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AppGameKit Classic Chat / Language/Engine Selection

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gbison
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Posted: 14th Sep 2012 22:14
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Hello all,

I have some questions I'm hoping someone could elaborate on. Our team is looking for an engine/language solution for mobile platforms. We have been using a solution for the casual games industry from another provider for quite some time but unfortunately this does not offer mobile or web-based support.

It was discussed this week that we should move forward in adopting an engine/language for our mobile and web based efforts of the future and that is why I'm here. We are looking sincerely at AppGameKit as well as some other technologies. I would like to get the communities take on the AppGameKit platform for production casual games development? Is it stable, is the product in any danger of abandonment? Are updates being made as promised? In light of the Freedom Engine what will become of AppGameKit? The bottom-line is that we want to invest our time into a product that will be around for years to come, just as Dark Basic has been. Do you feel AppGameKit is a product of that nature?

I apologize in advance for the length and questions. We are however trying to understand the current state of AppGameKit as well as what its future might hold.

Much appreciated!

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled, was to convince the world he didn't exist."
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kamac
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Posted: 14th Sep 2012 22:33
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Quote: "Is it stable, is the product in any danger of abandonment?"


It's stable, and it's not going to be abandoned any soon

Quote: "Are updates being made as promised?"


Certainly
TGC even listens to our needs

Quote: "In light of the Freedom Engine what will become of AppGameKit?"


Freedom engine is still relatively new, it doesn't let you code in native language and is quite buggy yet. Althrough, they're separate products.
TGC's having a small monopoly

Quote: "The bottom-line is that we want to invest our time into a product that will be around for years to come, just as Dark Basic has been. Do you feel AppGameKit is a product of that nature?"


As long as you wish to develop for mobile platforms, it's the right tool for it.
I think that it will be constantly updated, and if the trends somehow change, I see no reason why wouldn't it to be ported to these new trends.

Follow me on twitter! @MotionStruct
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bjadams
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Posted: 14th Sep 2012 23:46
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let's put it this way... take a look at the games TGC have released, because those are the best examples of what agk can do.

keep in mind that no one sdk or toolkit is a miracle or magic solution. if you are a business and your sole income is from app making, then i would suggest embracing 2 or 3 technologies to have your a$$ covered
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gbison
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Posted: 15th Sep 2012 00:09
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Quote: "then i would suggest embracing 2 or 3 technologies to have your a$$ covered"


That my friend is exactly what we are trying to do and why we are here. Obviously we already have multiple technologies for our other arenas. This will be the first of our technologies for the mobile platforms but as with any language/engine there is an investment of time applied to properly wield it, Im just trying to find out it AppGameKit is still on the straight and narrow so to speak. That being said, I understand exactly what your saying and thank both you and kamac for the replies thus far.

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled, was to convince the world he didn't exist."
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bjadams
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Posted: 15th Sep 2012 00:25
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agk is 1 year old, it's hard to say how it will evolve, if it will be a strong engine or if it will lag behind other sdks.

my suggestion, use T2 at least you will have a way out to integrate options which are not supported by AGK
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JimHawkins
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Posted: 15th Sep 2012 00:43
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AGK is in a rapidly evolving mode. Consequently, problems arise which were unforeseen. The same thing goes for the mobile market. However, the issues are addressed very rapidly.

TGC have been around for quite a while, and I don't think they're going away any time soon, so I would confidently recommend adding AppGameKit to your arsenal,

-- Jim DO IT FASTER, EASIER AND BETTER WITH AppGameKit FOR PASCAL
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gbison
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Posted: 15th Sep 2012 06:01
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Thanks for the feedback thus far folks! Exactly what we were needing....

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled, was to convince the world he didn't exist."
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Digital Awakening
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Posted: 15th Sep 2012 11:21
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Click on the image in my sig to go to my WIP thread and download a demo of my game for PC or Android. There's also quite a bit of talk about features in AppGameKit as well.

Freedom Engine is not the end of AppGameKit as FE is sort of built on top of AGK. The official word from TGC is that features will be added to AppGameKit before FE. But it is something that do delay development of AGK.

AGK have dropped to half the price and there are currently no plans to charge for updates. Which I think is a bad idea for the future of any project. FE have a subscription method that could bring in cash to the company.

