Programming Language

[Typhoon22]

Hi guys, and girls!

I have written a couple of games using glbasic, and I am looking to go a bit more technical. But not too far.

What I am looking for is a fairly simple SDK with a nice IDE that I can start writing programs with.

I don't mind learning a new language (fear leads to anger, anger leads to coffee) but obviously I want to start producing *something* soon with it just to keep my interest up, if you know what I mean.

Also the IDE and SDK have to be free - I can't pay for one tbh... thats why I want to move from glbasic to another tool.

Not too much to ask is it?

Any help/opinions gratefully accepted!

[edit] Keep forgetting the girls! damn it!

Typhoon

 

[Squidge]

Fenix ?

There's a support forum here for it too

 

[Alex.]

If you want fast results you should try Fenix. Easy enough to get to grips with quickly, and dedicated to writing games. Ruckage's games are written in Fenix, so that should give you a good idea about the nice things it is capable of. This sourcecode is a great all-around intro to it.

There is also C, a good choice if you'd like to go in a bit deeper. Yaustar's CodeBlocks package will get you all set up and ready to begin coding. If you choose C, also look at lazyfoo's SDL tutorials, they're very useful.

 

[Sphinxter]

I vote for C, if you've got to learn something you might as well make it something that looks good on your resume.

 

[zacaj]

C++ is best in my opinion, although also the most complicated, if you get it, use it, otherwise go to fenix first

 

[donny662]

+1 for fenix. I think that for C/C++, you have to love programming and creating games, but for fenix, you just have to love creating games (and at least be able to enjoy programming).

 

[kevcal]

I'd recommend C and then learn the basics of C++. Both can be as complex as you want them to be.
If you use a lib like SDL (or Allegro) then you can be creating simple games 'fairly' quickly...
And as has been said, if you want a career move into software (don't know your age), it's probably the best course to take.

 

[ledow]

I think it very much depends on your needs and your patience.

Personally, (not talking about GP2X programming, but programming in general) I can program in C just fine when the need arises, hell, I've even done Z80 and x86 assembly down to the "creating your own toy Operating System" level, but give me Visual Basic anyday when I just want to knock something up (and version 4 at that... I can't be bothered to jump through the OO hoops when I just want to write a functional program that only I will use). I've seriously spent several hours just writing a Makefile for some C programs, ages to debug a missing/misplaced +, &, | or =. It's not for the casual programmer, unless they've been brought up with it.

I find that my mood determines my programming language of choice. If I just want to knock something up quickly to see if the concept works, I'll use a nice, simple, slow language that does the job without a million libraries and has a really good GUI, including a GUI debugger. If I know I need speed from the start, or if I've already prototyped my ideas, or if I know that other people will need to use this in the future, then I'll use a more mainstream language like C. (C++ is far too dialect-dependent, every time I use it and try to port C++ code to a different compiler, it turns into a nightmare - plus I have a healthy hatred of OO for OO's sake but that's probably just my age).

I'd recommend that you get a couple of languages and just try them. C will probably be over your head to start with unless you can get yourself a couple of decent books to start with it, but you never know - it might be just what you are after. You'd probably want to start out with Devkit if you're thinking of C - there are a couple of articles on the wiki to start you off. Don't worry about C++ - it's C with knobs on and you can always learn the ++ later if you decide you want to, *after* you've learned basic C. You would have to want to work at learning the language, though.

I do wonder why the rest of the GCC collection isn't ported to GP2X - something like gcj (a Java native-code compiler) would be a good middle-ground for people, even if the final executables would probably be huge.

Python is a more faddy language that's also in the same area and I believe there are Python libraries/compilers for GP2X. That's a good middle-ground because it can use SDL to do all the heavy lifting while still being quite a manageable language.

Fenix, from the look of it, isn't too bad a next step and will be hardly a jolt if you're prepared to work at it. That's probably where you'll be happiest for the moment, to be honest.

 

[GernotFrisch]

If you want to go away from GLBasic because of "technical issues", then use C++. Why Fenix? Just to make things more complicated and slower?
:scratch_head:

 

[Squidge]

If you want to go away from GLBasic because of "technical issues", then use C++. Why Fenix? Just to make things more complicated and slower?
:scratch_head:

Fenix is easy to get to grips with, and since the OP just wants to product something to keep there interests up, I doub't they want to spend the next 3-6 months learning a completely new language before they can write a game. With Fenix, they can jump in and start writing a game.

 

[Typhoon22]

If you want to go away from GLBasic because of "technical issues", then use C++. Why Fenix? Just to make things more complicated and slower?
:scratch_head:

Fenix is easy to get to grips with, and since the OP just wants to product something to keep there interests up, I doub't they want to spend the next 3-6 months learning a completely new language before they can write a game. With Fenix, they can jump in and start writing a game.


Thanks for the advice guys - I think from what everyone's said I'll give Fenix a go and see what I can do. I'll also see if I can get work to spring for C/C++ training, I'm in an IT job, so I can't see why I can't think of a suitable excuse for them not to pay for it, and get some time off from looking at green lights turn red once a week when servers decide they've had enough of life, I've nick named them Marvins (my manager doesn't get the reference!)

thanks again for the advice and the time!

 

[GernotFrisch]

Fenix is easy to get to grips with, and since the OP just wants to product something to keep there interests up, I doub't they want to spend the next 3-6 months learning a completely new language before they can write a game. With Fenix, they can jump in and start writing a game.

As you can see from the GLBasic/GP2X competition results - you don't need 2-3 month before you can write a game, they had this time to write a new game from scratch.
Anyway.

 

[ruckage]

Fenix is easy to get to grips with, and since the OP just wants to product something to keep there interests up, I doub't they want to spend the next 3-6 months learning a completely new language before they can write a game. With Fenix, they can jump in and start writing a game.

As you can see from the GLBasic/GP2X competition results - you don't need 2-3 month before you can write a game, they had this time to write a new game from scratch.
Anyway.

Squidge never said you did need 3-6 months to learn glbasic, he was referring to learning c++ which was your suggestion as according to you fenix is slower and more complicated than glbasic. I haven't used GLbasic but I released my first fenix game after using fenix for only a few weeks - and it certainly isn't slow. Also if you read the original post from typhoon22 properly you would realize that one of his criteria was a free development environment which GLbasic isn't.

 

[GernotFrisch]

Doh! Next time I start reading before ranting. Promise!
Sorry for all. Cheers.