GP2X You Want Make Games For Gp2x?

[yaustar]

£2500 is about a month's work? If it is, you would be earning £30,000 a year which is about £12,000 then most entry level programmers.

500 is still a tiny number of sales but on this market it REALLY depends if the consumers are willing to pay for their games when some are releasng for free. It also depends how accessible the distrobution channels would be.

Something like joygp made it hard to buy software from since they only accpeted credit cards.

 

[Digital Awakening]

Well, in sweden you first have to pay social taxes for employies and then they have to pay income tax so 50-60% is taxes It's still a good pay though.

 

[digitaljez]

Holy Moly ! That means that if you start work on the first of January, it isn't until you get your pay cheque at the end of August that you can finally say that that money you get is yours, and your taxes have been paid. You must have the best services in Europe.

 

[Digital Awakening]

We don't get pay cheques, the employer transefers our pay directly to our bank account. However, all taxes are already payed by the employer so no work on your part. As for services then yes that's quite good here but the system is falling apart now because people live longer and fewer are born.

However, Sweden have a lot of area but not a lot of people so it requires more money to run the country compared to more dense countries. For example communications maintennance is way more expensive per citizen here then in for example UK who have less area but a much higher population.

 

[MiniMoose]

However, all taxes are already payed by the employer so no work on your part.

​

You are paying in a way because every euro your employer pays to taxes is one less euro they can pay to you, or to someone else. It works out as either lower wages for you, or fewer jobs for everybody. One way or another, somebody loses when the government taxes.

Broad welfare programs also attract the deadbeats of the world to your country. I've been to Sweden and I have some very good Swedish friends. I know of the social problems Sweden is suffering at the hands of the immigrants that are soaking off of the welfare system. We have the same problem in the U.S. too, but to a lesser degree.

Havinging very low taxes and a minimal social safety net creates an economic and social environment that attracts the smart, hard-working, inventive, and self-reliant people of the world. That *was* the United States until the 1930's. We've gone downhill since then, with WWII and the computer/internet revolution being the only upticks in our overall status quo.

I'm off my soapbox now. I won't say any more.

 

[Digital Awakening]

I'm not gonna discuss politics with you but FYI we don't use Euro in Sweden.

 

[MiniMoose]

I'm not gonna discuss politics with you but FYI we don't use Euro in Sweden.

​

Fair enough. Truce? I'd much rather have developer friends than developer enemies.

 

[yaustar]

I just realised what the BIGGEST problem that developers must face, keeping code neat and tidy and resisting the the urge to 'hack' at the code to add features in. I just added a feature into my code last nighht and now faced with a long session of tidying code over several classes... *argh*

 

[Digital Awakening]

Mini:
Sure

yau:
Yeah, I think I mentioned that. The result is what some call spagethi code because when you add unplanned stuff it often gets very messy. Problem is people often make a quick fix and that might be ok the first couple of times but sooner or later you can't even understand what does what. It's part of the challenge of completing a game, esp. the first time around.

 

[MiniMoose]

Yeah, I think I mentioned that. The result is what some call spagethi code because when you add unplanned stuff it often gets very messy.

​

Yeah, good point DA, I think you touched on the main difference between being a programmer/coder and being a software engineer. There is nothing wrong with being a programmer, especially when agility and speed is desired. But, if you're writing any software larger than a few thousand lines, you may want to consider using some time-tested software engineering practices such as revision control, interface abstractions, generic data structures, and encapsulation.

Reading a few software engineering books can give you some direction on that. Be warned though, the cost you pay for maintainable code is all of the (boring) time you spend designing your code architecture (UML maybe) and specifying interfaces.

The main difficulty is that homebrew/hobby game dev is done for fun, and following a disciplined approach tends to be a killjoy. But, you'll increase your chances of actually completing code considerably

 

[Digital Awakening]

With experience you learn to plan stuff and to code in a more flexible and structured way without the need to get into hardcore software engineering. As long as you're the only dev or there's like one or two more coders it should be doable as long as one can keep everything in the head. For larger projects involving many programmers you need a lot more engineering before you start.

 

[Digital Awakening]

Bumping!

Can't someone make this topic sticky?

 

[skate2live92]

seconded

 

[Ferentix]

Ack, quick question? Started getting SDL set up for GCC/Mingw using Dev-C++ (Windows XP), did everything I was meant to- copied the SDL.dll and the libSDLmain.a (er... that's a linker-script right?) into the \lib subdirectory of the Dev-Cpp root (C:\Dev-Cpp in my case- the default of the installer), and all the header files into an \SDL subdirectory of the \include directory (so C:\Dev-Cpp\include\SDL in my case)

then I wrote in the following code, which is basically just some code from a tutorial at a Wiki, which initialises a basic SDL project, setting Fullscreen and double buffering flags on, and just initialising the video mode.