TGC have a tendency to add loads of features in each new update and it takes for ever to get bugfixes because of this. And of course with new features comes new bugs. The current state of AppGameKit is quite good but this method combined with the large (and increasing) number of platforms (sort of) supported makes it take a long time to get everything stable.

There are interesting features on the horizon with support for things like Facebook and Twitter (so you can post things from an app to these communities). 3D if that's what you are interested in. People still have problems with basic things like sound and music, text input etc. and that holds back development of apps. The lack of progress on all supported platforms is also notable at this point.

TLDR
AGK is a nice cheap engine to develop on but it will still take months before it will reach its full potential.


Demo 2 is out! Click the image for more.
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MarcoBruti
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Posted: 15th Sep 2012 19:49
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Quote: "AGK have dropped to half the price and there are currently no plans to charge for updates. Which I think is a bad idea for the future of any project. FE have a subscription method that could bring in cash to the company.
"

I would like to meet people that is available to pay a subscription for a product (FE) that is at an alpha (or earlier than alpha) stage. I could try to sell them the Colosseum
It would be more straightforward to ask for a contribution or donation for FE development.
I do not think that FE can become a significant source of incomes for TGC, until the product evolves to a more decent stage (less bugs, more platforms and browsers supported, export to Android and Apple, etc).
I have got family, bills to pay and many expenses and I am in search of a relaxing hobby. Programming with FE is far from being relaxing, it is very frustrating. I have not got time to make experiments, if other people are happy to stay awake all night to troubleshoot FE, they are welcome.
AGK too is full of bugs that are taking a too long time to being corrected, but at least, you can produce working apps, and TGC people and many others are showing, check WIP.
I already pointed out in other threads that to cut the price of AppGameKit is not a good sign. I think that upgrade to 3D will and should be paid, not for free. AppGameKit must be supported better, if TGC, with the very limited resources in term of development team, spreads over too many project, than I am afraid that no one will be really successful.
It would be a pity, because AppGameKit has got an enormous potential, and any I RECOMMEND THE PURCHASE OF IT TO ANYONE, BECAUSE, DESPITE BUGS, IT IS AN EXCELLENT PRODUCT CONSIDERING THE VERY LOW PRICE.
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Digital Awakening
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Posted: 15th Sep 2012 21:14
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Quote: "I think that upgrade to 3D will and should be paid, not for free."


I agree that it should be paid for. The price cut came as a surprise and I could only imagine that it was done to draw in more users to sell the 3D upgrade. But right now it seems more like TGC is not going to charge for it. But I could be wrong about that.

The long time between updates really hurts AppGameKit though. People get discouraged when they are unable to progress with their apps. I think moving to 3D before 2D and all the other parts of AppGameKit isn't working is a bad idea. TGC does what it has done before with DBP, adding new features without fixing the existing bugs.


Demo 2 is out! Click the image for more.
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baxslash
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Posted: 15th Sep 2012 22:08
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I would like to say that bugs are being fixed all the time and people seem to think just because we are adding new features we are not fixing bugs. What we are doing is building in new features (such as 3D) as we need them for our own apps as well as fixing as many bugs as possible...

I haven't used any similar products so have no real comparison but my experience of TGC and the community has been extremely good.


this.mess = abs(sin(times#))
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MarcoBruti
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Posted: 15th Sep 2012 22:36
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@baxslash,
in Italy it is adviced not to ask the wine sellers how is good his/her wine, because you can easily guess the answer ("it is excellent, sir!").
we can understand your position as TGC employee, but what I and other people are saying come from hands-on experience as app developers.
Have I got to list all threads and comments that I posted about bugs, error messages not removed, etc? Many things (sounds, folder management, etc) works badly or simply do not work at all. Not to say about IDE, very poor, no debugger, and even the line number reported in the error log is STILL wrong (and it is wrong in FE, too, it is a direct porting of AGK).
Do we want to start a talk about EditBox?
Do we want to start a talk about the old version of the player that is taking the dust since months on the purchase orders or Google Play?
We are happy that you (TGC), have no problems when developing, but WE are the customers and we have got to tell you our claims.
For DBPro, it is exactly how said Digital, it seems a product left to Open-Source for development (see support only for DirectX 9c), and Lee question about the "willing to pay" for a brand-new and product suitable for newer DirectX, is very significant.
I defend your product and advice other people to buy it, because it worth while the purchase, but TGC have got to show signs of a clear roadmap, both for new features and bug fixing.
I do not think that all TGC customers are short-of-money people that are happy with a open-source like product to waste their day and nights with in order to find bugs, fixes or contribute. My focus is making apps with a working product, not to fix and improve your product. That is YOUR focus. I am available to pay a resonable amount for an AppGameKit upgrade. I am sure that professional developer would pay on monthly or yearly basis for support.
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bjadams
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Posted: 15th Sep 2012 23:30
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baxslash you are right in what you say.
but you are always using the very latest builds, and we are stuck with 1076!

