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Back to Hands-On Interactive Game Development

02.02 - Game Development Tools

Teej · 2004-04-22T16:00:51

Game Development Tools If you want to write games, you’re going to need more than NOTEPAD . In this article I quickly run through some of the tools you should have at your disposal, and mention some other considerations as well. The Operating System What is the target platform for our games? Although Linux is gaining popularity by leaps and bounds of late, we’re still going with the most popular of platforms, Windows. Of course, Windows comes in many flavors, and those we’re interested in are 95/98/ME/NT/2K. Luckily for us, software on these operating systems is compatible… …but not 100%. If you’re not aware of DirectX technology, don’t worry about it for now – all you need to know for the time being is that we’re going to be using DirectX components in our games, and one of these aforementioned operating systems doesn’t adequately support DirectX (at the version we’re going to be using). I’m referring to Windows NT, which is too bad because it has always been the choice for software developers. While it is true that there is a version of DirectX on Windows NT, it’s outdated – we would have to restrict ourselves to using it, and we wouldn’t be learning new technology, so it’s a concession we’re going to make. That leaves us with Windows 95/98/ME/2K. Hey, what about plain ol’ DOS? For years, DOS was the gaming platform, even when Windows was in wide use. The problem with the Windows of old was that it didn’t allow direct access to the hardware, and therefore games written for it were too slow to be considered. In DOS, you had direct control, and in Windows you had the GDI (Graphics Device Interface), which wasn’t designed for high-speed graphics applications. Of course, this was eventually remedied with technologies such as DirectX, which allowed games the conduit to the hardware that’s needed for speed. There’s one other important thing to note about using Windows as our gaming platform, and that’s compatibility. Windows provides an abstraction to the hardware in the form of drivers, which implement a consistent interface to the hardware’s capabilities. This allows us to utilize the video card, sound card and other devices without even knowing what vendor they’re from. In DOS, we’d have an insurmountable problem on our hands – all hardware is not created equal. Bottom-line: write your game in Windows and it’s going to work on a wide variety of systems and configurations. The C Compiler It probably won’t come as a surprise to you that I use Microsoft Visual C++ for all of my C/C++ programming -- it’s easily the most popular compiler out there. What about the others compilers out there? At first, you’d think that any C compiler would be fine, but there is a caveat: our code will be considered C++, and utilizes COM components. Sure, we’ll be coding in C, but we’re also using DirectX in our programs, and that requires a C++ compiler. Microsoft provides DirectX libraries for use with their own compiler (MSVC) and for Borland, so it would seem that there are your options in a nutshell. I’ve heard of people using other compilers successfully, but you’ll have to inquire in this forum about which compilers can get the job done. Graphics-Editing Software Since you’re in Windows, you already have at least one graphics-editing package – the infamous [b]PAINT . Right off the top of my head I can think of a couple of reasons why that won’t cut it, one being it’s lack of palette editing support, and another it’s total lack of features. Perhaps we can get some feedback from others in the forum on what they use – some will be rather interested in Freeware/Shareware applications. Personally, I use JASC’s PaintShop Pro . I’ve never had need for anything else when it comes to bitmaps. Sound Editing Software This may not be an important consideration for you right away, but there comes a time when you’re faced with the prospect of creating and editing your own audio clips. For the time being, I’ll just mention a few of the more popular types of audio software and let this aspect of game development slide until we have occasion to make it an issue. Sonic Foundry’s SoundForge is a sound-processing tool that let’s you manipulate almost any type of audio file, and is considered the ‘cream of the crop’ by many. Of course, you could use darned-near anything to record a sound, but if you need to do anything to it (other than copy it) you’ll need a sound-processing package such as this – there’s an amazing amount of features at your disposal. MIDI soundtracks can be created with a tool such as Twelve Tone System’s Cakewalk Pro Audio software. Steinburg’s Cubase is a similar title that comes to mind. Check out their websites for more information. Feel free to reply to this topic with your questions, comments or suggestions.

Hands-On Interactive Game Development Workshops

Started by Teej April 09, 2001 12:09 AM

58 comments, last by Teej 20 years, 3 months ago

asylum101

122

April 18, 2001 09:35 PM

for anyone iterested i found a game dev kit for $59 that comes with VC++ 6.0, SRMA model animator, Genesis 3D a 3D game engine with no roalties =D, and DirectX 7 sdk. its called "game programming starter kit 4.0" and i found it at best buy
have fun people! =D

Edited by - asylum101 on April 18, 2001 10:37:41 PM

FallingFrog

122

April 18, 2001 09:58 PM

I got DirectDraw working with Dev-C++. You have to add -fvtable-thunks to the list of extra arguments to the compiler or something- can''t remember exactly. Anyway, it worked fine but it does compile slightly slower code than Visual C++.

Falling Frog

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, butthe unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to him-therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -Samuel Butler

Anonymous

April 23, 2001 08:46 AM

Hello everyone, I''m very new to this forum and I have really been enjoying it a lot. I just wanted to add that SoftF/X has released
an open source version of their program called OpenFX. It can be found at:

www.opnefx.org.
Seems to be a very nice 3d graphics program

Gwydion

122

April 23, 2001 08:49 AM

Sorry about the last post.

The correct url is http://www.openfx.org

EvilDead

122

April 25, 2001 03:53 PM

ok, damn!
this was gonna be fun until i realized we werent gonna be using NT...stupid university ''puters!well'' as long as ME works ill be fine....later

The Rock

122

April 29, 2001 06:08 AM

I would like to know if there is a site where I can download a C compiler. I have Windows 95.

Thanks.

RandomGamer

122

May 01, 2001 05:34 PM

Borland''s free compiler is a useful one, and it''s up to version 5.5. It is what I have been using, however, there is a problem with the OpenGL compatability, and I have yet to be able to figure it out. It will compile C and C++ applications depending on the command line options you use, and it is capable of creating windows applications (use the -tW option)... it is all command-line stuff as someone has already pointed out, but that doesn''t bother me too much. If anyone knows how to fix the OpenGL problem, please feel free to explain (in detail if possible) how I could do so as well. It has to do with the glaux library files and it gives unresolved external _____ errors.

Corrosive

122

May 06, 2001 11:44 PM

Hi, i´m totally new in this forum, but i have readed the posts for some time!!! I have C++ Borland Builder 4.0 for windows!!! Can i compile the sources that you will post here soon? DX7 is compatible with Builder 4.0?

Thanks!! and by the way, can you tell me where can i get some really good newbie tutorial to windows programming with C++?

bye!

To code is to make things come to life ;)

ElCabong

122

May 07, 2001 11:32 AM

This is the best windows programming tutorial I have discovered so far:

Windows API Programming Tutorial

Hope you find it useful!

===================================Josh Ebersol"I'm not afraid of computers taking over the world. They're just sitting there. I can hit them with a two by four." -Thom York

Corrosive

122

May 07, 2001 11:08 PM

Thank´s... I guess it will help a lot...

And as i have asked before, Builder 4.0 is compatible?

for security reasons i have adquired Borland C++ 5.0 for windows!

and DirectX 7.0a SDK full!!

The dll´s of DX7 are compatible with one of the two compilers above?

To code is to make things come to life ;)

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02.02 - Game Development Tools

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02.02 - Game Development Tools

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