ZFGC
Projects => Discussion => Topic started by: 4Sword on May 31, 2008, 08:52:49 pm
-
I recently installed this into the Visual C++ thing so that I can now use the GDK, but even so, I have not been able to find any good examples of its use to create 2D games (with the exception of the included examples, but these are not really helpful). I have some knowledge with C++, and this seems to be a good step, but meh. Has anyone used this, know resources for it, or have comments about it?
-
Eh, anything made for or by the people who brought us Dark Basic deserves to die slowly in a ditch. To be frank if your after 2D and you have knowledge of C++ I would go for a different library, SDL perhaps? Or if you want you can roll your own using OpenGL / DirectX, both are relatively simple.
-
I mainly went with it as it was recommended as a link on the Microsoft download page when I downloaded Visual C++. I could try OpenGL or SDL, but is it easier to use either of them in DevC++ compared to using them with Visual C++?
-
I could try OpenGL or SDL, but is it easier to use either of them in DevC++ compared to using them with Visual C++?
Personally I would stick with Visual C++, DevC++ is horribly dated and has a great deal of instabilities in it.
-
Use Visual C++, I can't even fit the number of reasons for this in a single post.
Anyways, Dark GDK is garbage: It's slow and it's nothing more than a horrid adaptation of Dark BASIC Pro to C++. If you want to do 2D games, I strongly suggest using SDL (here, take this, the best SDL tutorial you'll find. Keep in mind, though, that due to an update in SDL, you have to use SDL_main() in place of main() now, which isn't annotated in this tutorial : http://lazyfoo.net/SDL_tutorials/index.php) , Irrlicht, or write your own system using either OpenGL or Direct3D.
-
Use Visual C++, I can't even fit the number of reasons for this in a single post.
Anyways, Dark GDK is garbage: It's slow and it's nothing more than a horrid adaptation of Dark BASIC Pro to C++. If you want to do 2D games, I strongly suggest using SDL (here, take this, the best SDL tutorial you'll find. Keep in mind, though, that due to an update in SDL, you have to use SDL_main() in place of main() now, which isn't annotated in this tutorial : http://lazyfoo.net/SDL_tutorials/index.php) , Irrlicht, or write your own system using either OpenGL or Direct3D.
Wow, that link really seems useful, and the other information supplied in this topic attests to the strength of SDL so much that I will give it a shot. I did not know that Dark GDK was that bad, lol, its documentation at least did not seem adequate as to say what you could fully do with it. Kind of makes me wish that my Programming class last semester would have hit up the graphics programming rather than skipping it, but oh well.
Thanks Infinitus and Minalien, your advice seems to have led me away from wasted time.
-
It's not so much wasted time, because DarkGDK IS still usable (and I use that in the lightest sense of the word), and you can still learn one or two things about programming a game with it, but SDL is a lot more efficient, integrates well with OpenGL (for when you're ready to move onto bigger and better things), and you learn a lot more about what's truly required for game development, and have a lot more freedom and expansion room for experimentation and learning.