agk does 85% (i don't need 3d, i am referring to 2d) of what i need, it could be a complete product for me if they release builds a bit more frequently if they are fixing bugs all the time.

hopefully with a bit of patience we will get there some day
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bjadams
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Posted: 15th Sep 2012 23:33
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Marco, I'm not a TGC employee, and i don't have all the problems you mentioned... because I decided to use T2 from day 1.
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MarcoBruti
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Posted: 15th Sep 2012 23:43
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Quote: "but you are always using the very latest builds, and we are stuck with 1076!"

I hope that it is not as you have written, it would be a very unhappy situation that we -CUSTOMERS- are left with the old stuff...
If TGC makes more money doing their own apps with powered AppGameKit version, and leaves a "downgraded/downsized" platform to us, it would be like Microsoft time ago that was not disclosing some APIs of their MFC in order to give a competitive advantage to their products.
I sincerely do not think so.
Quote: "hopefully with a bit of patience we will get there some day"

The problems is not to have all issues solved NOW (I am not so stupid!), but a clear roadmap for bug fixing and new features.
But patience is not infinite, and in IT time runs very fast.
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MarcoBruti
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Posted: 15th Sep 2012 23:50
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@bjadams: it is obvious that Tier-2 has less problems, no surprise.
No IDE, no player, no compiler, only a library. Of course you do not need folder commands, you use native ones. And so on...
I remind you that FE (heir of AGK) is T1 based, do you think to be able to program C++ on the web
In any case, TGC is free to remove the T1-Basic feature for next release of AppGameKit, everything will be solved, MarcoBruti (and many others) will go away and the other will be free to program in friendly languages as Pascal or C++. Good luck!
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Auger
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Posted: 16th Sep 2012 00:06
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Well this thread has officially derailed

AGK/FE are great programs if you have the patience and persistence to get through some bugs and manual deficiencies. I'd recommend them to anyone that wants to build apps.

TGC will be around for awhile. I've brought DB, DBpro and AppGameKit from them and have found them all easy and useful to program with. In fact I'm going to show my age here . I bought Amos and Amos 3d , if any of you remember those
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xCept
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Posted: 16th Sep 2012 00:42 Edited at: 16th Sep 2012 00:44
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Of all the game development kits I've explored, AGK/FE has definitely been one the most efficient to work with regarding programming and asset management. This is especially true if you are already familiar with developing in DB/DBP.

However, it is still a new platform and naturally has a number of bugs and missing features that can deter use of it for production development. The current release does not implement any in-app purchase abilities, social network sharing, Game Center (or equivalent) for scores, and has a very limited ad system. There are some other bugs as well that can require T2 development to resolve. As I understand TGC is working on adding these essential features to AppGameKit and many are already available in the dev versions but haven't been released to the public.

Quote: "It was discussed this week that we should move forward in adopting an engine/language for our mobile and web based efforts of the future and that is why I'm here."


Unfortunately the HTML5 component of AGK/FE depends on WebGL for all operations, which heavily restricts its usefulness for real Web apps at this time. Most HTML5-based engines use standard 2D canvas / JS operations which are supported well by all modern browsers. Users will have to use Chrome exclusively to view any AGK/FE Web apps, as best I can tell (FF supports WebGL but the FE projects perform poorly, 20FPS). It could be several years before most users have a WebGL enabled browser, so this is something to consider if using AGK/FE specifically for Web app development.
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RUCCUS
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Posted: 16th Sep 2012 01:01 Edited at: 16th Sep 2012 01:02
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NinevehGL is a free 3D rendering engine for iOS / Android that drastically cuts down on dev time for mobile 3D games. I am currently using it with several other SDKs for my app right now and its wonderful. Ofcourse going this route involves knowing Objective C instead of BASIC.
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Digital Awakening
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Posted: 16th Sep 2012 10:35
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This is what Lee posted 2 weeks ago:
Quote: "
My personal goal is to get V108 out the door supporting all platforms by Christmas, but I also realise you have waited a long time and so I am inclined to release some kind of AppGameKit V108 'Windows/iOS' BETA once the IDF dust settles so you can check out the new commands that the internal team have been enjoying for a while. Unfortunately you will have to take the 3D commands as well, it's an all or nothing deal No charge!
"

