PGD Challenge in the Winter?

**WILL** · 11-09-2012, 01:52 AM

Originally Posted by User137

I would hope there was different result system though, like letting forum members vote. Wouldn't need judges. Most importantly i'm not after the rewards. All that stuff make the contest feel more pressing and bigger than it should be. It could be in big part a self-maintained system.

The problem with this is the validity of those scores. Platform Popularity is the main issue that will either drive down any game entry that doesn't run on the most popular OS or you run into the problem of people scoring based off the videos shown because they can run the game thus scores based mostly on how the game "looks" rather than the actual end result of the finished game after playing it.

I can't see getting away from actual judges with posted system hardware specs. You'd drive away all the new platform development and limit those that would feel it's worth competing.

**User137** · 11-09-2012, 06:51 AM

Originally Posted by WILL

The problem with this is the validity of those scores. Platform Popularity is the main issue that will either drive down any game entry that doesn't run on the most popular OS or you run into the problem of people scoring based off the videos shown because they can run the game thus scores based mostly on how the game "looks" rather than the actual end result of the finished game after playing it.

Each entry could have downloads for more than 1 platform, if it's supported. For Delphi there's no way around only for windows, but others may be able to run on linux. It's something contestant would need to do by himself, or if giving source code, then site admins could modify the sent competition package and add different OS binaries to it.

It's at least better than not being able to test them at all after contest ends. I was a little disappointed in not being able to test more than half of the entries in this contest too. All projects should run at least on windows in my opinion. If it's freepascal project, that should already be given.

**SilverWarior** · 11-09-2012, 01:18 PM

@Will
I totally agree that public scoring for competition won't be good especially if pepole can't run the entries becouse of lacking proper OS or dependancies. That's why we have judges who can runn entries on any competition supported platform.
But still I think it would be good to alow other PGD members to express their own impresions on the entries. Offcourse this will be only informative and would mostly serve just as fedback to the developers (more fedback is always better).

@User137
Making game to be able to run on multiple platforms isn't easy especially if you don't have sufficient expirience with target platform.
While windows is still most popular platform on PC computers this is no guarantee that all of us have suficient expirience with it even due the fact that probably all of us used Windows at some point. But if someone is using MAC OS for the last 5 yers it will have a lot of troubles making game to run smothly on Windows due to qute some changes in Windows architercture (changed various paths, lots of changes in acces premisons etc.).
Same will go for me if I would try to make my game runable on MAC OS or Linux becouse I have no expirience with MAC OS and verry litle expirience with Linux.

**code_glitch** · 11-09-2012, 04:56 PM

Or... Package your game into a vmdk with something which uses WINE and XFCE or LightDm... Just a handful of megabytes and everyone is happy

Plus, no need for installers or the like. Write once, run anywhere... If that rings a bell

**Ñuño Martínez** · 11-09-2012, 05:45 PM

Originally Posted by code_glitch

Or... Package your game into a vmdk with something which uses WINE and XFCE or LightDm... Just a handful of megabytes and everyone is happy

Plus, no need for installers or the like. Write once, run anywhere... If that rings a bell

Another project of mine is do something like that: a simple Linux/FreeDOS/ReactOS distro that can run on CD (AKA. Live CD) and make it simple for developers to add games/apps. That is the modern version of good old autoboot diskettes.

**code_glitch** · 11-09-2012, 06:26 PM

In theory a minimal system with just the desktop environment on top of the linux kernel and the libraries you need should zip up pretty small... So it'd be like a Java VM, just full on x86

Might do this for my entries from now on...

**User137** · 11-09-2012, 09:59 PM

Originally Posted by SilverWarior

Making game to be able to run on multiple platforms isn't easy especially if you don't have sufficient expirience with target platform. While windows is still most popular platform on PC computers this is no guarantee that all of us have suficient expirience with it even due the fact that probably all of us used Windows at some point. But if someone is using MAC OS for the last 5 yers it will have a lot of troubles making game to run smothly on Windows due to qute some changes in Windows architercture (changed various paths, lots of changes in acces premisons etc.). Same will go for me if I would try to make my game runable on MAC OS or Linux becouse I have no expirience with MAC OS and verry litle expirience with Linux.

It's not that difficult when you are making apps with Lazarus

Simplest requirement is not to include Windows in the uses list. Second is converting all paths to fit operating system. For this there is a internal constant PathDelim, which is \ or / depending on OS. But also you can get tips from nxPascal FixPath() function

That should be all there is to crossplatform. Use OpenGL, not DirectX. Some differences with dll libraries, but that's a problem outside of compiled executable.

LP · 11-09-2012, 10:32 PM

Originally Posted by User137

It's not that difficult when you are making apps with Lazarus

Simplest requirement is not to include Windows in the uses list. Second is converting all paths to fit operating system. For this there is a internal constant PathDelim, which is \ or / depending on OS. But also you can get tips from nxPascal FixPath() function

That should be all there is to crossplatform. Use OpenGL, not DirectX. Some differences with dll libraries, but that's a problem outside of compiled executable.

Actually, this is much easier to say than to do. In reality, when you have worked on Windows platform for too long, it *is* difficult porting to other platforms. OpenGL is nice, but its initialization differs (unless you use GLUT or similar helpers, which have its own problems - for one, they are not readily available on Windows and are outdated). Sockets (anything beyond trivial) are considerably different due to WinSock specifics. Other helpers such as temporary path folders, registry configuration, dynamic libraries, etc. all all different too.

Also, you need to be very careful with the code you write to keep it portable.

To resume, for some very basic or crippled games/applications that will work and look poorly on all platforms - sure, it is relatively easy to acomplish, but as soon as you start working on features beyond trivial you *have* to start using platform-specific routes, which makes the code considerably more complex by adding many different code paths. Just take a look at actual LCL source code to see the real scope of a cross-platform project.

However, it is still a good idea to pursue multi-platform PGD challange and it will help people to work out issues in their code. Making and running your applications on different platforms is an ultimate challenge for writing applications, that requires discipline and experience to make proper architectural decisions.