Game Development Components

[cairnswm]

I am a fan of DelphiX. I have found it very easy to use. But effectivly I use a very small subset of the available components:

DXDraw
DXImageList
DXSound
DXWaveList (?)

Now I have heard that there are compatibility issues with DelphiX. A number of more modern machines do not like DelphiX particularly much. Even some older machines have problems such as my Windows ME machine (doesn't like the transparancy stuff) and also a couple of my friends have not been able to run my games as they get initialization errors. I also would like to start using alphadraw functionality which DelphiX is not very good at. 3D functionality is not required as I cannot do modelling but have a good sprite library available.

I dislike the Sprite Engine that DelphiX has as I find it very restricitve. Each game I basically write my own Sprite Engine and Gui Engine as such the Sprite Engine of any tool is irrelevant. I would like to make use of DirectMusic (or equivilent) in my games.

As I want to create games that can easily be run by the majority of casual gamers I specifically want to avoid DirectX 9 so the component library must be DirectX 8.1 or OpenGL based.

What set of components would you suggest I use? Please give specific reasons why you think the component set will fit my requirements.

I have looked at GameVision SDK but it didn;t run and has now been ported to DirectX 9.
I looked at Omega a while ago and the DXDraw equivilent component continually crashed my Program (with nothing except initialisation code).

[TheLion]

SDL is pretty good, so is DirectX... I prefer to do most of the stuff myself, however SDL comes fully equiped with all things you could wish for!

But look out for the Basilisk Engine (DGDev Team) it's going to blow DelphiX away! It'll probably arrive in time for next years contest!

Personally I dislike the VCL components for gaming, it just takes up a lot of space and if you write the intialisation code for DirectX, SDL or whatever once you can use it over and over again!


EDIT : Just for the record the Basilisk engine is not going to be VCL!

[Ultra]

Since Omega has been (and is) in heavy development it means that if something didn't work some time ago probably will work now. And if you would have any problems all you need to do is post in the forum and we'll look into it.

[cairnswm]

I tried straight OpenGL but found doing 2D stuff too complex.
Same for JEDI-SDL

I've just tried GLXtreem and it seems to have exactly what I want. So I'm going to spend some time on this and see if its better than my DelphiX stuff.

[Traveler]

It'll probably arrive in time for next years contest!

Contest? Which contest ?

[cairnswm]

I think he's talking about the Ludum Dare 48 hour contest.

[TheLion]

Yup, I was talking about the next years Lundum Dare!

[WILL]

But look out for the Basilisk Engine (DGDev Team) it's going to blow DelphiX away! It'll probably arrive in time for next years contest!

EDIT : Just for the record the Basilisk engine is not going to be VCL!

Basilisk Engine: You guys are really gonna have to tell everyone about the Basilisk Engine soon. Those that have heard about it are probably going stir-crazy. I am.

I like JEDI-SDL, but the version I used last[size=9px](this was not the new Alpha version thats out!)[/size] did not have a complete set of basic sprite effects like DelphiX has and I'm sure you are quite familiar with.

ie. DrawRotate, DrawAlpha, DrawStretch, DrawAlphaStretch, DrawWave, DrawAlphaRotate, etc...

Depending on your game it may require some additional code to complete your graphics functionality. It would be great to have a superset of JEDI-SDL that included these. Or even this covered by the new 1.0 version of JEDI-SDL.

For sound, OpenAL is the daddy. There are some headers on noeska's site, ]EDIT: Oh here is even a thread here on where to find the site: click here[/b]

[Canderel]

I used GLScene for my first game, and found it to be quite easy (especially as I am a complete newbie to OpenGL/DirectX programming).

If you are not a wizz programmer, using vcl stuff is easy. DelphiX is cool, but I wanted to go cross platform (in concept). I dl'ed GLExtreme, but could not run it because I only have Delphi 5.