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=199892&b=41&msg=2390778#m2390778

What I don't get is why not release bugfixes to 107? And christmas is quite a long time to wait for those who are releasing apps on other platforms today. Also it seems like 3D will be free.


Demo 2 is out! Click the image for more.
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baxslash
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Posted: 16th Sep 2012 10:48
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Macro, I would have said the same thing about two months ago when I wasn't a TGC employee... I bought AppGameKit on day one and have enjoyed using it despite the relatively minor problems.

I'm well aware of the problems in AppGameKit as I use it full time every day, yes I have the latest build but because I am a TGC employee and I am using it every day I am also in a unique position to see problems being resolved. It's a shame we haven't been able to release more updates but so much has been added that is not available for all platforms yet it would not be fair to you as customers to give you it in its current state.

Are TGC not allowed to comment and address issues pointed out to a potential customer? I don't ask a wine seller how good his wine is either but I would allow him to have a say if someone said they didn't like the aftertaste...


this.mess = abs(sin(times#))
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Hodgey
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Posted: 16th Sep 2012 12:15
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I'd say baxslash receiving the latest builds is pretty natural since he is a TGC employee. Look at the bright side of this, the new commands being added will get road tested before they reach us.

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bjadams
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Posted: 16th Sep 2012 13:12
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Marco i don't plan to use agk or fe for web development i already use another toolset that is way ahead of what agk is right now
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bjadams
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Posted: 16th Sep 2012 13:19
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A new release in xmas is way too far away and Lee has already stated that he might consider releasing a beta version before
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TheMechanic
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Posted: 16th Sep 2012 13:19
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I'm not after a war here, but have you considered Monkey? http://www.monkeycoder.co.nz/
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bjadams
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Posted: 16th Sep 2012 13:52
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Why war?

Discussing toolsets and sdks is healthy.

Having a few toolkits to do different things makes you more flexible.

Personally i don't like monkey and the "blitz" way of doing things even though i loved blitz on amiga it was far superior than amos
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JimHawkins
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Monkey's fine by me - HTML5 works very well. Has Lua support. In my opinion the language is infinitely better than Basic - and lots of third-party plugins available. I think TGC could take a few hints from it.

I would like AppGameKit to develop as far as possible, though, because I can code very fast in Pascal and I find the Monkey forums are often patronising and opinionated, whereas this forum is often fun and has a real community spirit.

We all could write our own road-map for AppGameKit, and they'd all be different. For example, I think that AppGameKit Basic should be yanked into the 21st Century with OOP and a Strict mode which would include pre-declaration of variables with types, a massive clean-up with the problems of UDTs and parameters. It's not actually teaching beginners anything that relates to modern languages and causes, as we often see here, lots of problems with ambiguity.

A "component" model, like Delphi, would be a huge step forward. I can plug a Fourier transform and wave-form visualisation into a Delphi program in about three seconds. It seems like the Dark Ages having to write loads of procedural code!

-- Jim DO IT FASTER, EASIER AND BETTER WITH AppGameKit FOR PASCAL
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bjadams
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Posted: 16th Sep 2012 15:48
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RUCCUS thanks for the info. I will have a look at the NinevehGL.
What other sdks would you recommend for mobile development from your experience?
I am always interested to test out new technologies
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TheMechanic
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Posted: 16th Sep 2012 16:15
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@JimHawkins

I actually find the Monkey forum to be very helpful and supportive, it's the minority that spoil it for the majority, unfortunately.

TGC forums are no different.

AGK looks like a very good product, but I am having way too much fun with Monkey to change or to purchase AppGameKit, but I do own DB Pro and use that from time to time.
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IronGiant
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Posted: 16th Sep 2012 17:28
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I like AppGameKit beccause of its Basic like syntax, the ease at which you can just try out an idea for a game. the fact the Emulator like windows just POPS right up instead of makin you wait to see your code run like some others do.

