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AppGameKit Classic Chat / AppGameKit Tier 2 Source Code Repository!

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RickV
TGC Development Director
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Joined: 27th Apr 2000
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 11th Jul 2018 16:45
For those of you who want to create your own AppGameKit commands, we have now released the full source code to the Tier 2 libraries, giving you access to the code behind all existing commands, and the ability to create additional commands as required.

We have set up this repository so that any work done to the Tier 2 libraries can be shared with the whole community, and to provide access to the low-level source for developers who need access to the core engine. It is our hope that this resource will allow contributors to expand the programming language going forward, and introduce commands that may not have been on our road-map, and facilitate collaboration on adding new features quickly.

This repository primarily targets coders with experience in C++ and Visual Studio, who have an interest in learning more about the functions of the language, or who want to participate in adding new commands to the language. We have created a number of Wiki documents which you can find in the repo that walk you through the process of compiling the libraries and creating your own commands, and this should be studied before attempting to use the repository. Users should also be familiar with Git source control which is the primary method of code collaboration, and have experience cloning, checking out, committing and pushing changes.

We have already conducted early tests of the repository, but its still early days and the source code will have a very strong gate-keeping policy at the outset with no write access to the master branch. You will need to clone the repo and add your own commands independent of the master branch until the benefits of the contribution can be assessed.It should be made clear that this is not open source, and the source code remains the property of TheGameCreators, only using GitHub to provide greater access to the heart of AppGameKit.

You can find the AppGameKit Tier 2 Repository on GitHub HERE

(you need a GitHub account to view the repository)
Development Director
TGC Team
Bengismo
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Joined: 20th Nov 2017
Location: Yorkshire, England
Posted: 11th Jul 2018 16:56


Wow...this is pretty amazing....Thanks Rick.

The sky is now the limit for all those extra functions that people ask for!
This allows for object oriented programing, ludicrously fast speed and access to the core of the library!!

Wow, awesome
Alex_Peres
AGK Master
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Location: The Milky Way Galaxy
Posted: 11th Jul 2018 17:14
Cool! But does it mean that AppGameKit will no longer develop?
fubarpk
Retired Moderator
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Playing: AGK is my friend
Posted: 11th Jul 2018 17:23
Great stuff

I am also a little concerned if that means AppGameKit is on way out
I Love AGK

After GDK was released development stopped which to me meant no more updates
Which meant my last project after direct x updates meant that transparency in videos
no longer worked.

But the Github is by far the better option with people sharing updates
fubar
GarBenjamin
AGK Developer
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Location: USA
Posted: 11th Jul 2018 17:44 Edited at: 11th Jul 2018 17:45
"the source code will have a very strong gate-keeping policy at the outset with no write access to the master branch. You will need to clone the repo and add your own commands independent of the master branch until the benefits of the contribution can be assessed."

Sounds like they are saying internal development will continue and they will also review external contributions and the ones that pass their review they would merge into the official release. In this case would just be away to accelerate development.

Of course it could be that internal development will ramp down over time. I hope not. Especially when I think AppGameKit seems to just be taking off in the past year meaning new users etc (I know I have posted about it on other forums and YouTube and am sure others must do the same... these things all bring more people in). Would seem like a silly time to stop internal development. That would basically kill it just as it is ramping up imo.

I think it is cool but am not quite sure I understand what I read. I only saw references to Tier 2. I guess the contributions would be released in future updates for Tier 1? If so I will probably contribute something to this at some point. Internal commands for tilemap loading, rendering, tile updating and tile collision would be nice for my projects anyway. Currently I have it all written in Tier 1.
TI/994a (BASIC) -> C64 (BASIC/PASCAL/ASM/Others) -> Amiga (AMOS/BLITZ/ASM/C/Gamesmith) -> DOS (C/C++/Allegro) -> Windows (C++/C#/Monkey X/GL Basic/Unity/Others)
Alex_Peres
AGK Master
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Posted: 11th Jul 2018 17:54
Since Apple stopped to support OpenGL/OpenCL AppGameKit will compile Windows/Android only, without continuing developing ... {
puzzler2018
User Banned
Posted: 11th Jul 2018 17:59
I think it is just an idea to allow Tier2 developers to create PlugIns etc etc and this been a central hub just solely for this

Good thought and idea to allow you to buiild your own AppGameKit commands internal to the engine, so you can develop your own / share others unique features etc