#include <stdlib.h> // For some useful functions such as atexit :)
#include "SDL\SDL.h" // main SDL header

#define SCREEN_WIDTH 640
#define SCREEN_HEIGHT 480

SDL_Surface *screen; //This pointer will reference the backbuffer


int InitVideo(Uint32 flags = SDL_DOUBLEBUF | SDL_FULLSCREEN) {
  // Load SDL
  if (SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_VIDEO) != 0) {
    fprintf(stderr, "Unable to initialize SDL: %s\n", SDL_GetError());
    return false;
  }
  atexit(SDL_Quit); // Clean it up nicely :)

  // fullscreen can be toggled at run time :) any you might want to change the flags with params?
  //set the main screen to SCREEN_WIDTHxSCREEN_HEIGHT with a colour depth of 16:
  screen = SDL_SetVideoMode(SCREEN_WIDTH, SCREEN_HEIGHT, 16, flags);
  if (screen == NULL) {
    fprintf(stderr, "Unable to set video mode: %s\n", SDL_GetError());
    return false;
  }
  return true;
}

Anyway, when I come to compile I get a rather strange error:

10 C:\Dev-Cpp\Projects\SDL test\main.c syntax error before '=' token

help please? This is really annoying.

 

[junker]

shouldn't it be
SDL_Surface = *screen;
?

i don't know..

 

[evening2005]

Ack, quick question? Started getting SDL set up for GCC/Mingw using Dev-C++ (Windows XP), did everything I was meant to- copied the SDL.dll and the libSDLmain.a (er... that's a linker-script right?) into the \lib subdirectory of the Dev-Cpp root (C:\Dev-Cpp in my case- the default of the installer), and all the header files into an \SDL subdirectory of the \include directory (so C:\Dev-Cpp\include\SDL in my case)

then I wrote in the following code, which is basically just some code from a tutorial at a Wiki, which initialises a basic SDL project, setting Fullscreen and double buffering flags on, and just initialising the video mode.

#include <stdlib.h> // For some useful functions such as atexit :)
#include "SDL\SDL.h" // main SDL header

#define SCREEN_WIDTH 640
#define SCREEN_HEIGHT 480

SDL_Surface *screen; //This pointer will reference the backbuffer


int InitVideo(Uint32 flags = SDL_DOUBLEBUF | SDL_FULLSCREEN) {
  // Load SDL
  if (SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_VIDEO) != 0) {
    fprintf(stderr, "Unable to initialize SDL: %s\n", SDL_GetError());
    return false;
  }
  atexit(SDL_Quit); // Clean it up nicely :)

  // fullscreen can be toggled at run time :) any you might want to change the flags with params?
  //set the main screen to SCREEN_WIDTHxSCREEN_HEIGHT with a colour depth of 16:
  screen = SDL_SetVideoMode(SCREEN_WIDTH, SCREEN_HEIGHT, 16, flags);
  if (screen == NULL) {
    fprintf(stderr, "Unable to set video mode: %s\n", SDL_GetError());
    return false;
  }
  return true;
}

Anyway, when I come to compile I get a rather strange error:

10 C:\Dev-Cpp\Projects\SDL test\main.c syntax error before '=' token

help please? This is really annoying.

​

I tried to compile it and it was fine, but there is no main() function, so you can't build an executable. One thing is that it's not legal C, I think, because C doesn't define true and false? I got errors when I tried gcc, but it's fine under g++. Try renaming main.c to main.cpp and see if Dev-CPP uses the C++ compiler? Sorry, I use gcc at home and MS Studio C++ 6.0 at work. I've never used Dev-CPP, although some of my students have had some success with it.

 

[digitaljez]

int InitVideo(Uint32 flags = SDL_DOUBLEBUF | SDL_FULLSCREEN)

C probably thinks you are declaring a variable and assigning a value to it in the function call parameters.

what's the prototype for this function ?

I would try :

int InitVideo(Uint32 unused) // dummy parameter

Uint32 flags = SDL_DOUBLEBUF | SDL_FULLSCREEN;
.......

 

[Ferentix]

Just to say, I'm using the tutorials at this wiki: http://gpwiki.org/index.php/C:SDL_tutorials

They seem a good set of tutorials too


Anyway, firstly, I should of course have realised I needed a Main() :rolleyes:. I know that much about C . but at the minute that shouldn't matter, because it stops compiling before it realises that there is no Main(). But I will remember that next time...

So, if C doesn't define True and False though, all I'd need to do to remedy this would be to put these #Defines at the top of my source (or in a header)?

#Define True 1
#Define False 0

Is that right?

I'll give Digitaljez's suggestion a try, see if that works. otherwise I'll try switching it to C++ mode, see if I get a better result then. If not, I've just found a reference to compiling problems under GCC on windows as far as SDL is concerned. It says to either upgrade GCC or downgrade SDL. So if all else fails...

Thanks for all the help


EDIT:

I switched to C++, and then killed all the syntax errors, only to get a mass of linker errors. So I guess I'll try my luck at downgrading to SDL 1.2.7, or upgrading GCC...

LOL, broke my Dev-C++ installation by trying to update GCC, so I switched to Code::Blocks, which has the 3.4.4 of GCC tools, and it now compiles (using the original code with no modifications) perfectly

 

[sand_man]

I don't usually bother with booleans in C but if I needed to I would use.

typedef enum{false,true}bool;

 

[yaustar]

int InitVideo(Uint32 flags = SDL_DOUBLEBUF | SDL_FULLSCREEN)

hmmm... In C++ that would mean, "If no variables are passed, default the value of flags to (SDL_DOUBLEBUF | SDL_FULLSCREEN)." However I am not sure if that is legal in straight C. I think it would be called "Default Parameters"