And for the love of god, dont add OOP I use AppGameKit because its like Basic, I use AS3 in some projects I have and its a freakin nightmare. Much easier to call a Procedure/Function than do instancing and Class calls. If I wanted OOP, I'd be using a different tool set than this. I dont find Classes or OOP a step ahead in programming, if you ask me, it over complicates the simple. But thats my style of programming. And thats why I use AGK. and as I understand it, you have OOP with tier 2. Lets keep it that way please.

It's Bird! , It's Plane!, No its a rocket powered Squirrel holding some acorns and a smile!
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RUCCUS
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The Parse SDK (http://parse.com) is one I use heavily. It makes creating a back-end for your app insanely easy (IE a server to store information on for your app, including files and images). Whether you're storing user accounts with passwords and top scores or geolocation data for a user's favourite places to take a pee after a night at the bar, Parse makes it pretty damn easy to get it all set up and implemented to have your data stored online. I use it extremely extensively.
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JimHawkins
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Not including Visual Basic, then?

-- Jim DO IT FASTER, EASIER AND BETTER WITH AppGameKit FOR PASCAL
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bjadams
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Posted: 16th Sep 2012 19:54
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Ruccus checked out NinevehGL but it's all obj-c which i have no motivation to learn
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IronGiant
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I loath Visual B, one of the reasons I purchased Purebasic years ago. There are more than enough class based languages out there. JAVA, AS3, Javascript to a degree though you can just treat it like basic also.

Heres a test, take AppGameKit tier 1 and any class based language. now write a small program to animate a shape moving from left to right then back again, do this without cut and pasting anyone elses code, go, do it now! Bet you 100 dollars it takes you far longer in a class based language to get the same program up and running. I'm not saying classes are not powerful, but for game programming in my opinion it is overkill. I've been programming for years, I've seen all the promises of languages that were gonna kill basic (procedural basic), yet its still here, funny how that worked out isnt it?

It's Bird! , It's Plane!, No its a rocket powered Squirrel holding some acorns and a smile!
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IronGiant
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Oh and if you wanna know how long I've been programming, google Midas Maze for the atari 800. I made that when I was a teen. and No classes were harmed in the making of it. Peace out!

It's Bird! , It's Plane!, No its a rocket powered Squirrel holding some acorns and a smile!
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MarcoBruti
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Posted: 17th Sep 2012 10:35
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[quoteMarco i don't plan to use agk or fe for web development i already use another toolset that is way ahead of what agk is right now [/quote]
Which tool are you using currently for web development?
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JimHawkins
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Posted: 17th Sep 2012 11:15
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@IronGiant - it would take me exactly the same amount of time to write a trivial program using Object Pascal or Delphi as it would using Basic.

However, it would take me a fraction of the time to write a real program.

In any case, nobody forces you to use objects, inheritance, function overloading or anything else. If you really want to stick with a thirty-year old way of doing things, you can. That shouldn't stop AppGameKit Basic being able to do things in a more powerful and modern way.

As a matter of fact, I could do your trivial example in Delphi XE2 just by dropping an animation on a form, without any need to write a single line of code!

-- Jim DO IT FASTER, EASIER AND BETTER WITH AppGameKit FOR PASCAL
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MarcoBruti
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Posted: 17th Sep 2012 12:32
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@IronGiant: Have you not harmed any class in a machine language program in eighties? I am very surprised. Why did not you use OO Assembler?
Many of us started at that age, and no OOP existed, only assembler or basic-basic.

@Jim: I agree with you, AppGameKit Basic must evolve. Scripting languages as Perl, Phyton, Ruby, Javascript and others support OOP heavily.
AGK Basic is a scripting language, based on VM, and it have to support them.
Let's forget pointers, beloved by somebody but an old heritage of early days of programming (let's go behind 20 years instead of 30), but all others things must be supported.
But I am not so optimistic about that...maybe the core compiler and language specs must be rewritten, and I am not sure that TGC wants to invest in such activities...being busy on a lot of projects.
Let's wait for the next release of AGK.
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JimHawkins
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@Marco - Grazie - it's nice to have someone agree with me for a change. I know you believe that Basic is the cornerstone of AGK's future, and if that's the case it would be worth the effort for TGC to start to catch up on some language features.

