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[Problem Machine]

I'm thinking about starting up a game project and looking at the different options for development environments. I was originally planning on using Flash/Actionscript, and this is still one of the primary platforms I'm considering.

However, I'm concerned about platform portability, as if I DO finish this project I would like the option of pushing it on consoles as well as on PC. If anyone could just point me towards something listing the portability pros and cons of different environments, I'd be much obliged.

[deadeye]

If you're looking to eventually port to a console, the 360 is probably the easiest and cheapest right now.  You could use XNA Studio (which if I remember correctly is a C# devkit) to make PC and 360 games.  The XNA Creators club is $99 a year.

I don't know the price of the WiiWare license off the top of my head (iirc it's expensive), but I do know Nintendo is much more strict with their licensing, and if your game doesn't pass muster then you can forget about Wii distribution.  The general feeling I get about Nintendo is they want pros only developing content for them, so you're not going to see much in the way of small-time indie stuff.

And I have absolutely no idea about user-created content for the PS3.

[Problem Machine]

Hm. Is there any solution readily portable to both PS3 and 360, or is that too much to hope for?

[team_q]

Hm. Is there any solution readily portable to both PS3 and 360, or is that too much to hope for?

yeah, thats a bit much, you could see what libraries you need for each and plan from the beginning, but it would be easier to just make something for either and hope that Sony or Microsoft throw some development cash your way, but you've got to have proven yourself first.

[deadeye]

Hm. Is there any solution readily portable to both PS3 and 360, or is that too much to hope for?

Torque has devkits for 360 and Wii right now.  Who knows, maybe they'll come out with a PS3 one.  I have no idea.

Other than that, no there really isn't any one solution that covers all platforms.  Even with Torque you'd be paying for separate licenses, and porting to different environments.  And you still need a WarioWorld account to be a Wii developer with Torque.

[Problem Machine]

Understood. Thanks for the help guys. I'm reading through the sticky at the top comparing tools now, so that should help clear some things up too.

[ninjascience]

If you really want to use Flash and deploy to a console you can check out this company: http://www.scaleform.com/products_gfx.php.  AFAIK, it allows you to program in ActionScript but compile into a graphics accelerated app.  Though it seems to be used in modern games more for HUDS and GUIs than actual game-play graphics.

I was very much into Flash game dev but gave it up recently.  I preferred ActionScript over other languages because it was simple, and I knew it well from my 9-5 business app job, but after checking out XNA and C#, I feel like that platform is  just as "easy" now.  Just be aware that the Flash player doesn't have any hardware acceleration, so you limited to pretty simple 3D stuff, or 2D stuff.

[Problem Machine]

I was planning to go entirely 2d; do the environments you mention sport any substantial benefits over AS/Flash in that context?

[ninjascience]

Hardware acceleration is a big one.  Not that you can't make great looking 2D games with Flash, but you are more limited.

Some people point to the fact there are more C++ game resources available, but knowledge can be applied to AS3 and tools can be ported (the great C++ physics library, Box2D has been ported to AS3 and has great performance).

One thing I really like about Flash dev is it's easy to show off your games, just post them on a webpage.  My new platform is XNA with C# and not only will people have to download whatever I develop, they need the .NET framework AND and XNA framework dlls.

[Melly]

I heard as well that that is one of the biggest drawbacks of developing stuff in XNA for PC's, the need of many aditional downloads that many people will simply not want to bother with especially if you're asking them to look at a small prototype.

One solution is to include some kind of installer that downloads all that stuff for the user, but that might still be a lot to ask. I myself am always a bit wary of some random game I download on the internet trying to download a ton of extra stuff I never heard about, especially if I don't see any other benefits of having those things other than playing the specified game. I'm pretty sure that's what a lot of people think the moment you ask them to download extra stuff in order to play your game.

Though I'm not sure if Vista comes with all that installed, and in that case it shouldn't be an issue. For Vista users, that is.

[ravuya]

I think the Microsoft license agreement also forbids you from redistributing the library anyway. At least that's the way it was with some of the D3D releases.

[ninjascience]

I seem to remember a mention on the TorqueX forums that it is possible, and allowed, to make an installer that downloads/installs the necessary dlls.  Not sure about that myself.

[ravuya]

It'd make sense if it downloaded them. I think it was a kerfluffle over the Windows authenticity check, since you had to verify the non-piratedness of your Windows install to download the D3D runtime.

[jcromartie]

Any platform that can compile or load C libraries (that includes XNA) can use Lua.  2D graphics are pretty generic across most platforms, and my having a simple Lua API to write your game in, porting is easy.  I could take my stuff right now (SDL/OpenGL) and port it to Allegro or XNA in no time flat.

