Delphi and working in game development

[DarkSSJ]

Can I hope to be in a team that sell their games (written in Delphi) or if I want work in game developing I should learn the (****ing) C++?

[Xorcist]

There are some companies that have used Delphi to program commercial games (Digital Tomb (http://www.siege-of-avalon.com)).
However it's an unfortunate reality that most of the industry mainly uses C/C++.
Keep in mind though that 90% of gamers only care if the game kicks ass.

[Traveler]

A great game (seen it, but haven't played it myself) is Age of Wonders (http://aow2.godgames.com/welcome.html). It's written in Delphi, made by a dutch company. :D

[Bobby]

It was also a best seller. They have a second version now too =)

[Marty]

in the meanwhile game developer realize that delphi is a good RAD tool and very practical for game tools. for instance the unreal editor UnrealED ist written in Delphi! There are some other tools, presented at gamasutra.com for commercial games which are written in delphi. so the chances for delphi programmer in the game industry are going better.

[savage]

Hi DarkSSJ,
I have personally worked on 2 commercial games using Delphi.
I am credited with working on Siege of Avalon ( http://www.siege-of-avalon.com/ ) and more recently Hero X ( http://us.infogrames.com/games/herox_pc_action/ ), which was released earlier this year.

SOA was written with Delphi 4, while HeroX used Delphi 5 & 6. Both games used DirectDraw for rendering.

The only problem I see with writing games with Delphi is that the compiler is not available for consoles. That said, it is great for any PC ( Windows or Linux ) games.

[Sly]

in the meanwhile game developer realize that delphi is a good RAD tool and very practical for game tools. for instance the unreal editor UnrealED ist written in Delphi! There are some other tools, presented at gamasutra.com for commercial games which are written in delphi. so the chances for delphi programmer in the game industry are going better.

UnrealED was originally written in Visual Basic, then Legend Entertainment rewrote it in C++ when they licensed the Unreal engine. They did not use Delphi unfortunately.

I got my job as a programmer in the games industry with a portfolio consisting entirely of Delphi applications. We use C++ for our games and tools (Visual C++ (PC, Xbox)and Metrowerks CodeWarrior (PS2, GC) for the games, C++ Builder for the tools), but the applications that I demonstrated showed enough to impress the bosses. Plus the bosses knew Delphi because they had used it on a previous game several years back (Zombie Wars, a Halloween Harry sequel).

[Zanthos]

If we take a look at the most influential games ever made, they're nothing that can't be accomplished on any procedural language:

Tetris, Sim City, Pong, Gauntlet, Frogger, to name just a few.

In todays game industry the software is more, well-filled around the edges, and graphics play a major part in dragging in casual gamers drooling over eye candy :)

Saying that, speed differences between C++ and Delphi in many cases are minimal (or so benchmarks have proven), all it means is that games made using Delphi have to be extra lean and mean to keep up with C++ where it may fall short, and in theory that can't be a bad thing ;)