Technologies/Standards/Products

[Kurilka]

Hi all!
I know that i was asking this question before, but i want to formulate a concrete question and reasons for it. Also i wait concrete answers to it. So the question is:

What are the technologies/standards and software products (programming libraries are maybe the most important part of them for me ) will we use in our game?

The reasons to get the answer so early:
1. People (i mean StPDT) will know what to use, so they can download it, play with it a while and so on. They will be ready when it will be needed and will not spend 1 month more before the actual work
2. Common file fromats (for graphics/sounds mostly, but nto only them) will spare us also some time as we won't be searching convertors and so on (e.g. for MS Access ).
3. As always efficiency and extensibility are very valuable parameters, so we must think about it not an hour but more and maybe discuss some details and so on.

Waiting answer or maybe more questions

[Leland]

I'm not part of the team (at least not yet...), but I am slightly interested in the libraries used as well (poking my nose in stuff that's none of my business, as usual ). In particular, I'd like to know the pros and cons of SDL vs. Allegro. Also , in the old forums Blake briefly mentioned ParaGUI as one possible library to be used, is that still under consideration? Or do you guys have some other UI framework in mind, maybe writing your own?

[vovan]

Actually I've been wondering this for quite a while now, also. When I joined the team as a developer, Rasbelin has only said this:

DirectX runtime libraries are used and all images are PNG files.

He also said that as Blake returns he would send the new coders on the team the list of libraries used and other such information. Seems he is back now, but still not much stuff from him. Must be busy with other things...

Another possibility might be this: Rasbelin also said in one of the posts here (I think in the "Ask about StP" thread) that the GOD will be distributed to the members of the team shortly (that's a document that contains the outline and other information on how the game is going to work). Although I thought that it would only contain information on the proposed mechanics of the game, they might also include the technical information...

[Blake]

Allegro vs SDL

SDL is a minimal library, it is mature and bug free. But does very little past the basics:
graphics, sounds, events, timers, mouse, keyboard, joystick, cd
SDL is easy to use and extend, so there is a great number of supporting libraries, including those intended to be used with SDL (ie your mad not to use them) such as SDL_image for loading png, jpg etc and SDL_mixer for better sound support. As well there are several GUI libraries, and quite a few for graphics.
However SDL itself is not supported anymore (altough more 3rd party libraries are being made every day...)

Allegro is a full game library, including graphics (more than SDL), sound, events, mouse, keyboard, joystick, timers, GUI, datafiles, animation, polygons, maths, 3D maths. The only thing SDL does that allegro doesn't, is CD support for music and such.

Allegro is still being supported and bugs are fixed (then again, SDL doesn't contain bugs)

SDL has basic support for OpenGL built in, while Allegro has no support for OpenGL, except through the use of AllegroGL, that gives better OpenGL than SDL, in particular it makes GUI, text and other stuff easier.

Both libraries support Windows, Linux, Mac and more. Allegro used to have some issues on non-windows platforms, but that should be mostly fixed by now.

Both libraries also have good documentation, SDL's is probably better, but the supporting libraries may be poorly documented (may not, ofcourse). Both libraries seem to have a simialler user base as well, I would daresay allegro is more popular (things such as pixelate on-line magazine), but SDL has been used for professional games, primarly ports of CTP, SMAC etc to Linux.

Overall I would say both are equally easy to use, so it comes down to the choice of using SDL and mix'n'match other supporting libraries to get exactly what we want, or using Allegro+AllegroGL and getting some stuff we dont want too

One last difference is that Allegro really only works with C/C++, while SDL can easily used with many popular languages

SDL is written in C, but works with C++ natively, and has bindings to several other languages, including Ada, Eiffel, Java, ML, Perl, PHP, Pike, Python, and Ruby.

F*cked if I know which one is better, altough I'm almost inclined to go with AllegroGL because I suspect allegro would make development a little quicker.

[Kurilka]

So Blake the list of libraries or something like that will be in GOD?

[Rasbelin]

The reasons to get the answer so early:
1. People (i mean StPDT) will know what to use, so they can download it, play with it a while and so on. They will be ready when it will be needed and will not spend 1 month more before the actual work
2. Common file fromats (for graphics/sounds mostly, but nto only them) will spare us also some time as we won't be searching convertors and so on (e.g. for MS Access ).
3. As always efficiency and extensibility are very valuable parameters, so we must think about it not an hour but more and maybe discuss some details and so on.

That's all very understandable and I could add that file formats, libraries, applications and other such information will be added to the GOD 0.1. It'll only require that Blake sends me a list of the libraries he wants to use (I assume his choice now is Allegro and AllegroGL for the graphics).

[Kurilka]

So i'm waiting god to come

[targon]

BTW, it seems that successfulness of every project is roughly inverse proportional to the number of toolkits used. Just one example KDE and Gnome. KDE is better while Gnome was better designed (full real CORBA support from its roots, BTW). I think it's due to Gnome authors were very angry to reinventing any wheels. They grab every technology that seems to fit their needs and nail it to the project.
But imagine following situation: you have to construct a car. You have F1 Ferrary chassis, bulldozer's diesel engine, bicycle wheels, transmittion form stolen cab (really nice discount) and electrical/controls from last Ford. All these parts are really working and, in fact, may be kludged into something moving (just add more bicycle wheels, they're weak). This situation definitely ressembles construction of some software using lots of different toolkits. So our clever coders must be very scrupulous while selecting right stuff...