I May have misunderstood that though
puzzler2018
User Banned
Posted: 11th Jul 2018 18:00
Rick / TGC - could you confirm and settle our minds if AppGameKit is going to be reducing its lifetime / stopping?
smallg
Valued Member
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Posted: 11th Jul 2018 18:36
it won't be stopped, this is just because they have seen how well Game Guru has improved since it was opened up to github - but Lee is still working full time on GG and if anything GG has seen more rapid advancement since that time than ever before, so i see no reason AppGameKit will die unless we (the users) let it do so
life's one big game
spec= 4ghz, 16gb ram, AMD R9 2700 gpu
Bored of the Rings
User Banned
Posted: 11th Jul 2018 19:00
it's basically gone the same route as GameGuru, but Paul will have full control on what gets merged onto master branch on Github for AGK. I've cloned it already and compiled in Visual Studio 2017.
Professional Programmer, languages: SAS, C++, SQL, PL-SQL, DBPro, Purebasic, JavaScript, others
Stab in the Dark software
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Posted: 11th Jul 2018 20:05
Interesting, it is not open source but they want people to contribute and improve their product while
they get the sales. Maybe it is just me, but I would never do it this way. I would want to compensate those
that contributed to a product that produced income for the company. Hmm, maybe it is not producing sales
anymore. I guess they think it is working for GG so why not try it for AGK. I wonder how many AppGameKit users can program in C++?

Quote: "After GDK was released development stopped which to me meant no more updates"


Kinda thinking the same thing
The coffee is lovely dark and deep,and I have code to write before I sleep.
puzzler2018
User Banned
Posted: 11th Jul 2018 20:13 Edited at: 11th Jul 2018 20:15
Feels like a magic circle VS Penn and Teller

TGC must have some reason to do this - still awesome though for you experienced C++ prorammers
GarBenjamin
AGK Developer
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Posted: 11th Jul 2018 20:19 Edited at: 11th Jul 2018 20:31
I don't see anything wrong with them doing it. If a person is concerned about contributing work they will profit from the person can just choose not to do any work. It is not a new thing Unreal engine and even Unity (to a much smaller more controlled degree) have opened up parts of their engine in the same way for a long time now to benefit from all of the skilled developers who want to enhance the engine and related tools with features the company's may not have on the roadmap.

It is a win-win-win for the developers, users and the company. Developers get to contribute (there are loads of them who love developing just to develop without any pay - they already have jobs) and some may hang it on their resume. Users of course benefit a lot perhaps the most of all being able to not only get new features made by others but also personally add things they have wanted for a long time (if they have the skill). TGC benefits by more attention being given to the product in general as well as some work being done for free.
TI/994a (BASIC) -> C64 (BASIC/PASCAL/ASM/Others) -> Amiga (AMOS/BLITZ/ASM/C/Gamesmith) -> DOS (C/C++/Allegro) -> Windows (C++/C#/Monkey X/GL Basic/Unity/Others)
puzzler2018
User Banned
Posted: 11th Jul 2018 20:21 Edited at: 11th Jul 2018 20:22
Its all buiit around C++, so I think maybe TGC is given us a chance to develop our own the features that we keep asking for over the time, to now build them ourselves, and if they work and satisfactory - Paul will build them into the AppGameKit system for future releases

Its more like Growing AppGameKit with the help of us rather than the opposite.

RickV
TGC Development Director
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Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 12th Jul 2018 07:37
Hi all, the main reason to do this is to offer the opportunity to C++ developers to make contributions to the engine. We get lots and lots of request for features but cannot deal with them all and have to choose wisely the features, tweaks and maintenance of the engine. Having done this already with GameGuru we have seen it's worked for that product and hopefully it can work for AppGameKit.

We are 100% committed to AppGameKit, it's the engine we use for our learning to drive apps so please don't think we're pulling the plug or slowing things down. In fact we have a new build of AppGameKit about to be released this week!

We hope some devs can make a contribution!
Development Director
TGC Team
Alex_Peres
AGK Master
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Location: The Milky Way Galaxy
Posted: 12th Jul 2018 16:15
I really hope you will support the engine in the future!

By the way, we сould raise money for the AppGameKit 3.0!
puzzler2018
User Banned
Posted: 12th Jul 2018 17:41
Im c# mainly, so i will delve into C++ over the next few weeks getting it ready and then think of any features/functions that i could try to develop which maybe handy to have it built-in.

Ive taken a look at some of the codings behind particulary AGKMesh.cpp - and that looks quiet cumbersome and easy to follow with the AppGameKit internal commands compared to the C++ function which relates to it.

and I like it been also been nice and structured and manageable too

Cant wait for this new venture over the next many years

You have done us proud once again TGC



GarBenjamin
AGK Developer
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Location: USA
Posted: 12th Jul 2018 18:00
Yeah I downloaded it it last night and compiled in VS2015. Seemed to build fine although I think there are some dependencies I need to set up since I set uo nothing. Lol

Anyway I looked at some of the files. First thought was wow it has been a long time since I worked like this with pointers and such. I did use tier 2 last year for a 3d shmup side by side with tier 1 but that was first time in decades.