-- Jim DO IT FASTER, EASIER AND BETTER WITH AppGameKit FOR PASCAL
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IronGiant
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Posted: 17th Sep 2012 17:38
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Drag and dropping in my opinion is not programming, but if thats what gets you through the night..

and I used Action, a language made only for the Atari 8 bit computers that was a cross between C and basic, and 6502 assembler for the tight spots. Thats called programming!

Actually I still have my Atari, hooked up with an indus GT disk drive and the little orange Action cart, along with all the software.
I also programming on Amigas Atari STs, both in Basic, Forth, C and Assembler. and both of which I still own .

So dont treat me like some old fart thats stuck in the 80's. "I'm not your grandpas age or shape, No barrel belly here". I know some stuff, I've seen some things...jk.

I am also presently using AS3 and Flashdevelop for a project. Also doing a HTML5/JavaScript project So I understand Classes, but still hate them. And I'm sure like me, most came here to use Basic , because of its ease of use, and AppGameKit Basic for its power and ability to crank out a game in no time and run on many systems.

And I was giving my two cent on the whole lets change AppGameKit idea, and letting the original author of this article know what I thought of its present state, which I think is pretty amazing being the short time AppGameKit has been a product, though code folding would be nice.

Like I said, you want Objects, stick to tier 2, as for user addons/Libraries, I''m all for that.

But hey, if you all wanna turn this into another "Me too!!, Lets program in Classes/Objects!! and look smart while doin it!!, kinda language", count me out!.

I'll just use Java, AS3 or some other language thats already established in that area and has a way better IDE's, Eclipse or Flashdevelop.

So in ending, is AppGameKit worth it, you bet!, you wont find an easier way to write games. and being it runs your program fast, debuggin goes pretty quickly, built- in physics engine is a giant plus in my book.

And a new update is coming soon, same Bat Time, same Bat Channel. and they think I'm stuck in the 80?


Oh and if you wanna play my game (Midas Maze), dont , you're not allowed. I dont like you. and thats enough for me... j/k , Use Win800 and download the rom. or get an Atari 400 offa Ebay and buy the cart, its still only $19.99.

Peace out players.

It's Bird! , It's Plane!, No its a rocket powered Squirrel holding some acorns and a smile!
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bjadams
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Posted: 17th Sep 2012 17:53
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I use AppGameKit T2 and I never use classes in C++

so its just a matter of choice
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MarcoBruti
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Posted: 17th Sep 2012 18:16
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We all are "old"
I started programming games at 14 in 1983 with TI99/4A, the worst computer ever built in the world in term of speed and expandibility, but with sprites and coincidences (if you bought TI Extended Basic)! Of course, no OOP.
I chose TI99 because VIC20 had a ridicolous 5K memory, and ZX Spectrum a ridicolous keyboard. C64 has been released a little later, unfortunately (glory to Jack Tramiel, creator of C64 and AtariST).
I tried TMS9900 Assembler: a 16 bit with CPU with (horrible to say), the registers in RAM.
Atari had not much success in Italy as a computer, maybe AtariST, but it had a short life. Amiga has been more successful, but...rest in peace.
I like AppGameKit because it resembles TI Extended Basic, much more powerful and fast (after 30 years). When I was 16, I wrote a "Frogger" clone, it worked nicely, with a very similar graphics, and a lot of other games...
I agree that OOP is not so mandatory for games programming, since a game is more or less a do-loop cycle. But OOP has got many good fallbacks: for example, how can you pass an UDT in an AppGameKit function without encapsulating into an object? How can you manage trees, linked-lists, dynamic arrays etc without references?
Then shifting from simple UDTs and references to class-based with data and methods encapsulation, overloading, inheritance, etc is straightforward.
Of course, if you use Tier-2 (C++ or Pascal), all problems are solved, but all rapid development features disappear.
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IronGiant
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Posted: 17th Sep 2012 19:04
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You reference them by name, just like you do with arrays. And I'm not saying dont have link lists, types, or any of that. I just do not want to have to make constructors, classes, methods, when a simple Function/Procedure call, does it simply.

Sure some of OOP is gonna slip in, as I said, Look at Purebasic, Simple, can do all the calls to an OS or file you want. yet easy as hell to write a program in without over thinking. Thats how I see AGKs future, Basic with a little OOP in there to keep the data flowing.

