Glbasic For The Gp2x!

[purple_goat]

Sounds great to me so far, many people are quite warm with basic and its a easy syntax.
I'm positive that we could see some great games made with this

:blink:

... I'm stunned at this comment, truly. This is the first positive remark about BASIC I've ever seen on this forum ... wow!

2nd: i love basic cuz its easy and i dont code :lol:

 

[therealadmin]

Irony: I switch to Basic from C++ because my brain needs a rest and I want to get some ideas coded out. Now I switch back to C++ and they make a Basic language available for the gp2x.

Yeah, but basic is a very good landuage for programmers that have no clue what they're doing .

 

[EvilDragon]

Sounds great to me so far, many people are quite warm with basic and its a easy syntax.
I'm positive that we could see some great games made with this

:blink:

... I'm stunned at this comment, truly. This is the first positive remark about BASIC I've ever seen on this forum ... wow!

Well... I coded in BASIC until I was 13 And just don't have time to learn C++
So maybe I can do some stuff now And it will be optimized and really fast, that's pretty cool in my opinion

 

[abertalia]

Hmm I dunno if I like the sound of "2 minutes" but this looks alot easier that that C and C++ stuff...Should I buy? :blink:

No! Get Fenix instead; it's free and easy to use.

And riddled with bugs!

... yes, but it's free.

Go ahead though, buy this suite of tools for ~$88 USD ... I couldn't possible care less. <_<

Gah!! It seems they do a nice thing for peers and give them a discount price! So yeah I have submites my stuff and am waiting for the reply of how much it's gonna cost in all...

 

[drodd]

Yeah, but basic is a very good landuage for programmers that have no clue what they're doing .

I'm one of those clueless programmers! I just downloaded the demo, can't wait to try it.

Just wanted the devs to know there is definitely a market for this (in case they're reading this forum)...

 

[STTrife]

Why release it and post news if it can only show a black screen? I mean, if it was something free I wouldn't be bitching about this, but it seems to be a commercial something... and I think it's really weird that they release something and promote it while it doesn't even work.
The blitter doesn't work? very very small demo with only a print and showscreen even show nothing... so basically games written in this have the same effect as leaving your Gp2X in off mode (except that the off-mode uses less battery power )

 

[GernotFrisch]

*** Official Statement ***

I'm sorry. The first version up and it does nothing.
I was so excited about getting it running, that I wanted to show it to others. I didn't know it's going to be widespread that fast.
I don't have my GP2X here right now. I though it was OK, but I forgot some #defines for the release. I'm uploading an update which *might* work. You can get updates with menu Web/Internet Update (even with the free demo version).

It's at the very earliest stage so far - do not expect awesome results. However from what I've seen, this baby's gonna be a lot faster than the PocketPC version which is absolutely comparable to commercial PocketPC games out there.

Well, it will surely take another month to get it stable and quick, it will be. Promise.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

BTW: The 2 minute limit is my option to these 30 day trial versions which I disgustingly hate. You have a lot of time to test and see if GLBasic fits your suits, and can buy with no risk then. You are able to test all features, even INLINE C/C++.

 

[Jogi]

Cool, tools like GLbasic are nice addition to GP2X.

 

[Lindopski]

I did BBC Micro Basic in the 80's and used to be able to use that fairly ok , even made a little space invaders type game loooong ago.
I covered some C++ in Uni 1st year but only very basic and did nothing at all to do with handling graphics or anything like that.
I am currently using VB.NET and have just made a very buggy and unfinished program for an assignment at Uni (it semi works).

With these quite novice skills which language would you suggest choosing for starting a very simple game for gp2x.
to for example make another crappy space invaders type thing.

 

[ldesnogu]

That looks cool.

But this raises legality some questions:

1. how much does it rely on GPL'ed software?
2. what "OpenGL" back-end is used? If it's gpu940, then there is some trouble as it is GPL.

 

[GernotFrisch]

That looks cool.

But this raises legality some questions:

1. how much does it rely on GPL'ed software?
2. what "OpenGL" back-end is used? If it's gpu940, then there is some trouble as it is GPL.

I use SDL_mixer for sound, which is LGPL. I have to link statically, though.
For 3D I adapted a TinyGL version, which has a pretty free license. You just have not to claim you did it yourself, which I hereby do.
All the rest is just glibc and my own code, which has no license problems or something.

 

[Tobriand]

Sounds cool, though I'm afraid I'm not going to spend $70 on picking it up since my basic skills are about par with my C/C++ ones (which is to say, virtually non-extant). Not a bad price, though, considering it converts to around £35 in pounds. Expensive for a community used to free, but not out of range of people who've managed to get it to do cool stuff within the time limit.

Speaking of which, I don't suppose there's any chance of changing it to 5 minutes is there? Somehow 2 seems really restrictive. 5 *is* restrictive (so you'll still have to buy it to release anything for it), but it doesn't sound quite as much so in terms of being a disincentive to download and try in the first place...

 

[Shadowsithe]

I'll pirate it. Try it, and see if it's worth the investment. I'm not into spending money on something I don't know enough about. Especially when the price tag is pushing three figures... probably is in Canada's monopoly money.

 

[GernotFrisch]

I'll pirate it. Try it, and see if it's worth the investment. I'm not into spending money on something I don't know enough about. Especially when the price tag is pushing three figures... probably is in Canada's monopoly money.

I might increase to 5 minutes time limit. That should be fair enough to see if it's worth the investment.

 

[Hanz™]

I'll pirate it. Try it, and see if it's worth the investment. I'm not into spending money on something I don't know enough about. Especially when the price tag is pushing three figures... probably is in Canada's monopoly money.

You said your thoughts out loud.

 

[ldesnogu]

I use SDL_mixer for sound, which is LGPL. I have to link statically, though.
For 3D I adapted a TinyGL version, which has a pretty free license. You just have not to claim you did it yourself, which I hereby do.
All the rest is just glibc and my own code, which has no license problems or something.

So you are *almost* legally safe

If you use an LGPL library, you have to provide a way for the user to link in another version of that library.

Basically this means that if you statically link, you have to provide a way to run the linker with your files and the newer library.

That's a pain, but that's how it works

 

[Mudi]

You can link SDL_mixer dynamically if you use GPH's toolchain script to make a gcc3.4/glibc2.2.5 toolchain. If you want to avoid 50 people on the forums whining about license terms, I'd recommend it.

 

[bigsofty]

I'll pirate it. Try it, and see if it's worth the investment. I'm not into spending money on something I don't know enough about. Especially when the price tag is pushing three figures... probably is in Canada's monopoly money.

Reported.

 

[Draken]

Why? He didn't do anything that contradicts the boards' rules?

 

[Sadistictoaster]

With these quite novice skills which language would you suggest choosing for starting a very simple game for gp2x.
to for example make another crappy space invaders type thing.

C with the SDL headers is all you need. SDL takes care of all the tricky stuff ( drawing graphics / playing sounds / button input ) , leaving you with just - if you'll forgive the expression - the basic stuff. C with SDL isn't massively different to BASIC ( I moved up to it from Blitz Basic with almost no problems at all )


Avoid C++ for the time being , as that is quite fiddley. I've also read that it can be slower the pure C on the GP2X.