[Problem Machine]

Okay I don't see any reason to make a new thread for this, though I will if I don't get a response here.

Basically, here's the situation: I've been working on the bones of a game engine in Actionscript 3, and somewhere in the process of working out the collision testing code I got fed up. Perhaps it's because of Flash's undocumented 'features' (hey guys, did you know that Flash automatically floors sprite coordinates to the closest 0.05 value? It's true!), but at the point where a TRACE was causing my code to behave erroneously I really started to question how worthwhile this endeavor was (especially given my pre-existing concerns about Flash's lack of native joystick and mouse-right-click support).

So, okay, let's go to hypothetical town. Say I ditch AS3 and want to develop this in C++. I'm a little rusty, and I've never developed an actual application, but when I see code snippets I usually understand them okay so I think I'll be fine in terms of converting the structure of the game engine over.

However, I know two things about graphics programming: Jack and shit. So I either need to download a graphics library which will give me the same capabilities as Flash's (particularly the ability to create both vector and raster images and draw both to the screen) or a tutorial which will let me make one myself (preferably the former, this sounds like an ungodly pain in the ass). Any graphics library would need to be relatively platform independent, as per my earlier concerns. Of course, I'll need the same for sound. This is concern number 1.

Concern number 2 is that the game programming book I have (Beginning Game Programming, Michael Morrison) focuses entire on developing within the context of the Win API, which would kind of shit on my goal of making this platform independent as well. This is less tricky, as all I really need is a good example of a game written in C++ that DOESN'T rely upon the Win API to go off of (preferably heavily commented and/or accompanied by a tutorial).

I'm sure I'm going to find it very difficult to figure all this stuff out in C++. HOWEVER, I've noticed that basically every tough to eliminate bug I've encountered so far has been a result of Flash's bullshit (CONSTANTS SHOULD BE CONSTANT GODDAMMIT). Considering that it will make the final product superior and it's beginning to look like it may actually end up easier once I get into the swing of it, I think this is the right decision to make.

So: I would appreciate it VERY much if any of the more experienced developers here could point me towards some resources to help me resolve the above concerns. All advice is welcome, even if you think I'm a total jackass and I'm making a huge mistake. I've heard worse before 

[justinfic]

Seconding the C++/OpenGL/SDL combo. It's fairly easy to get into yet still pretty powerful and flexible, and you're automatically cross platform between OSX, Windows and Linux. SDL also has libraries for sound (SDL_mixer) and loading images (SDL_image) as well as other things, making it an easy way to get everything working quickly. Porting this type of engine to 360 means replacing OpenGL with DirectX (which is easier than it sounds) and SDL with the 360's own calls. Porting to DS also means ditching SDL, but it does use a lite version of OpenGL, which means you'll need to retool a few things but otherwise no probs.

I have no experience with PS3, but the announcement of the Phyre Engine has me excited. It's free, looks like a powerful graphics engine without getting in the way of game logic, and it's portable between PS3, Win/PC, and Xbox360. The downside is you need to be a registered PS3 developer.

None of these will give you vector graphics or a Flash-like interface, though. There are a few libraries out there that claim to give you vector graphics (like Amanith) but I know nothing about them.

[Problem Machine]

Well, this is going to be entirely 2d; would OpenGL have any point in that context? Right now, I'm looking at the Allegro tutorials linked in the stickies, and it seems like it might be suitable to my purposes, though I'll probably do more research before I settle on a final choice. SDL sounds interesting by your description though, I'll definitely check that out.

[dustin]

Well, this is going to be entirely 2d; would OpenGL have any point in that context?

with opengl in 2d games you can render crazy amounts of sprites and also do neet things like trasnparencies and rotation and shaders and such all with little/no cpu time

Seconding the C++/OpenGL/SDL combo.

Just a question.  You mean using sdl to set up a window etc. and opengl for drawing?    I remember when I first used sdl I thought it was rendering using openGL but I think I was wrong about that.  SDL renders in software  not hardware right?

[jcromartie]

Seconding the C++/OpenGL/SDL combo.

Just a question.  You mean using sdl to set up a window etc. and opengl for drawing?    I remember when I first used sdl I thought it was rendering using openGL but I think I was wrong about that.  SDL renders in software  not hardware right?

SDL provides both software drawing and a simple cross-platform way to set up an OpenGL rendering context.  You can even mix the two if you want to draw to an SDL surface and then copy that to an OpenGL texture (you can't normally use SDL blit routines in OpenGL... there is some new support for it though).

[Problem Machine]

If OpenGL had support for vector graphics then that would be a pretty ideal solution. Anyone know if there's an add-on for that anywhere?