RPGDX > Forums > Off Topic > Development OS Poll

Windchill · Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 4:44 pm Post subject: Development OS Poll

Feel free to reply explaining what platforms you develop for.
I use Macintosh for stability, ease of use and just because, but my future developments will be Mac and PC with a possibility of Linux.
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white_door · Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 7:23 pm Post subject:

Although I mostly only use one platform at any given time, I like to develope in a way that my programs can be ported to any of the major OSes at anytime. This appeals to my belief that everyone should be free to choose whatever OS they want. If developers (both indie and commerial) would like to help this happen they need to provide more multiplatform support for their appilications.

I'd have to admit though that providing support for mac would be one of the hardest things to do, given the price tag on most macs. I can install linux on spare partition on my computer, but to mess with mac I'd need either to fork out serious money or find a mac developer who wants to help port stuff in his/her spare time.

LeoDraco · Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 7:58 pm Post subject:

You do realize that none of those are really OSes, yes? And that what you listed is hardly accurate?

See, while my experience with Apple/Macintoshes is somewhat limited, I'm fairly certain that flavors of MacOS prior to 10 were not Unix-based; as such, it might be harder to port a program written for Jaguar or Panther to MacOS 8 or 9, than any other type of port.

Also, there really isn't an OS (at least, none that is used canonically) named "PC"; yes, there is a PC-clone architecture, but there are a wide variety of OSes that may be ran on such an architecture: DOS, Windows, GNU/Linux, BeOS, Minix, flavors of BSD, etc. It hardly seems appropriate to list "PC" and "Linux", when there are a wide variety of Unix-flavors out there.

A more appropriate set of development platforms would be something like: MacOS < 10, *nix, DOS, Windows.
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biggerUniverse · Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 8:06 pm Post subject:

Bjorn · Posted: Thu Jul 08, 2004 11:09 pm Post subject:

Windows had me always struggleling getting the right libraries installed the right way, and you have to pay for all the nice editors (which weren't even that nice, now that I found vim). GNU/Linux is clearly the platform of my choice.

Of course, people will want to play the game in Windows, so the compiling struggle is not over yet. Even today I've been trying to get allegro, lua and libxml2 to work nicely in MSYS and MinGW, after a while I had the first two working, but libxml2 is still giving some weird errors. I'll probably just wipe it all out and start over, cause it's so messed up after trying to solve error after error that it's no wonder new problems keep popping up.

To all Windows users... life could be so much easier!

Windchill · Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2004 12:03 am Post subject:

Macs really arn't that expensive, it's just that some other PCs have dollar store editions. And yes, I did screw up the OSes, the correct list should be as follows:
Mac OS X
Classic Mac OS
Win32
DOS
Linux (explain)
Other (explain)
as there are many versions of linux, and many other OSs.
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As dawn's first fingers of light crept through the trees a young knight awoke in his stead.
What happened next?

Verious · Mage Joined: 06 Jan 2004 Posts: 409 Location: Online

My primary development platforms are Windows XP (for my workstation), Windows 2000 Server running Microsoft SQL 2000 (for my database), and Windows 2003 Server running IIS 6 (for my Web server). Pretty soon it will be all Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server, since I'm planning to upgrade the Windows 2000 machine.

Rainer Deyke · Demon Hunter Joined: 05 Jun 2002 Posts: 672

I develop primarily on my Windows 2000 PC. I don't think moving to Linux would buy me anything - I already do everything from the command line, I already use VIM, and Visual C++ 7.1 compiles much faster than gcc. I do intend to port to Linux.

I have a crappy iMac that I bought used for $200. It's gathering dust right now because I can't get it to install OS X, and there are no C++ compilers for MacOS classic that actually work. I might buy another Mac that can run OS X, but Mac prices are truly ridiculous.

biggerUniverse · Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2004 2:53 am Post subject:

Come on now people, while this is an interesting diversion, perhaps we should be looking at this in a different light. We have a voting majority favoring Windows as development platform, but there are quite a few from all platforms that are looking at porting. We could each be helping eachother with these porting endeavors, given our particular expertise, and not getting into scuffles over which platform has the best <insert_the_thing_you_think_your_platform_does_best>.

This is RPGDX, not OSDX. I thought we were striving for OS transcendence. I'm pretty sure Windchill didn't have a petty OS turf war in mind when he posed this very valid question.

For my part, I use Linux. If there is anyone who isn't that familiar with Linux and would like some insight or help with porting, I'm more than willing to lend a hand. I'm sure anyone with Windows expertise here would do the same for me.

Is that not enough?
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Rainer Deyke · Demon Hunter Joined: 05 Jun 2002 Posts: 672

I'm not comfortable with other people doing the actual porting, but if somebody knows how to compile C++ on MacOS 9.2 or how to get my iMac to run OS X, I'd be very grateful.

Windchill · Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2004 1:58 pm Post subject:

I agree that platform is a matter of prefrence, and we all have a personal bias. I'm just wondering in general what the statistics are here. They seem to be around market average :) .

I agree that everyone should be alowed to choose their OS, and am working very hard to make my games as cross platform as I can. If I could find a good (free) Windows C compiler, I could probably run my code 99% unmodified, and I'm sure once I get around to it Linux will be the same.
I hope that many people will adopt the cross platform atitude, and watch for me to ask Windows and Linux specific questions when I get to that point in my development.
_________________
~Joseph

As dawn's first fingers of light crept through the trees a young knight awoke in his stead.
What happened next?

LeoDraco · Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2004 9:05 pm Post subject:

You could always get yourself a copy of cygwin; it's a fairly comfortable GNU environment for windows.
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valderman · Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2004 12:14 am Post subject:

How about VC++ .NET 2k3 Pro? Microsoft gives it away for free nowadays.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/vctoolkit2003/
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Nodtveidt · Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2004 7:22 am Post subject:

I primarily develop games nowadays in VC++ 6. My development computer uses Windows 98SE, heavily modified to my own twisted purposes. :D However, I will be shortly installing Mandrake 10.0 as a second OS and cross-developing most everything (since I use C and not C++, this is worlds easier, hehehe). I do still have a couple of projects I'm finishing up in QB, but neither are RPGs (one's an FPS and the other's a fighting game), so MSDOS is still somewhat used here. :D
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LeoDraco · Posted: Sat Jul 10, 2004 9:28 pm Post subject: