Other Platforms ?
BlitzMax Forums/BlitzMax Programming/Other Platforms ?
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| Ok I know its really early days yet, and I understand that but I was wondering if Mark or some one else who knows for sure would be able to fire over an answer to this question for me. How hard would it be for some one to get max to compile for another platform ? could it be done via a module ? I ask because like in Blitz3D I would like to get some Max stuff working on a webpage like flash/shockwave/java . not only that but it would be cool to get something from max working on one of the new handhelds that are C based like the Gizzmonda thingi and the GP32. just a Question so dont bite ma head off. |
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| How hard would it be for some one to get max to compile for another platform ? Borderline impossible. could it be done via a module ? No. It could be done by writting a new compiler/linker(/possibly maketool) tho'. |
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| I recall something about someone making a Blitz2Java converter some time back, I'm now wondering how much further this could be taken given the new OO approach that max has. |
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| it would be far more intelligent to straight use java as the code would be far better optimised than some converted thing |
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| Hmmm... I read that Mark's code was extemely portable and could travel over to other platforms with relative ease ... although he'd have to be the one to port it I'd guess. |
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| Since most of Max is written in Max and also in C I would think it's not too difficult to port to another platform. Of course, if there's a new CPU involved that adds some work. You also have to consider that Max is cross-platform and so needs to have one command set that works on all platforms. If you add a platform you would either need to be sure that it supported the whole command set that currently works on Mac/Linux/Windows, or you would have to alter the commant set on all platforms. |
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| Well, most interesting platforms (e.g. TiVo, XBox, iPod) get Linux pretty quickly, so assuming BlitzMax can be easily ported to Linux variants... |
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| Xbox pretty much has a version of windows built in and can already run linux, and sony's console has Linux too. Don't know how that kind of thing would work. When making console games you need to get licenced pay a fortune for the dev kits, and then pass Q&A testing (expensive) where the console manufacturer decides if your software is worthy of their platform. You have to go through Q&A at leat twice and as they will allways find problems with the first submission, (quite often how games are saved probs if nothing else). And then each game developed for that platform has to go through the same process. I'm not sure it's really worth the trouble, unless BRL had a seperate pricing scheme for commercial games on consoles. Like $10,000 per title so that after several commercial games were published they might cover their costs on developing the language for that platform. Thats kind of how I would see it working, unless Microsoft had something like their old incubator program again, where you got 6 months to prove yourself, and $1000 per dev kit. I suppose with their wanting new games monthly for their Xbox live arcade service. There may be a way in there somewhere. As for Sony, they are really hard to do business with as they don't like talking to developers, they prefer to talk directly through your publisher, and and seem to try their best to ignore developers. Thats what I made out from my experiences with a mid size development studio in the past. |
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| much more practical is mobile and pocket pc. Consoles are just toy applications IMHO. Unless of course they begin to use off the shelf hardware. |
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| It's entirely possible in theory to add support for other platforms, but it would require work (including but not limited to):adding appropriate compilation keys to the compiler (?PS2, ?pocketpc, ?RISC, etc) (only something Mark can do), writing platform specific alterations to existing modules/C sources (something anyone can do), finding/coding appropriate free C and asm compilers for that platform (anyone), further alterations to compiler for new CPUs (Mark only). Basically unless Mark has specific interest in a platform I don't see it happenning. |
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| XBox: good luck on paying the license. I am not planing to pay 10000$ or so for BlitzMax sorry ... PS2: the same mobile devices: the whole stuff would need to be rewritten on mobile devices you can't afford 300-400kb only for the plain exe so better forget about this idea |
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| yeah, MS used to have an incubator program where you got to develop for free after purchasing a dev kit for $1000. Unfortunately out of the dozens of developers that took up the offer only a couple of games were finished. Quantum Redshift was one of them. |
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| mobile devices: the whole stuff would need to be rewritten on mobile devices you can't afford 300-400kb only for the plain exe so better forget about this idea With framework, exes are just 40k. And thats with exe file bloat. I wish you would do your research first, cos you seem to have an opinion about everything. Where is your game? I think you should do it - honestly! :) I would love pocket pc stuff. That would just so totally rule... |
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| Yepp you can get it down to 40kb And what part of a game do you have with it? 300-400 kb were already with frameworks that are needed for a 2D game. Might be that you missed it but I am quite active when it comes to help the people especially on IMs and german board. My current project is "understanding blitzmax", a project that far more here should have ... I'm crawling through sources etc to understand how the whole thing works ... and afterwards learning OpenGL further. creating a project in the current situation is out of question for me ... creating modules for then is something different. |
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| 300-400 kb were already with frameworks that are needed for a 2D game. I wouldn't be surprised if the compiled code for a mobile platform turned out to be a lot smaller... I think the bigger problem would be... how many mobiles support OpenGL? ;] And I don't think 300-400k is a problem anyway, I have games on my mobile phone that are around the 10mb mark... and they came with the phone ;] |
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| don't know my phone does not accept java apps larger than 100kb ( and java is the only possibility to extend my handies capabilities ). I think they thought more of Pocket PC or Palm :) |
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| Hmm, I've ever seen large Palm games either, but then I havn't had much experience with them. They're used by the teachers in school, I only touch them when they are exhibiting problems (which happens around 3 times a day). Everybody hates the things except for the assistant principal whose idea it was to get them in the first place ;] |
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| large palm games are "normal" ... but the prob is not their size but very restricted ram size of ~0 to 4mb and similar ... very unused for most and by far to less the way BM actually works ... |
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| They support java just fine so a java output processor would be nice as the syntax of blitzmax might be a much better fit. |
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