Yes.... I am writing a 2D games. of course thinking to make some money with it. The problem is that, Am I wasting my time writing a 2D game if I am trying to make some money?. Actually, is not a game where you must kill everyone to win, no fight, no gun, 2d is perfect for this gameplay, (Wich I think is nice, fast, and original). Personally, I don´t like 3d games with a complex gameplay, unless this is for instances, "The Dig" From Lucas Arts, or Broken Sword, I enjoyed myself playing some estrategic games like "Age of empires". But I don''t like to play games like Doom and going around shotting to everyone.... I can play theese games for about 10 minites before getting bored. I earned some money (I can''t live from that) making some simple games, but I''d like to make a little more.... In other hand, I hate that arcade games that reproduce a midi file that has nothing to do with the situation or gameplay.... I think, If I want to hear music, I play a CD or turn the radio on. I put my enphasis in good sound effects (Including some sugestive and good background sound) rather in music.... Am I doing well? Just waiting opinions.

hey,
about 2D, they are perfectly fine for most ppl. Check out www.dexterity.com for ex, no 3D games there.
I''m writing myself a 2D game.

About music.. it might be a bad move not to include any.. althrought adding a cd-player capabilities into your game and allowing user to turn music off without turning sound off is the way to go.

Hi!
I was curious to see your games but the link in your profile point to a order or download the game "impossiball".
I think you should put some screenshot and some description there!!

About 2d games, there''s still someone that like them, it''s not a waste of time.

Music... it''s good to put nice sound effect but you also have to insert some midi: noone listen to it but, without it, someone will consider your game unfinished.

MirekCz, I think implementing a cd-player would means "put some nice music, mine sucks!".

Hummm... I would like to ask to this forum one question: what is the minimum requirement for a shareware game today?
I mean, I know the world is full of P100 with a 2d video card, but, what hardware internet shareware buyers owns?
I''m planning to use Opengl for my 2d game, you think I''m loosing potential buyers?

Most current computers are fast enough.. anyone that still uses a p100 isn''t a gamer at all anyway... but if you really want to target them you shouldn''t use opengl...
i''m using opengl for some 3d rts i''m working on. and the model loader still displays about 7100 tri''s, a grid and some bitmap fonts with about 80 fps (windowed) but this is a pentium 3 i''ve tested it on (at work ) i don''t think a 2d game requires so much tri''s really so even computers without hardware could be targetted when using ogl.. you just need to take care that you make some choices on graphics (particle systems etc take alot of speed)...

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
I''m planning to use Opengl for my 2d game, you think I''m loosing potential buyers?

I''m a huge OpenGL fan. Love it, have been using it for years, temporarily switched to Direct3D a few times and switched right back. OpenGL is just a joy to program in. I am currently using it as the renderer in Miko & Molly. Now, here is the problem...OpenGL is great to program in, but more of a PITA to support. A lot of 3D cards support Direct3D but not OpenGL, or some (like the intel I740) only support GL under 95/98. A lot of the older cards that do support it do so in a flaky way. Then, even for those brand new systems with up to date hardware, you run into problems becauses Windows doesn''t install OpenGL drivers for cards. Even a GeForce card doesn''t get OpenGL acceleration on a default Windows XP install. Users have to go download the latest drivers from Nvidia.

All of these issues make it somewhat of a pain to support for users. Some things like GLSetup help a little. Unfortunately, it only works for 95/98 (and maybe ME, I''m not sure). Its also a huge download at 80MB. They have a websetup version that is only a few megabytes (it downloads only the necessary files after identifying your 3D card), however all the links to it from their web site were broken for months. It seems to be fixed now, but for 2000/XP users, you still have to send them to get drivers from the IHVs.

Direct3D, on the other hand, is much simpler to support for users. If Windows recognizes the card, it installs the Direct3D drivers automatically. The only things you might have to worry about is someone installing a GeForce into a Win95 machine (probably not very likely, but I suppose it could happen). In that case, they would still have to install the drivers from the IHV. However, every card seems to have Direct3D support under every OS. Of course, NT 4 only supports up to DirectX 3, and I''m not sure if Direct3D even existed then. And only those cards with a Direct3D 6 driver will support the Direct3D 8 interfaces, so to support very old cards you will need to use the Direct3D 7 interfaces instead.

Finally, I can''t say what the state of compatability is for Direct3D drivers, but I found a lot of bugs and various other gotchas when supporting OpenGL on old cards (like the Permedia, old ATI cards, etc).

As much as I love OpenGL, for the above reasons I will be adding Direct3D support to Miko & Molly soon. Somewhat of a long rant...sorry about that, but I thought you might like to know.

Ron Frazier
Kronos Software
www.kronos-software.com
Miko & Molly - Taking Puzzle Games to A Whole New Dimension

The above reason is why I started with DirectX. I''ve done some GL projects and I must admit it''s a nice API and quite simple to use if you understand basic 3D principles. However after the programable graphics piplline stuff came out GL just got too fragmented both from an API perspective and a compatibility perspective.

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Bad news for me!!!

Well, I want a full portable game, and I ate DX!!

That''s why I am programming in python and pygame (SDL), but on my duron800 I got 45fps (with 24 sprites, 6 layers of background and textures for timer and fps generated on the fly - 80 fps with ). So I''m going to make a minimal OGL engine to test the speed.

But now, after yours posts, I''m considering to optimize the drawing algorithm to see if all works well.

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Bad news for me!!!

Well, I want a full portable game, and I hate DX!!

That''s why I am programming in python and pygame (SDL), but on my duron800 I got 45fps (with 24 sprites, 6 layers of background and textures for timer and fps generated on the fly - 80 fps with ). So I''m going to make a minimal OGL engine to test the speed.

But now, after yours posts, I''m considering to optimize the drawing algorithm to see if all works well.