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[moi]

We didn't choose XNA because we wanted our games on XBLA, we chose it because it made developing our game really easy. We chose it for a ton or reasons:

- C#
- lots of resources available (community/tutorials/sample code/great documentation)
- no low level details to consider (device initialization, etc)

I guess any choice made has its consequences. We didn't realize how many people wouldn't be able to run the game when we chose it being one of them.

Suggest an alternative that has points 2 and 3 (I'm opened to using Java) and I'll take a look 

Java, you said it 

[Melly]

What about that PyCap thing? I hear developing in it is very easy and it runs smoothly, though I'm not too sure.

[Xenophobe]

Hard choice! All of these were so awesome

[Farbs]

What about that PyCap thing? I hear developing in it is very easy and it runs smoothly, though I'm not too sure.

I like it, but that's probably because I made it :D
ROM CHECK FAIL runs on pycap in slightly under 3000 lines of code. It's certainly not the fastest engine around, but I find it very easy to develop for.

[Melly]

If it's faster than Game Maker and MMF and runs on any Windows platform then I might try it out. Is it multiplatform?

[Farbs]

If it's faster than Game Maker and MMF and runs on any Windows platform then I might try it out. Is it multiplatform?

It's win32 and linux at the moment. I'd really like to have a mac version but sadly nobody's offered to port it yet Performance is probably similar to GM and MMF, but honestly I don't know.

[John Nesky]

Actionscript 3 is a really fantastic language for game programmers, unlike Actionscript 2 which was barely more than an animation scripting language. FlashDevelop is a free compiler for Windows to get you started. If trace/printf isn't good enough for you and you need an integrated debugger, you'd have to fork over the money for Adobe's commercial compilers, but for quick games FlashDevelop is good enough and the swfs it outputs should run on all computers, with or without a web browser. People really aren't making use of Flash the way they should now that AS3 is out. It's hard for Flash to escape the stigma of AS2...

[Hideous]

If it's faster than Game Maker and MMF and runs on any Windows platform then I might try it out. Is it multiplatform?

It's win32 and linux at the moment. I'd really like to have a mac version but sadly nobody's offered to port it yet Performance is probably similar to GM and MMF, but honestly I don't know.

Wow, taking a look at PyCap, and it seems much simpler than PyGame. You sir, win :D

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I've found that performance-wise most interpreted languages perform similarly, and most compiled languages perform similarly, so going from one interpreted language to another (like Game Maker to Python) won't probably give you much of a performance boost.

PyCap looks interesting, this is the first I heard of it, if I ever learn Python seriously I'll be sure to try it out.

[Robert]

It's certainly not the fastest engine around, but I find it very easy to develop for.

I checked out your site Farbs, read all about PyCap and gave it a whirl. It was the #000000 muzzle shine that sold me. Honestly though it's a fantastic system, very simple to use and *so* fast to get things up and running. Python's such a good language to code in as well, pseudo-code on acid. I'm used to C++ and it seems so arcane, verbose and unwieldy now. One thing though - you can display a scaled sprite, but not at float co-ordinates or rotated. Is this intentional? Is it a drawback inherited from the PopCap framework?

Hmm, sorry if this is too off-topic!

[Farbs]

On the game code side I agree, the performance difference will probably be negligible. On the renderer side though I found the Popcap framework (used in pycap) performed much better than pygame.

Wookiee - I just created bindings to the draw functions that the framework gave me. Float coordinate rotated scaled sprites probably aren't supported by default 'cos they're probably not implemented in the software version of their renderer. I'm sure it wouldn't be very hard to add though.

Oh yeah, and I voted a couple of days ago. Am very keen to see the final placings.

[Pencerkoff]

Hello this is Pencerkoff.  I start play games but there are too many.  I am sick of voting.  We should make one person in charge and have him vote for best.  Everyone should not vote since most probably vote for own game.  The votes is flawed.

-PENCERKOFF 

[Retro]

Whoa, that was a load of games. I just played through all but two, that didn't run due to mcvbllblblbl.dll something. I am an XNA dev, so those game ran fine.

I'm putting some of the best games on the Joker magazine's DVD:
- My First Skydiving Academy; Paul Greasley; Metanje dojenčkov iz letala. Avtorju se ni zmešalo, naslov mu je namreč ukazal naključni Video Game Name Generator.
- No One Can Stop The Farm Pioneer; Wandering Monster; Še ena igra narejena po naslovu, ki ga je izpljunil Video Game Name Generator.
- Twin Hobo Rocket; Bum Arcade; Še ena izmed iger z naključno generiranim naslovom. Dotična storjena s flashem.
- ROM CHECK FAIL; Farbs; Kaj se zgodi, če zataji MAME. Sicer še ena izmed iger za tekmovanje z naključno generiranimi naslovi.

Knock yourselves out

[Melly]

I love broken english.

[Chris Whitman]

Actually, I sort of assumed no one voted for their own games. It'd kind of be in poor taste to do so.

[Gorman]

Actually, I sort of assumed no one voted for their own games. It'd kind of be in poor taste to do so.

oops 

[Chris Whitman]

Well, I mean, don't lose sleep over it. I just figured it'd be pretty obvious that most of us like the things we did, so voting was a good opportunity to pick other people's work that we really enjoyed.

[dustin]

yeah I just didn't vote because partially because I wouldn't play all the games but also so I didn't have to deal with this.  That said I found 3 others I liked better then mine so I would have just voted for those...

[shinygerbil]

I really think it's worth taking the time to play through them all. There are some very well-hidden gems in there.

[Farmergnome]

I'm putting some of the best games on the Joker magazine's DVD:
- My First Skydiving Academy; Paul Grisley; Metanje dojenčkov iz letala. Avtorju se ni zmešalo, naslov mu je namreč ukazal naključni Video Game Name Generator.

Honoured, seriously, last name is greasley though