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Post by johnno56 on Jan 10, 2021 13:56:20 GMT -6
Open question for all (Tomaaz included...)
In your opinion, which application(s) would you consider to be ideal for retro game developing? For Beginners; Intermediate and Pros. (maybe not so much Pros... 2D. Pros?) Reasons for each.
Discuss....
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Post by n00b on Jan 10, 2021 16:31:55 GMT -6
I am going to break my answer down into different types of applications. Graphics - I use Aseprite for pixel art. I use it for tiles as well as sprites. It has support for multiple layers and custom palettes. Audio - I am not much of an audio guy so I usually download all of my music and sound effects from opengameart. For any audio recording like voice overs as well as cleaning up audio I use audacity. Level Editor - Tiled is probably the most used level editor for retro style games today. It is fairly easy to use and supports every type of tile based level you could think of. Code - I will exclude the obvious answer here. There are a number of good libraries and frameworks. Some I have looked are love2d(lua), pygame(python), phaser(javascript/html5), and libgdx(java). - Love2d uses lua which is really fast and also easy to use..
- Pygame does many of the same things love2d does but uses python. I personally am not a huge fan of python but I know a lot of people are so this could be perfect them.
- Phaser is great if you are trying to build a game to run in the browser but because its entirely browser based, it may not be a good fit for most games.
- LibGDX is actually surprising easy to use. It just has a little bit more setup than the other options I mentioned. One thing to remember with this is that since it uses java you will be force to use OOP which is a turn off for me personally.
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Post by aurel on Jan 10, 2021 16:32:02 GMT -6
hmm prediction.... just a idea: if i made micro(A) in FreeBasic then should work on Linux .mybe i am joking and maybe not well... Naalaa . i see and play some really nice games made in NaaLaa (i don't know how work on Linux..) smallBasic QB64 o2 is also good for retroGames FreeBasic and of course RCBasic
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Post by tbird on Jan 10, 2021 18:21:29 GMT -6
Beginners: Gdevelop: Multiplatform, taught me the basics of game design and structure, lots of examples and tutorials, free!
Intermediate: Orx: Multiplatform, free, massive amount of features and great place to learn c/c++.
Pro: No idea....as I am nowhere near this lol, Unity, Cry engine, Unreal......RCBasic lol
Me personally, well, I'm here.
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Post by Tomaaz on Jan 10, 2021 19:30:53 GMT -6
RCBasic and LOVE have been mentioned already, so I'm gonna add Raylib to the list. It's extremely easy to start with, but you can do more advanced stuff with it. Plus it can be used with different programming languages. If you want to go the easy way then there is Lua, Python or OpenEuphoria. To start the hard way, simply choose C. Nim and Go are somewhere in between. Of course, there are also bindings for several BASICs.
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Post by Tomaaz on Jan 10, 2021 19:59:41 GMT -6
Coding retro games is one of the easiest programming tasks, but it doesn't mean that making them (games) is easy. The real issues are the main concept, graphics, music and audio effects. If you have these then the rest is basic maths (mainly integers), couple of arrays and loops. Modern languages (even interpreters) are fast enough to make sure that there are no performance issues. It's been a long time since I tried (and failed) to make a retro game, but I still remember that I simply couldn't make all the pices work together. Writing the code was the easiest part.
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Post by johnno56 on Jan 11, 2021 1:09:25 GMT -6
Thanks guys. Certainly a lot of options and cool suggestions. Some of those tools I have used before and some a new to me.
Love2d: I have used this many times on simple stuff. I like the way it's usually coded. Initialize; update and draw. I had a bit of difficulty when the game was more complex. I get confused easily... lol Pygame: Used quite a bit. Can make some cool stuff. The syntax, for me anyway, seems... bloated isn't the right word... Not used to Classes and Definitions.. Phaser and LibGDX I have only heard of... Naalaa: I have used that in the past (Aurel. Linux version available) but development is slow to seemingly no-existent with almost no response from the forum. Apart from that it is quite a package. Editor; Raycast Editor and a Tilemap editor. Smallbasic (not Microsoft) is quite good. Could do with a proper GUI... QB64. Basic. What more can I say. Active forum and development. FreeBasic. Used a little but a long time ago.
I have download Phaser, LibGDX and Open Euphoria... I hope the learning curves are not too steep... lol
Tomaaz, "Writing the code was the easiest part.", has always been "just out of reach" for me... lol I am glad that at least one of us has such a gift...
Again. Thanks guys for your input... Much appreciated.
