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I've been having some debates with myself about whether to go with SDL, which I'm sure a lot of you know of, or Allegro, a gaming library. ( http://alleg.sf.net ) They look pretty much the same to me, just a different style and I'm trying to find out what would be best for engineering a 2D RPG.
> I'm trying to find out what would be best for engineering a 2D RPG.
Since they're both capable from a technical point of view, you have to go with some other kind of choice. Like your past experience and where you see yourself wanting to be.
Would you view SDL as a stepping stone to OpenGL?
Well, I am trying to steer clear from DirectX as it is Windows-only and I seek cross production. SDL and Allegro both simplify OpenGL to some extent, though I'm hoping to hard code the game's resources such as images and sounds into the binary to hide them from end-users to avoid alteration.
> SDL and Allegro both simplify OpenGL to some extent
SDL does not... and really has very little to do with OpenGL
> I'm hoping to hard code the game's resources such as images and sounds into the binary to hide them from end-users to avoid alteration.
Impossible to avoid alteration, and that's a silly idea. Big game companies stopped doing that long ago for a good reason.
Well, they do usually have the game data in some format that's not usually readable by the average Joe...Quote:
Originally Posted by zacs7
I have anecdotal evidence that some of them now use more human readable formats like XML documents (which, admittedly, are not readable by the average Joe, but tend to be readable even by the average computer game playing Jane).Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris87
Well, take Blizzard for example. Their game data is in the Mopaq archive format, a format exclusive to Blizzard products. Also, I think Half Life 2 has it's own format. I saw no image/sound files laying out in accessible folders for it, but instead large binary documents that were above 1 gigabyte in size.
Just change all the file extensions to .dat.
Or, if you really want to do it, apply simple XOR encryption or something. Then the average computer game playing Jane won't be able to read it, but of course the average programmer John will be able to.
Good strategy, thanks!
I do not have many examples as I tend to play browser based online games, but one PC game that I do have in my possession, Civilization IV, has its sound files in MP3 and WAV format easily found in an Assets subdirectory. Its movies are in some strange format provided by a third party, but a free converter for that format by that third party is nonetheless available online.
The custom formats that you speak of could well be optimisation or even just development strategies.
> Also, I think Half Life 2 has it's own format.
Nope, they just use steams "gcf" system. And there is already a program to unpack and repack them... and it was out well before HL2, so it just goes to show they don't care.
Perhaps a better way is to perform checksums on the data instead...
I'm learning OpenGL now and I can't imagine there's any point in "simplifying it". I don't play games (much) so I don't notice these things, but it seems to have routines for interfacing with devices like joysticks. But you probably need SDL to integrate sound.Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris87
Even if the game is a 2D RPG like Dune (am I dating myself?) or Warcraft, you may want to go with 3D modelling anyway (do "they"? could be...) and certainly working with 3D objects on a "2D" surface is a little simplification.
OpenGL seems nicely designed to me but I haven't gotten that far into it.
ps. Isn't the whole Half Life engine open-source?
pps. your fears about user alteration would seem silly even if you owned the company ;)
Take a look at Mangos, it's an emulator that is capable of running privat wow servers. They provide tools that can unpack blizzard's files.Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris87
However, clientside manipulation is often of no real concern. If the game designers aren't idiots, they will have made it so that almost nothing can be changed from the clientside. All information for World of Warcraft is stored client side. Even if you would change your HP on your client, you would still die according to the server.
On top of that, spending too many resources to create complex file formats when they will be cracked eventually, is pointless. To use some method of compressing many files into one, you will need some kind of a header that contains information about it. Anyone with a few nights off a month and decent experience in the field will be able to decipher what the first few bytes say about the rest, etc.
That is probably a typographical error where "client side" should be read as "server side" (though it may be true that much of the information is sent to the client so...)Quote:
Originally Posted by IceDane
> ps. Isn't the whole Half Life engine open-source?
Goodness no. Quake 1-3 are, but certainly not the Half-Life engine... and it never, ever will be.