hi ?ëu?±o,
I can't remember if you said that you had tried SDL? It's one of the simplest cross-platform APIs I've come across, though maybe it is too simple for what you want. JEDI-SDL is now supported on Mac OS X, Linux, Win32, SkyOS, Nintendo DS and probably a few other OSes and processors.

Anyway, just a thought.

[Ñuño Martínez]

...can't compile in FreeDOS (a FreeDOS based Live CD with games would be great ;))...

I want something simple: ...

I have experience programming pure x86 assembly and pascal+asm low-level code for 2D graphics (EGA, VGA, VESA), input (BIOS keyboard, BIOS mouse, BIOS joystick) and audio (Soundblaster), and I don't remember it being something simple at all :P I have experience with assembly and C and I find it more natural than DirectX :wink:

Thanks for the words. :)


I can't remember if you said that you had tried SDL? It's one of the simplest cross-platform APIs I've come across, though maybe it is too simple for what you want. JEDI-SDL is now supported on Mac OS X, Linux, Win32, SkyOS, Nintendo DS and probably a few other OSes and processors. Well, I didn't used it but I'd download it and read the documentation, see the examples, etc. Has some interesting things, but I'm not sure if it fits with what I'm looking for.

Thanks.