J
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Post by aurel on Jan 11, 2021 3:50:42 GMT -6
i dont know what you mean under development but NaaLaa is very complete for "game language" Basics like : QB64 smallBasic are not very much good for games ...maybe for demos and simple graphics show off,qb64 forum is full of them. well on the other side FreeBasic is powerful one , i am not sure how perform on Linux damn...i simply cannot catch a time to re-build Saluki Puppy version with FreeBasic....
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Post by johnno56 on Jan 11, 2021 5:03:47 GMT -6
Under development was implied. I have both version 5 an 6 and haven't seen any other work done. It's development is either very slow or it is, as you say, complete. I enjoyed using while I had support from the forum... Asking for help took longer and longer to get a response. Moved on. But it is still a good package.
I have noticed that with QB64. A lot of "graphical" programs being created. In the past there were some quite good space shooters etc being made... Version 1.5 will soon be released... Perhaps they are just 'tinkering' until it is ready? lol You may be right about smallbasic. The 'examples' are basically demos of the various commands etc. I think it may be a symptom of Basic in general. When was the last time we noticed an application made with Basic? It may also be a result of Basic's limitations. There are only so many ways that Pong or Asteroids can be cloned in Basic... lol
I'm going to try and get some sleep... It's just gone 10pm and it's still 33 degrees C...
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Post by Tomaaz on Jan 11, 2021 9:47:22 GMT -6
aurel, I'm using SmallBasic. Just compiled the version 12.20 that was released three days ago. However, I haven't been able to run Raylib examples on Linux. Windows version works with wine, but Linux version has problems with loading .so file correctly. Anyway. You should try it. Several modules are included (with examples). Raylib, Raygui, OpenGL, Nuklear... This is really good and modern (that's why it's not popular) interpreter.
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Post by aurel on Jan 11, 2021 15:21:12 GMT -6
ahh i already tried ..i mean Windows version , you should try Napoleon Brandy i think there is Linux version if you use Linux... heh... modern ....maybe is modern on Linux if you think on black editor screen well rayLib is not bad i tried it on windows with mingW(gcc) examples but somehow it looks to me strange , it looks to me that SDL is simplier to use with similar speed of execution but i am not that much in games engines ..
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Post by johnno56 on Jan 11, 2021 16:38:42 GMT -6
Aurel. Napolean... A version of Brandy Basic (BBC). I couldn't get it to run on my Linux box. I believe that the LibSDL "so" file is looking for the 32 bit version... Oh well. Worth a shot. But, the Windows binary running via Wine, seems to execute ok. It's been a long time since I have used any version BBC basic. Could be fun!
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Post by Tomaaz on Jan 11, 2021 17:04:06 GMT -6
Aurel, you should already now that I drink only vodka. Is it this one - sourceforge.net/projects/napoleonbrandy/ ? There is no Linux version and it's in alpha stage with last version being 0.00.13 (released in... 2017). Plus it's a BBC Basic interpreter. So, thanx, but no. Have you tried version 12.20 of SmalBasic? If I'm not mistaken it's the first version that comes with all the libraries pre-compiled and ready to use out of the box. By "modern" I mean the dialect itself, not things like IDE, build-in graphics etc. I use Geany anyway and SmallBasic modular system let you use several good external solutions for graphics, GUI and more. This is one of the cases when Geany really shines. I've got three different button configured to be used with three different version of SmallBasic (1. console version, 2. SDL version 3. Windows console version working under wine). It wouldn't be possible to do the same in SmallBasic editor. I don't use it even with SDL version of the interpreter, just run the code with sbasicg -r [name of the program].bas directly from Geany. I just can't go back to those old school editors with no tabs, no code folding, no sidebar with all functions listed... Also, an option to easily search and replace words in entire document or in all open documents is a must. As well as ability to customise commands for building/compiling/running, so they can also contain shell commands. It looks like, until now, the SDL version was the main one, but from now the console version is taking over, because external modules can be used with it. So, yes - it may be not your thing.
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Post by aurel on Jan 12, 2021 10:22:09 GMT -6
Yes that one ..and i was thinking that there is a Linux version too... oups... then i read: it is clone of Brandy Basic 5I don't inspect all that BBC-ies ..also smallBasic as is now is not original one which primary target was Linux and is developed on Linux first.
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Post by Tomaaz on Jan 12, 2021 12:10:05 GMT -6
Aurel, I was kind of hoping it was a joke. You know - brandy, vodka... But now I'm starting to think you were serious. Did you really recommend to me an interpreter that was abandoned almost four years ago and at the time when it was abandoned it was still in alpha stage with version number starting with 0.00? Seriously?
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