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| A game library for beginners |
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Niunio
Member #1,975
March 2002
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Quote: Mingro is a game library designed for begginers and amateur game developers. It implements useful stuff as double buffer, multiple sprite planes, digital and programable sound and music, drawing primitives and customizable game controls (joystick, mouse and/or keyboard). The API was designed to simulate the MSX hardware but better: up to 256 color (using indexed color modes), not tehorical limit for sprite planes (limited by RAM), double-buffered background, more than 3 sound channels (about 16 channels? Not yet defined). It will include some internal functions to allow add-ons and extensions (i.e.: 3D rederization support). Well, that's the theory. The attached file contains the unfinished Beta version of Mingro (Minimal Game Routines). Before to release the Beta I want some feed-back and comments from all you, the Allegro Wisdom. I know some people will not agree the way I take. The library was designed to be used in Pascal and by beginners or amateur game developers. I decide to simulate the MSX hardware because it was easy to write action games with it (note: I never used ZX or Amiga). I decided to not use pointers, beginners are confused with pointers and they doesn't understand how they "points" to the memory, so I use "lists" (for sprites, musics and sound). The attached file is the unfinished version, that means it isn't optimized and some parts aren't yet implemented. Those parts are joystic/joypad support (but you can use the keyboard), programmable sound, programmable music and add-on extension interface. About the add-on extension interface, I'll include an interface to bypass the graphics initialization (i.e.: to allow OpenGL output) and the sound&music system (i.e.: to allow D.U.M.B). Should I include any more? You'll need Allegro 4.2 and GCC to build the library and FreePascal to compile the examples. I've test it only on Windows and I didn't write code to support other operating systems. Any suggestion or comment will be wellcome. Of course you can offer yourself to write the documentation, port to other platforms or develop the Demo game ----------------- |
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Arthur Kalliokoski
Second in Command
February 2005
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Some random newbie comes up to me and asks "Are you Matthew Leverton?". I reply, "No, but I know how to find him". I'm a pointer, see? They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas. |
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Mark Oates
Member #1,146
March 2001
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just for discussion's sake: I think a good 'beginner' library should have several game templates. eg: platform, top down adventure, shooter, adventure. Then the beginner gets to play around with adding/changing graphics, sound effects, and things like speed and placement of objects/enemies. More advanced things would be the behavior of objects. Really basic stuff like the RPG maker thing. I would assume that a beginner would not know how to program c/c++, so I think some kind of scripting or IDE would be in would be the next step. the next step up from that sounds like what you are putting together. It simplifies and initializes the necessary componets, keeping the user from having to do that. sounds cool. -- |
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Jonny Cook
Member #4,055
November 2003
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I personally think it's good for beginners to start with C++... I mean, it's not that complicated. If you just want to make a game, then perhaps it would be better to get some sort of game factory. But if you want to program I think it's better to just start from the bottom. Like, you should know how to make a fully functional console program before you start making things with graphics. The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face. |
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casey d
Member #4,901
August 2004
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Quote: Some random newbie comes up to me and asks "Are you Matthew Leverton?". I reply, "No, but I know how to find him". I'm a pointer, see? WTF? -- |
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Niunio
Member #1,975
March 2002
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Note that I've said: "The library was designed to be used in Pascal" Of course, the library can be used from C or C++ applications but I think Pascal is much better for beginners than C++ (Pascal is less cryptic than C and C++ is complicated). Mark Oates said: I think a good 'beginner' library should have several game templates. eg: platform, top down adventure, shooter, adventure.
Create templates is a good idea. Some friends suggest to us about to create SCUMM-style games so we're planning about to create a graphic adventure engine flexible enough to allow also some kind of RPG games. About platform, shooters and so, anybody else would write them using Mingro as base... Mark Oates said: the next step up from that sounds like what you are putting together. It simplifies and initializes the necessary componets, keeping the user from having to do that. sounds cool.
Thanks ----------------- |
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Archon
Member #4,195
January 2004
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Quote: "The library was designed to be used in Pascal"
This makes me think that it's a low-level Game Maker-like library |
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Niunio
Member #1,975
March 2002
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Well, the first idea was to write a Pascal wrapper for Allegro itself but it became too large and the API didn't fit the Pascal coding style, so we decided to simplify the API and the Mingro project was born. ----------------- |
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