It will take time to wrap head around codebase and not sure if I have desire to do that. Maybe sometime.
TI/994a (BASIC) -> C64 (BASIC/PASCAL/ASM/Others) -> Amiga (AMOS/BLITZ/ASM/C/Gamesmith) -> DOS (C/C++/Allegro) -> Windows (C++/C#/Monkey X/GL Basic/Unity/Others)
Scraggle
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Posted: 12th Jul 2018 21:26
Quote: "We get lots and lots of request for features but cannot deal with them all "

Have you collated the list of requested features?
If so could you please provide the list here so that anyone who chooses to add them can do.

Thanks,
Scraggle
puzzler2018
User Banned
Posted: 12th Jul 2018 22:24
- vu meter levels returned via Direct X would be nice

- more memblock functions - this is my primary thing at mo

Nothing is impossible now, just get on with creating your own I suppose this is saying... and if validated and satisfactory then will be used for future releases
xCept
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Posted: 15th Jul 2018 07:02 Edited at: 15th Jul 2018 07:03
I am excited about this, but do have one question before I dive in:

Quote: "Note that this does not include the Tier1 Compiler or Tier1 Broadcaster."


Does this mean that we will be unable to compile our custom commands and revisions down to the Tier 1 language for use in AppGameKit BASIC? In the "Adding a New Command" section I see this:

Quote: "Tier1 Commands ... Tier 1 commands are picked up automatically by a parser during the AppGameKit Tier 1 build process ... This is all that is required for the function to become usable in Tier 1, however it is highly recommended that you also add documentation to the function which will also be picked up automatically."


I'm hopeful that we will be able to test our enhancements locally via Tier 1 without having to go through the entire process of pull requests etc. I imagine at least 95% of all TGC users code in Tier 1 and it is much more convenient (even as an occasional Tier 2 developer) to use Tier 1 for portability and simplified multi-platform deployment.
xCept
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Posted: 15th Jul 2018 07:02 Edited at: 15th Jul 2018 07:04
<duplicate>
janbo
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Posted: 7th Aug 2018 18:06 Edited at: 7th Aug 2018 18:09
I am curious as well, how are we supposed to test our commands.
I made a new command and managed to build the AGKWindows.lib after downloading DirectX End-User Runtimes because it didn't find XAudio2 and altered the references to the new Direct X path.
Now I tried to test my command in one of the Tier2 examples. To do so, I replaced the old Lib and Source folder in platforms/windows.
I think I also replaced the header and cpp files in the common/include and Source folder.

I get this Error: LNK2019: Reference to unresolved external symbol

Probably did a bit much and forgot something else in return
xCept
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Posted: 7th Aug 2018 19:31
Without any way to test our commands in Tier 1 I haven't been eager to work on this. Testing new commands with only Tier 2 access seems like more of a pain and involves setting up many different environments to build and test for iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, HTML (if even possible?), references etc. For me it'd be a lot easier to just compile new players with the modified interpreter that could then allow testing from Tier 1 AppGameKit via broadcast.

@Janbo - Hopefully you can figure it out I haven't tried compiling anything yet in Tier 2. Purhaps a more thorough guide is needed to explain how we can actually setup all of the environments needed to test our commands across the platforms.
fubarpk
Retired Moderator
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Playing: AGK is my friend
Posted: 8th Aug 2018 09:58
Quote: "Without any way to test our commands in Tier 1 I haven't been eager to work on this. "

Puzzler created a working internet radio plugin which works quite well with tier1.
https://forum.thegamecreators.com/thread/222583 The thread has an
explanation of what was needed to be done. And there is other usefull links there
that are worth checking out.


fubar
janbo
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Posted: 9th Aug 2018 23:17
Just wanted to say it works for me now in Tier2.
One should really pay attention to the path if you have folders called the same but in differend subfolders
xGEKKOx
AGK Master
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Location: Italy
Posted: 1st Sep 2018 14:36
Hi to all... how are you?
Just completed my GG Engine (based on AGK) but completely dedicated to iOS / tvOS and soon for MAC OS.
All that remain of Original AppGameKit is 20% of the code, is only 2D, the 3D part was completely stripped, it compile in 23/24 Mb library.
I added : Voip, chat like (Whatsapp), New Server communication, TV Player, Radio, Facebook, and many other things...
I'm trying now to integrate all .h files in the cpp files so we could use only the .a library.

If you are interested i can continue in this thing.

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