Language Vs Engine

[kevin]

Just a quick question.

As game developers, what's the most important aspect of your chosen game development tool(s) ?

[thaaks]

I voted for C.

A year ago I chose PlayBasic because of B, it's strength of gfx and sound. All the demos impressed me a lot and I started coding.
While coding I got irritated/annoyed because of the limitations of PlayBasic in area A.

I surely haven't even touched PB's power in area B: Sometimes I don't even understand how to achieve a certain graphic effect that PB could easily do for me. And although there are tons of examples included I don't know where to start. Sometimes examples are outdated, better commands and options are available in the mean time but not used as the tutorials are'nt updated.
And the user base is not this big and experienced so that most questions need to be answered by Kevin...
...but I'll learn and get there some day  :D
So for me to sum it up regarding area B: Powerful enough for me!

Given my experience as a professional coder (earning my living with it since 20 years now) I am mostly missing features in area A.

Cons:
- I am used to think in objects and classes, methods and features like inheritance or interfaces. I miss them in PB.
- I am used to case sensitive coding.
- I am used to complex structures or objects (arrays of types within types and such stuff, or objects having other objects or collections of objects as instance variables or "fields").
- The misuse of PSubs in recursions always hits me - I would prefer to only have functions.
- Returning expressions as a result of a function is a must have, also for ExitFunction. - Another must have is INC'ing a variable with an expression (and the variable should be a local variable or a global or a type field or an element in an array - whatever!).
- Irritation of command usage: some commands require brackets (MouseX(), others don't (PositionCamera 1,x,y. This is confusing. Make brackets a requirement everywhere, don't separate between commands and functions.
- The sheer amount of commands and their granularity. Typing 13 lines to setup a sprite is too much...

Code Select Expand


im=GetFreeImage()
LoadImage name$,im
PrepareFXImage im
sprite = GetFreeSprite()
CreateSprite sprite
AutoCenterSpriteHandle sprite,True
PositionSprite sprite,x,y
SpriteDrawMode sprite,2
RotateSprite sprite, Player.angle
SpriteCollision sprite, True
SpriteCollisionMode sprite, 2
SpriteCollisionRadius sprite, 32
SpriteImage sprite, im

Sometimes it might be just the right thing to have the choice and ability to finegrain this, but most of the time I would just love to code something like

Code Select Expand


sprite = LoadSprite(imagename$, CIRCLE_COLLISION, 32, flags)

where flags would be a combination of drawmode and autocenter on/off for example.

Pros:
- I like "Explicit true". Should become default  :D
- I like the type inheritance feature.
- I like functions to return multiple values (like in Python).

I am aware that some Cons are based on the "BASIC" roots of PB and other Cons are just OO features.
It's just my personal opinion where I think PB lacks.

Ooh, you didn't even mention PB in your question  :rolleyes:

I am sorry, but C is still my answer: I want it all, a powerful language with simple concepts that allows me to use the great underlying sound and graphics engine  :P


Cheers,
Tommy
(who should better get coding his game instead of posting...)

[Big C.]

I always wanted to know how games are programmed... But as a child of the generation gulf stood me few information availably and there were few good programming environments. Then many things went only into programming assembler... heavy material... In the nineties my interest in web page programming began. Then still with perl (neither very much easy). Later with PHP (much easier and more understandable). In this time I started my first programming games with flash. But that was not the correct one either. I bumped PureBasic then. The language range and the simplicity of this language had convinced me. Unfortunately the training phase is very long in this language with me. Through a coincidence I am awake then through Ian's JetPak contribution at codersworkshop come to PB. This language convinced me immediately through the simplicity, similarity to other languages and the large instruction set for the games programming... But I wait... I wait for Cobra... Cobra is supposed to unite many elements of other languages...

... I vote for C