What libraries (native or libs with headers) do you use for game development and why?

[Carver413]

(I think I smell a PGD GL Base code...)

what did you have in mind. sdl makes it pretty easy to get a basic system up and running. perhaps a new wrapper more geared for opengl that would inialize dglOpenGL in the process.

[WILL]

I would seriously love something that makes game development on the Mac easier. So if it worked well on a Mac and had helper tools on Mac, I'd play with it as well. Right now I believe the only true cross-platform solution (not just for graphics) is JEDI-SDL with or without OpenGL and/or OpenAL.

[dazappa]

For pascal game development, I generally stick with Lazarus with SDL and Andorra. SDL is extremely useful for smaller games where there's not as much shiny graphics, and I use Andorra when I want some real power with hardware acceleration and all of the fun stuff that comes with it.

I want to play around with 3d in pascal, but it's really not an option at this point. My main OS is linux these days, and the only 3d pascal engine I know (that works with linux) of is glscene, which is in a pathetic state of disrepair, currently. The only thing I can really get to run is simple model viewing (w/ animation) & particle fx. Any dreams of dynamic shadows or physics can immediately be shot down because they're delphi only.

[chronozphere]

Interesting. Seems like almost everyone here is using OpenGL with SDL.

There are still a number of game libraries for pascal: Asphyre, Andorra, GLScene, DelphiX, HGE, Irrlicht port etc.. But most of us don't use any of those. Instead we write our own frameworks/wrappers or just write native OpenGL/SDL.

Why is it that we don't use the existing libraries alot?

For me, it's simple. During the past few years I learned how to properly use a graphics API. I really want to use that knowledge by making my own engine.

Also, it seems to me like there is a lot of overlap between the libraries, functionality wise. Most of them are aimed at windows and 2D games (DelphiX, Andorra, HGE, Correct me if I'm wrong). So my question is:

Is there still a big unfilled gap? Is it worth it to develop another library that just does things a little different and supports different platforms?

I'm working on a simple engine based on OpenGL+SDL. If it turns out that it could fill the gap, We might aswell get together and merge our codebases to make a fresh engine that does the things we want it to do.

Just a thought.

[Andru]

Interesting. Seems like almost everyone here is using OpenGL with SDL.

I don't like this ugly(inside) and bad library(at least for Linux). Why? Because it use bad method to start in fullscreen under Linux(block input, so if your game will crash... only restart X or Reset will helps you. Also there is no Alt-Tab support). So I wrote my own crossplatfrom library The only problem for now - I didn't make joystick support under MacOS X.

[User137]

(I think I smell a PGD GL Base code...)

I would do my best to integrate most of my tools and units to work with it. Such as the UI Editor and nx drawing and math classes.

So... I have actually no experience on SDL at all. I ended up to OpenGL with dglOpenGL header. Self-made wrapper called Next3D to simplify it great deal. Other than that, i have some basics in use from Synapse network lib.

Using Lazarus IDE fully. All programs are built on the form, so that i don't have to care about underlying operating system messages. It is much faster to make programs with form events and it doesn't come with efficiency loss.