Gph Sdk

[Toy8ox]

GPH said they will have a free SDK. I was thinking about buying GL Basic to learn but i don't know if it would be eaisier than GPH.

 

[Schnatterplatsch]

GLBasic is the easiest programming language you can get! If you're unsure get the Demo-SDK(of GLBasic). The Demo alowes already very much.

http://www.glbasic.com/files/glbasic_sdk.exe

 

[Squidge]

The GPH SDK will probably be GCC + SDL if it ever gets released, so if you don't know C/C++ (and don't have the time to learn it) then Fenix or GLBasic is probably a good choice.

 

[torpor]

GLBasic doesn't come in a Linux flavour though, right? Windows only, isn't it? (I use Linux/OSX, no Windows in my house whatsoever).

The basic GCC+SDL sdk is plenty for a lot of fun, in the meantime, and there is an effort under way to get pygame onboard for Python users as well .. this would be, in my opinion, a better investment of effort for learning, than GLBasic - Python skills can be applied all over the place, not just for games on WIZ, whereas I haven't a clue where I'd use GLBasic except for the one device that supports it ..

 

[iprice]

whereas I haven't a clue where I'd use GLBasic except for the one device that supports it ..

Whilst GLBasic itself only runs on Windows based machines at the moment (which are just slightly (

) more widespread than Linux/OSX or Macs) it produces apps that can be run on XBox, GP2X, Wiz, WinCe, PPC, Linux, OSX and very soon iPod/iTouch. It is a very fast and very capable language. Sure, you may not be able to use the GLB program itself on certain platforms like other languages, but you'll also find that learning it may be an awful lot quicker and that game/app development time could be significantly reduced over other languages.

But then certain people are snobs where coding languages are concerned. The way I see it, is if it works for me and does exactly what I want it to do in the quickest and easiest possible way, then great!

 

[torpor]

Yeah, thats all well and good (nice that it will target iPhone soon), except for one thing: NO WINDOWS IN MY HOUSE!

Not even gonna try to run it in WINE.

 

[iprice]

Yeah, thats all well and good (nice that it will target iPhone soon), except for one thing: NO WINDOWS IN MY HOUSE!

That's all well and good, but thankfully not everyone that develops/wants to develop lives in your house! Obviously, with no Windows in your house, you haven't seen the light and stumble around in the dark

 

[torpor]

I'd be glad if they did a Linux version of their tools, that is for sure. The question is, why haven't they done it yet? I can only assume that they're not compiling their tools *with* their tools, or else we'd have the environment on all the platforms they support, already.

That said, it sure would be nice to see what folks are doing with this environment on the Wiz .. it appears to be a common development environment option for new users. Perhaps we will see some nice new stuff in the future?

 

[iprice]

The problem with GLBasic, is it's pretty much a one-man team (Kung Phoo on these boards), and he continues to update the product. It would be very difficult (and incredibly time-consuming) for him to produce, keep updating and supporting several versions of GLBasic. There are more Windows based pcs than any other flavour, so he sticks with those. Maybe in the future there will be multiple OS versions of GLB. But for now, it's Windows only.

 

[mhadf]

Yeah, thats all well and good (nice that it will target iPhone soon), except for one thing: NO WINDOWS IN MY HOUSE!

Not even gonna try to run it in WINE.

So you'd rather shoot yourself in the foot than get a useful tool?
Do you also hate anything that you don't compile yourself?

Wouldn't you rather use the right tool for the job instead of hitting a screw with a hammer?


I've been messing around with GLBasic for quite a while now, and while it might be limited in some ways, it's so easy to use for testing ideas that I couldn't do without it.

 

[Exophase]

So you'd rather shoot yourself in the foot than get a useful tool?
Do you also hate anything that you don't compile yourself?

Wouldn't you rather use the right tool for the job instead of hitting a screw with a hammer?


I've been messing around with GLBasic for quite a while now, and while it might be limited in some ways, it's so easy to use for testing ideas that I couldn't do without it.

What is the point of this post? Do you want him to go out and buy Windows so he can use GLBasic? If he can't use it he can't use it, the end. Besides that, when it comes to programming no one should be talking about "right tools" for other people. That depends on the person and what they want to do. GLBasic is certainly not the best choice for everything. It's much more complicated than figuring out the best way to screw a screw.

It's actually pretty strange that the tools would be less portable than the runtime, unless he's using Windows GUI raw for it. It would be nice if more projects made portable decisions from the start to prevent being locked down to Windows. I'm sure someone else would be happy to maintain a port for him if it were portable enough.

 

[mhadf]

I was pointing out that by intentionally saying no Windows not even WINE that he was trying to limit his development environment. I can understand not wanting to use windows, and saving the cash from it is a good idea.
But WINE is the Linux replacement that lets you run windows runtimes without windows, they are open source too.

