Open discussion: What game devs need from Delphi

[User137]

I used to be a big lobby for a free edition of Delphi until I realized they wouldn't be able to pay the fabulous developers who worked on it.

Just keep in mind how much Lazarus "devs" get paid for their work. Yeah... nothing. And yet they are doing better job for pascal gaming world, even though a little indirectly. Compiler and IDE are general purpose, they don't decide that it's made specifically for games.

Borland already lost me as potential buyer. For a few reasons that have propably been mentioned:

• Open discussion with the people behind compiler and IDE development.
• Bug tracking system, and frequent software updates.
• Open source, free and unlimited.
• Crossplatform.

As far as gaming related libraries go, many of them work equally on Lazarus and Delphi. It's just that all the work for them is done by the user-base, not compiler/IDE developers. If they want to get into game industry, they would need to create a real game engine in my opinion. Graphics, Input, Sounds, Networking wrapped up easier for developers. I'm not sure if it's wise path to take for them, and how many potantial buyers there would be. That could depend entirely on quality of the engine, and it is not easy to compete with the latest commercial engines.

[phibermon]

I understand. Well trying to keep in line with cheap and easy :

Strip out all the components. the visual class designer, any documentation features, database features etc. Oh and firemonkey, we don't need that.

Just keep the 'standard' widgets, buttons and so forth. They're not going to be used, most won't even use forms, there's game ready frameworks that handle windows and we need fine grain control over that process anyway for multi-sampling and context creation. So Ideally get rid of forms and the VCL, but that's probably too much work.

Just the compiler, debugger, code window and the ability to target all supported platforms. Along with the headers for the respective platform APIs obviously.

No need to include third party stuff as people know what they're using anyway, don't need out of date stuff bundled in the install. (seriously guys update that OpenGL header, you don't seem to have a problem using third party stuff like FastMM and FPC)

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So it doesn't have to be anything special, just an even more cut down version at some lower price that more people can afford. but multi-platform is essential, that shouldn't be cut from any version of Delphi. It's not a feature, it's a core essential part of what makes a programming language a viable tool. It should of been done long ago, I thought Kylix was the start of something special. I was wrong.

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Please don't get me wrong, I love Delphi many happy memories of versions 2 thru 7. Avid Turbo Pascal user before that. Brilliant stuff.

[WILL]

A lot of people like it for game development. That is the beauty of a general purpose development tool. What I was wondering if there were some simple changes that could be made that would make it more suitable for the people who like it for game development. Reinventing Delphi to be just like FPC or Unity doesn't do anyone any good.

Hey Jim! Jumping into hostile waters I see! I appreciate you willing to step in and discuss the issues. That said, brace for impact.

The status of Delphi in the game development community is dwindling fast. Sad to say that Embarcadero lost a few of it's biggest supporters in recent years. Die hard Delphi users are switching over to Lazarus like bees to honey simply because it didn't offer the cross-platform capability that most indie devs are expected to put out nowadays. We don't get to play 1-OS hero anymore.

Platform diversity aside, there is not a single offering that is at all that attractive to indie game developers. Delphi is a business tool for the most part. It's strengths lay there specifically. Delphi Starter at $199 sounds nice and all, but it lacks what we really want and champions what we don't need and could care less about. Toted as "what makes Delphi Delphi" by David I. about a year ago, isn't 100% what game devs want from Delphi. This is not how you make sales to a potential target market like us.

Here is my general impression of the views of an indie game dev...

What should have been in Starter:

• Cross-platform cross compiling
  
  • We choose tools that will give us the platforms that we can make games on and where people will play them. This is not a choice for us, it's the gaming world now.
  
  
• Properly updated headers
  
  • If the community is offering this to your company to bundle it and it's better than your own older implementation whats the reason not to include it?
  
  

What should NOT have been in Starter:

• Licensing restrictions based on success of projects
  
  • Who else does this? Putting such restrictions is unenforceable and makes EMBT look petty and a little greedy.
  • If you want us to spend more money on products them make more for us! Like the next version of Starter for example.
  • This one caveat has scared away the most potential customers out of this community. Sales gone for the same effort it took type it.
  
  
• FireMonkey
  
  • Useless for making games that would be played and indies don't care!
  • David I. swears that it can be used for games, but I've looked into it. Not on your life.
  
  
• Form designer and/or any components other than the most common
  
  • Easily validates the cost of a Professional Edition. And indies don't need all the components. Games are not made this way!
  • The VCL isn't going to make my 3D games look better or accelerate my physics calculations or process audio smoother.
  
  

Personally I'd love to see just how well the Starter Edition has actually done. I doubt that EMBT would be willing to tell us, but my guess is that not very many game devs have bought it. When I talked about it with David before it sounded wonderful, but then it was released and I instantly got a bad taste in my mouth.

And I would love to see the reference to this statement:

The Starter edition license is an "indie" or independent developer style license. Think indie music, indie artist, indie films, etc. The indie style Starter license allows for freeware and limited "for profit" commercial use. The license is designed specifically as a low cost solution for hobbyists, students, and independent developers to be able to get started building and distributing apps, including commercially for profit, without a significant up-front investment. It is modeled after the self-publishing music and literature models and has become popular within the game and mobile development tools market.

I'd like to know who does this in the games and mobile tools market and if these libraries or tools are actually used.

That's my big chunk of wisdom for the Delphi tool it's self. As for the rest, well Embarcadero has shown that it loves it's licenses and restrictions. All the things that game developers and indie devs in general are all well to be wary of or avoid if possible. So culturally they have dug a hole for themselves with the indies. Borland didn't build a company around dev tools doing business this way. This may be all well and good for big business where everyone farts acronyms and sneezes contracts and reports, but it doesn't go well by future devs that all start as indies.

Just keep in mind how much Lazarus "devs" get paid for their work. Yeah... nothing. And yet they are doing better job for pascal gaming world, even though a little indirectly. Compiler and IDE are general purpose, they don't decide that it's made specifically for games.

Keep in mind that it also took about a decade to get to this point. I wouldn't knock a dedicated paid developer over a volunteer when he has the free time. Yes, Free Pascal and Lazarus has become quite the wonderful tool for game development (on the desktop primarily), but it didn't happen over night. It took a long time.

Why Delphi has sunk as a game dev tool has more to do with the mentality of the company that steered it's developers and their motivations than how "good" or "talented" they were as developers. It would seem that the new company has similar motivations, as new and hip as they want to sound. It's more about their core clients than reaching out to all markets evenly. And that has been and is right now big business that need a nifty new app that can connect to a database and give them data. Not compile a hardware level graphics driven interactive entertainment experience across multiple platforms from a single code-base.


I don't care about free as much as I do affordability. I'm willing to invest into tools so long as they give me what I want.

The best things that Embarcadero can do to get indies buying products is to make them something that they want to buy. Make us want to buy the next version. It's like the whole used games thing; if you don't want people to be buying the used version of your game instead of a new copy then make games that people want to keep playing. This is honest business and it's how developer tools should be made and sold.