Re: Tools

[Pierre Phaneuf <pp@ludusdesign.com>]

Steve Baker wrote:

> Yep - and in any case, we are talking **GAMES** here.  How many commercial
> games use any of that GUI stuff from the OS anyway?   Since Xmas, I've
> installed RailRoad Tycoon, Quake-3, Civ and Heretic II - not *ONE* of them
> uses the GUI provided by the OS.  They all have custom written GUI's that
> are utterly unique to that specific game.

No, the games themselves only rarely use a widget set provided by the
system like Gtk+, but this is not all there is to game development. All
the times, internal tools, level editors and things like that have to be
created. Just think of your own PrettyPoly project, where would it be
without fltk?

> Games hardly do anything other than sound and graphics that envolves the OS.
> (...well - maybe networking...)

Well, I would say that widgets aren't really part of the OS, and that in
fact, games use the OS all the time (threads, graphics, sound,
networking, timing, etc...)!

> 2D games blit LOTS of rectangular or non-rectangular sprites - but they
> don't need fancy API to do that...it just needs to be blindingly fast.

And Xlib isn't even that (blindingly fast). ;-(

-- 
Pierre Phaneuf
Ludus Design, http://ludusdesign.com/
"First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you. Then you win." -- Gandhi