Hello all, (: Lets just say I have had it to (past actually) here (Envision hand at neck level) with windows, et al. and and would like your input on an idea or two(: How feasable is it to develop on linux makeing a game, and when it is done or nealy so port it to windows? Any thoughts? Thanks much, windows has me at my wits end. heh. Robert (aka Feral) FireTop.Com *waves*

Why not? Use a crossplatform gamedev library (or make your own) such as ClanLib or SDL (?)... That''s all I have to say about that

Best situation in my experiance is to write a game
using OpenGL and use a wrapper for glx and glw.
You can write this wrapper yourself or use glut
(which may slow things down somewhat).

Using a portability library like SDL may slow things down
and loose some features that are specific to Linux or
Windows but it''s a good starting point.

Writing wrappers yourself will be a moderate amount
of work (not too much) and give you the best chance
at fast performance and harnessing the features of
each OS.

Thanks for the replies!

Muzzafarath:
Yea that is pretty much what I was thinking... (:

LearFox:
Point noted about portable libs possibly being slow.

--

I am wondering though (I mean *really* wondering (: ), why would this not be a good idea? As LearFox mentioned about OS specific features, those could be troublesome, but what else?

After all, writeing a portable program (game) has some distinct marketing posibilities that, I am thinking, probably outweigh the extra cost (time/effort/cash) compaired to the single platform version to actually make it portable. What do you think?

Thoughts are always welcome (:

Thanks much,
Robert (aka Feral)
FireTop.Com
*waves*

Writing a commercial game would involve a much bigger
audiance and often players with less computer experiance.
Which means portability libs (should you choose to
use one) becomes critically important because without
it your game is useless to the player.

If the portabiity library (most of which are GPL
and OpenSource development) might get dropped in support
(but this is unlikey for say, SDL).

Best recommendation for commercial potentential is to
start off right, writing your own wrapper for each OS.
Yes it''s a ton of work but it''ll be worth it in the end.

But if you are just getting started, then glut or SDL
would be a good start. Just remember they have limitations
based on OSes. Linux supports multiple client to sound
device, while windows restricts one program at a time
to open the sound device. Using a wrapper it would have
to limit to single usage of the sound device.
Writing your own wrapper would let you know to use
single sound device on Windows and allow multiple and shared
event based sound connections on Linux.

That is just an example, there are many other little details
here and there with Linux vs Windows features that
you really don''t want to get into (a flame war) *G* about.

sniff...
why noone knows and speaks of Allegro as a multiplatform library? Everytime I hear discussions on multiplatform programming, I see people suggest SDL, Clanlib or whatever, but never Allegro...

Allegro WIP 3.9.34 (current CVS version) supports DOS, Linux (Console and X), Win32 (DirectX) and BeOS

http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/allegro

And go in the WIP section to download WIP 3.9.33 (latest official release). If you want the most recent snapshot, take a look at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/alleg

Win32 support for Allegro is a very recent thing, and OpenGL has batter hardware support.

It''s a nice library nonetheless, but it still needs some work.


"Science is a tool. If the tool works, we use it. If it''s true, that''s great, but if it isn''t, it doesn''t matter" -- ("Desert Fox" from GameDev.net)''s physics teacher

Yeah, OpenGL is cool for graphics, but you also need sound, input, and other such things.

==================
/* todo: insert cool sig */
Martee
Magnum Games.NET

OpenAL is the way to go for sound. Input is still OS specific but it''s not very hard to write a simple wrapper for that.

Also you might want to check out
YIFF sound systems for Linux, it''s the original
sound coding API for Linux.

http://wolfpack.twu.net/YIFF

If you want to get into more advanced sound
however, OpenAL may be the better way to go
however it''s not as newbie friendly as YIFF.