Re: Newbie seeks guidance

[Steve Baker <sjbaker1@airmail.net>]

John Moore wrote:

> I want to break into game development (for fun really) but don't want to 
> switch to Windows to do it. However, I want to make my games portable so 
> my friends/family can play on their windows machines.
If you use OpenGL for graphics and some kind of 3D wrapper library (freeglut,
PLIB, SDL, etc) to open windows, read the keyboard, etc.   Then something like
OpenAL for audio (PLIB also has a very simple audio module).   PLIB also has
joystick wrapper classes, etc.

Even if you only want 2D graphics, using OpenGL is a really good idea because
it solve ALL of the portability issues at a stroke.

The result of that (providing you take a little BASIC care to write portably)
will be a program that'll compile on either Linux or Windows (although you'll
probably want to use CygWin to do the compilation).

This approach has worked well with every game I've messed with.

The only thing that's REALLY tough is actually doing the compilation of
a Windows executable on your Linux box.

I've heard of people who managed this - but it's a real pain to set up.

So if any of your windows-using buddies can install 'Cygwin' and type
'make' - then you'll be OK - but if you expect to deliver them a working
binary from the get-go, you'll have an uphill struggle.

---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
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