GamePascal - Cross-platform Game Development in Object Pascal

[SilverWarior]

Seems Pascal era is over(at least game development). More engines are shutting down, and more developers starting to use something else for game development.

Pascal era for game development ower? Why? Becouse development on some game engines has been stopped?
Pascal era for game development wont't be ower until pepole stop making games in Pascal compleetly. But from what I understand most pepole who stopped development on their own game engines still intent on making games. And for these they actually will make custom game engines specifically suited for those particular games rather than suited for most posible games.
And that could in the end turn out to be even better becouse when you are designing a game engine specifically for some game you focus on those parts that will be important for that game and not "waste" with implementing of whole bunch of other features you probably won't even need. So this will lead to faster development and probably more optimized game engines which will have better performance.

So don't write off Pascal game development yet!

[Andru]

Becouse development on some game engines has been stopped?

Not only because of this, I wrote about switching to other tools/languages by developers. And take a look on Pascal communities, nowadays its almost died. Shutting down of engines is only some part of whole "picture".

[SilverWarior]

Not only because of this, I wrote about switching to other tools/languages by developers. And take a look on Pascal communities, nowadays its almost died. Shutting down of engines is only some part of whole "picture".

Hey I'm well aware about Objective Pascal comunity getting less and less popular and I'm also well aware of the reasons for this.
Main reason for this is that not so long ago there was verry litle choice in Objective Pascal development tools (overpriced Delphi and somewheat unstable FPC). But that has changed recently. It is true that Delphi is still overpriced and that Embarcadero is def about suggestions on making Delphi more afordable for smaller developers and programmer beginers.
But FPC on the other hand become verry stable. Some even say it is already more stable than Delphi.
Also there is a Smart Mobile Studio here which suposingly is also quite good Pascal based development tool.

So you see potential developers have now much more choices than they had in past and until we (older Objective Pascal) would be prepared to share our knowledge with other new or old programmers and make games/applications with it there is still chance for it to gain more popularity.
But if we start complaining about how unpopular Objective Pascal is and such we are driving away other pepole which might be interested in trying to do some programming in Objective Pascal othevise.

[Cybermonkey]

Not only because of this, I wrote about switching to other tools/languages by developers. And take a look on Pascal communities, nowadays its almost died. Shutting down of engines is only some part of whole "picture".

Yes, I agree with this. I actually considered switching to C# since there are a lot of nice engines and the language looks more familiar than C++ or Java.

[JC_]

It's a vicious circle, without a good engine there will be no game developers.. and the community is a minority, so no one wants to do any engine with continuous development.
Too bad, because e.g. ZenGL is just the type of engine (concept, premeditation, cross platform) that would be able to attract people.

Programming language or platform ? Does not matter. Especially for someone who begins with games and syntax of Pascal is good reading. Small game can break and possibly earn millions USD Just have a good idea ​​and complete project.

[phibermon]

Hi all, there are no game engines for Pascal. They're all frameworks and/or graphics engines. Some have started to become engines and some pascal games have a code structure that can be described as an engine but there's nothing even approaching the scale of a game engine that's stated as being a game engine.

That's a problem, probably the biggest barrier to wider adoption of Pascal as a game development language.

And until more people start working together on engines, combining their knowledge and experience then that'll never change.

It's such a shame, so many great programmers all in the field of games development and they're all independently working on the same 10% of functionality of a real engine.

I'm just as guilty but in my defence I've approached a dozen or so people on here looking to work together or merge projects, nobody is interested.

It's the main reason I've stepped away from PGD and pascal in general, I love it but I'm serious about making games and for the scope I want then that means working with others. the C++ and Java communities are far, far larger. I can find all the like minded people I like to work on whatever we like.

[drezgames]

and.... what is your definition of a "game engine" ?

[phibermon]

A system that contains everything you need to create a game without *needing* to write any more code. So things that are often missing from 'engines' are :

- Skinning support combined with skeletal/weighted model format support with a minimum of exporters for 3DS and Blender.
- Path finding and steering algorithms for 3D environments with full physics integration.
- Abstracted game mechanics IE concepts such as projectiles, vehicles, pickups being implemented and customizable.
- An event structure separate from scripting that allows the chaining of events, IE collide, particles, noise, decrement variable (Ie health)
- programmable particle systems tied into events / scripting.
- Abstracted input and focus schemes for controller input. IE the ability to have a mouse cursor style RPG and a mouse controlled FPS from the same sub-system.
- Full support for variable digital controllers (IE analogue sticks) tied into input mechanism to allow for touch/mouse/stick control of the same input channel.
- Templated and scriptable finite state machines and decision trees tied into every relevant part of the engine.

Unreal is a game engine, ID Tech etc. You can pick them up, create some resources and have a playable game without writing any code.

You may want or need to add extra code to a game engine, IE the many custom versions of the Quake engine. But if you can't make a game with a system without writing extra code then it's not a 'game engine'.

It's middleware, graphics engines, whole frameworks, but not a game engine.

Another way of putting it would be to say that game engines are whole games that are setup to be customizable. The more customizable, the more the engine is used in the industry.

(not strictly accurate, unity isn't quite like this for example but as already stated, you can make games in unity using nothing but a mouse. You don't have to write anything substantial, just plug things together)