Game development is about the creative process, put to many bumps in that road, and you end up steering off course.

Oh and on a side note, always wanted a TI-99A. the what was it? 32 sprite ability looked cool, though with the Atari you had display list interrupts to multiply the built in 5 sprites, yes the missiles counted as a sprite.

But my dream machine if I could afford one now, would be an Atari Falcon, and though Tramiel was king with the C64 and ST, he basically killed Atari, its now a Software company in name only.

AGK for the win!

It's Bird! , It's Plane!, No its a rocket powered Squirrel holding some acorns and a smile!
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IronGiant
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Posted: 17th Sep 2012 19:17
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Oh and congrats on the Frogger game. Its cool making games, why I want AppGameKit to remain fun to program in,

And To Jim, if I understand it right, Pascal is more procedural than OOP?. Never having used it I wouldnt really know... I jumped to GFA Basic on the ST with machine language added, so I never experienced the Pascal popularity of the 80/90's.

SO.... to concluded, Buy AppGameKit!!! and dont eat puppies. they dont taste as good as they look, trust me on this

It's Bird! , It's Plane!, No its a rocket powered Squirrel holding some acorns and a smile!
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MarcoBruti
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Posted: 17th Sep 2012 19:21
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Who eats puppies? I am not from Switzerland or China
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gbison
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Posted: 17th Sep 2012 20:05 Edited at: 17th Sep 2012 20:06
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Hahahah its official, I have opened up a can of worms, inadvertently I might add. I don't have time for a real reply at the moment, I just wanted to chime in and say thank you all for the enjoyable discussion. This is one of the reasons I do love TGC.

I will say one thing, we don't work at the hobby level any more which I miss sometimes (less stress) but to build production apps you need a solid foundation. We do not care to pay for good products and as Indie developers we need a good language and engine in order to keep us running in our production time frame. I can say this and will come back to it later as I'm short on time.

I can understand the business vantage of TGC working to integrate new features. It keeps things fresh and appealing as well as making it a more robust platform (more attractive, better bottomline). However, this is my concern and why I asked the community about the product. You attract new users with features, but you keep old ones with service. For me, I applaud them for their feature additions but for someone who relies on the language for production there need to be service releases and feature releases. The difference is obvious. Service releases keep us making apps, feature releases let us make those apps even better.

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled, was to convince the world he didn't exist."
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IronGiant
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Posted: 17th Sep 2012 20:48
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Totally understandable, but again , at , what is the pricing of AppGameKit now? 59 bucks US. Even if it was just used to prototype games its a bargain. Sure its IDE needs work, but I've seen worst, anyone here ever use Blitz Basics IDE? if you can call it that(IDE), to me its a bare boned text editor. I used Ideal when I programming in that.

But I understand the needs of a team, you need a robust IDE thats easy to share files between programmers online.
Me, I'll stick with AppGameKit, bareboned IDE or not, its still the easiest way I can see as of right now to get a game out.
And the fact the Emulators it uses runs right awayis a bonus, every other one I've used had a huge lag time between runs if you changed even the smallest line of code.

Sure theyre not complete emulators, but gives you a rough idea of what your game will look like mobile, plus AppGameKit is about the only mobile development system I've seen that runs Windows versions right outta the box, meaning you can put your game up for your friends/play testers to test on their PCs as soon as you hit run.

Hell I tried Corona and it doesnt even come with an IDE. and $199 a year, for just android?, screw that.

AGK all the way! now off to watch Tron 2 on DvD, yea I like it?, so what lol

It's Bird! , It's Plane!, No its a rocket powered Squirrel holding some acorns and a smile!
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MarcoBruti
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Posted: 17th Sep 2012 22:38
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For production environment, you could use Unity free+ Unity Android. But it costs 400$ vs 59$ and, most important, the learning curve for Unity seems very slow...
AGK for prototyping is unbeatable (at least for 2D) and there are some good games in AppGameKit, pls check the work from baxslash and others.
If you are ready to invest time and money to do real production games, go ahead with Unity or others, but for hobbys or indie developers like myself, well, AppGameKit is very good...but must be improved.
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bjadams
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Posted: 18th Sep 2012 00:23
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unity for 2d casual games... total overkill!
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bjadams
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Posted: 18th Sep 2012 00:23
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IronGiant i don't complain about the IDE at all, i use agk t2!!!
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