And while GLBasic is the focus, what *IF* the GPH SDK comes out and is windows only? Suddenly Torpor is out of being able to use the SDK that everyone else is, and the community loose a developer. Not that they would do that of course.


I wish Torpor all the best in refusing to use windows, I hope that I'll be able to one day, but I like gaming too much to have just linux.


I agree that it is odd that the software is windows only but compiles to lots of different platforms. And would love to know why.

 

[Exophase]

I was pointing out that by intentionally saying no Windows not even WINE that he was trying to limit his development environment. I can understand not wanting to use windows, and saving the cash from it is a good idea.
But WINE is the Linux replacement that lets you run windows runtimes without windows, they are open source too.

And while GLBasic is the focus, what *IF* the GPH SDK comes out and is windows only? Suddenly Torpor is out of being able to use the SDK that everyone else is, and the community loose a developer. Not that they would do that of course.

Wine is a hassle and often things do go wrong or just don't work in it. I can understand someone not wanting to have to put up with it. Your argument is about as good as "what if the GPH SDK comes out and is Mac only." Actually, right now the only toolchain anyone has put together for Wiz has ONLY been released for Linux. You can still use ones released for GP2X, though. If GPH migrates to EABI then you'll probably be able to use one of many ARM toolchains available for Windows, like Code Sourcery, gnuarm, or yagarto. I really doubt that GPH is going to release anything worth using, much less better than anything else out there.

 

[fells]

Isn't it likely the Wiz SDK (if it arrives) will be flash? As in they give you bunch of example .flas that have the right dimensions and show you how to get at the buttons and touchscreen?

 

[Toy8ox]

I run a dual boot and run both windows and linux so the operating system really is not a problem. Like mhadf, I would like to run only linux but i'm bound by my games for windows. I'm probably going to wait for a while until the GPH SDK comes out and try it out. It is free. Torpor, is Pygame free?

 

[Toy8ox]

I did download the GL Basic trial version and watched some tutorial wher some guy made a kung fu game. it lookes easy enough but don't know if it's worth buying.

 

[torpor]

Well, to be fair, my not using Windows is my business, and there is no reason for anyone to get upset about it. Sure, I'm missing out - but if someone can work out if GLBasic runs fine under WINE in the meantime, I might give it a go if there are some interesting projects that might come of it .. just that, the investment in time for such an effort is not really worth anything except to the WIZ, and in my opinion one of the great things about the Linux-based game consoles is portability. I don't think I'd be taking my GLBasic code to any other platform, at least not unless it was really, really awesome.

In the meantime, I continue to plug away on the GCC+Libs (SDL and so on) toolchain effort .. its not like we don't already have a working-well-enough toolchain to use to target WIZ, and that toolchain, based on gcc, means I can use tons of portable code from other realms as well. And I think thats really the point where things are worthwhile: gcc for WIZ+SDL libs == plenty of SDK for tons of great development. And if we can get OpenGL ES in the mix too, somehow, then no worries ..

But I am curious, if its at all possible to build the GLBasic toolset *with* GLBasic? If this were the case, it'd become a very much more interesting set of tools to learn to use ..

 

[iprice]

And I think thats really the point where things are worthwhile: gcc for WIZ+SDL libs == plenty of SDK for tons of great development. And if we can get OpenGL ES in the mix too, somehow, then no worries ..

I totally agree that is one of the many positives of using SDL - there are already thousands of users working with it that can give assistance/tools/examples etc. And I can certainly see the point of not using a Windows based machine too - I wish I could go with an alternative OS, but my family would go nuts - they are all used to using Windows and M$ products, that's all they teach in schools.

However, the original poster stated -

I was thinking about buying GL Basic to learn but i don't know if it would be eaisier than GPH.

For someone that doesn't know which would be easier to learn, then the answer is most likely to be GLBasic or even Fenix (which can be used on any OS). The language (GLBasic) is capable of using external components in the form of libs and DLLs, so there's pretty much nothing that it can't do.

 

[trentg]

If anyone is interested in an Allegro 4.9 port to the Wiz that has basic OpenGL and framebuffer support, supports audio and joystick, I have one that I can commit to Allegro SVN. Some features like render to texture do not work as I can't figure out how to create a pbuffer on the wiz (I think I'm doing everything right).. Allegro has software drawing routines too so you can still use it to draw to memory bitmaps. I converted a game using Allegro 4.9 to the Wiz (mostly, still not 100% done, it's a big game), it renders everything in software then has two options for drawing to the screen: directly to the framebuffer (fast, but in my game I need to scale from 240x160 to 320x240 so it doesn't look so good) or using OpenGL (a little slower maybe, but with linear filtering enabled it's worth it in my case). The code is still in flux and not very neat so I could maybe create a branch in Allegro SVN for it if anyone wants to test it.

 

[sbock]

Sounds good. Well done!