Newbie question... - Page 2

targon · December 6, 2002, 05:57

The language I really love is Common Lisp and its variants. Lua is knocked-down poor brother of old Lisps, it has't even proper closures. Python is somethat better, it's knocked-down brother of modern Lisp. It even have lambda-abstraction.
C++ lacks some interesing aspects. For example, can you define completely new operator, not present in base lang? Can you derive from scalar classes? This list is very long. BTW, modern Lisps tend to produce programs not slower than C/C++ and defenitely faster than Python and friends.
One of most exciting things about Lisp: you can define things called "macros" that produce _code_ as its output (as lisp program is in fact valid lisp data) and may use _any_ language features to do their bidding. The only thing bad about Lisps: they are somethat harder to learn than mundane languages as C++. But, listen again, I'm not a coder here: I'm artist. Use language your want, its your part. I simply can't help if you will choice some lang I hate, but your surely may complete this task without any my help, so go on!
Concerning scripting stuff: here are some langs to try:
Guile (easily embeddable scheme dialect)
Perl (hairies syntax out there)
Tcl (dumbiest syntax out there)
Prolog (esp. YAP, nice embedding, fun for AI)
Various C scripts (if you really love C)
Check out more at sourceforge Langs/Interpreters, but make sure you select Status: Production/Stable or Mature,
so StP will not be plagued by third-party bugs.

Blake · December 6, 2002, 06:22

Targon knows what he's talking about. 3D is faster, and it's especially faster when ya want to do texture blending and stuff.

My idea would be to have the terrain 3D, but still reasonably flat so it looks like a planets surface... the point of using OpenGL is not to make a rolling hills 3D effect, but other stuff like more speed, effects, better zooming and stuff.

Yes, the map WILL be zoomable, and smooth zooming, because jumpy zooming is disorientating. Rotation seems fairly pointless and more disorientating than anything.

Units and stuff will probably be pre-rendered, because that usually looks better. Altough it's actually quite hard to say that having played Total Annhilation and seen some of the new units done by players, so it cant be all that hard to make 3D units that look good.

Kurilka · December 6, 2002, 06:30

Heh?
Are you really a graphics designer?
And about languages:
do you really need new operators? Most of the user have big problems with just operator overloading...
Do you need deriving from scalar classes (truely to say they are classes in Java, not C++, and in it you CAN derive from them)?
And the question was:
where do we need it?
And from this point of view we can get paremeters wich could show us what language suite our problem most?
i think that we will need fairly easy language wich will be easy to use (easy syntax, BASIC or something

) and easy to bind to C/C++. Also the speed/memory usage are quite important.
http://dada.perl.it/shootout/craps.html but http://www.bagley.org/~doug/shootout/craps.shtml is more in favour of Lisp than Lua

But i expect that Windows will be used more than Linux (but maybe i'm wrong...)

targon · December 6, 2002, 06:39

Blake,
Things looks like I need to stop creating models in PovRay (BTW, I have some really wierd idea of converting PovRay into tri-mesh, as there are some convex hull libraries with CSG support around; this stuff theoreticaly even may "bake" PovRay's surface into image map; still very wierd, IMHO, as PovRay has't exposed parsing libs or hooks).
If so, that model format your expect to employ? May be, .lwo, it's pretty .iff file, or some other (there are too many different graphics format out there, and each author seems to invite his/her own). Pre-rendering may be OK for single position camera, but it's too ancient technique. As most of models are born 3D anyway, why bother about sprites (other than impositors) etc? Game seems to have spaceborn stuff, and space is true 6DOF place, so sprites aren't fit into it.

targon · December 6, 2002, 06:53

Kurilka,
I'm graphics designer here, but I write programs about a decade, and know something about programming languages. I've said _noting_ about choice of language for this project, I think it's already choisen. I've said that _I_ can't _help_ you coding much with C++ while I know something about OpenGL, shaders, environment mapping. No problem, if something did't know about GL, it's fun to learn. I'm still happy drawning units and other stuff.

Kurilka · December 6, 2002, 07:37

OK targon topic about languages is almost over

, but i think that game scripting is not a bad idea, so maybe we should discuss it a little bit more.
May be we should start a new thread for it? Or just i see the topic interesting?

Rasbelin · December 6, 2002, 08:00

If you look close enough, you might notice that I just posted a new topic about the SL subject.