Monkey - first impression
Community Forums/Monkey Talk/Monkey - first impression
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| I'm talking here about the demo version, since I'm used to evaluate first before to buy. First impression, rock solid. I mean, no hangs, the IDE works as expected, build and run brings to a new tab in the browser (Firefox). Documentation is, well, ok. Something is missing, for example a complete list of available commands, each command being a link to a working example - ala Blitz3D. What I'm also used to, is to press F1 twice by a highlighted command, to see the command description, which obviously does not work. And please, write the docs with programming in mind. Don't expect that I know already the path where my images and media files should be located. I tend to put all the images and sounds in the same program directory, but it does not work. And there's no place where you can read, that all the media files should be located inside the yourprogram.monkey.data directory. That takes a while before you figure it out. Such informations, like mandatory directories and the like, should be well documented. Period. The site in the help section, where the commands are listed under categories, shows sadly a very small font, which is not affected by any of the font options available. This is one of the most important section, and it's quite unreadable. I've tryed almost all the examples which, with few exceptions, have worked. The animations inside the HTML5 canvas are really jerky thought. Perhaps depends on the browser version/type ? I've read that the canvas performances can be faster on different browsers. Or perhaps the flash version would have been smoother ? I was quite disappointed that there's no 3D available yet. I hope it comes in a near future. I'm also a bit skeptical, that there's no HTTP support, at least from what I've seen in the demos so far. No GET/POST, neither AJAX - what a pity ! Finally, there's a demo with an horse on a green field. This is the worst demo I've ever seen. The horse has no properly animation, and in the background there's a vertical line that walks while the horse 'rides'. Again, very jerky and amateur-ish. What is the purpose of such a demo ? All in all, still a very interesting product. The multi-platform feature is, self, already a winner. Add a 3D module, HTTP requests, smooth canvas performances, properly documentation and I'm sold ! Regards, Sergio. Last edited 2011 |
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| I just bought it due to the sheer excitement, from time to time it just feels great acting like a child :O) Written by customer number #19 (after Xaron's definition). :O) Last edited 2011 |
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| You can take that back about the horse, Mr., The horse is awesome. Cheers Charlie |
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| Firefox has one of the worst performance when it comes to HTML5. Try chrome, it is performing better. |
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| Ya, Chrome or IE9. FireFox 4.x is about twice as fast as the 3.x for HTML5. |
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| Case Sensitive! omg! |
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| Yay! This is good! |
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| The performance of HTML-5 content on the iPhone 3GS (running in Safari) is horrible compared to the Mac but it runs. Last edited 2011 |
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| Also at least HTML-5 is extremely fillrate limited. Computations aren't this much of an issue but the fillrate is. |
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| Blitz Monkey is Good but Case Sensitive does annyoned me but that can be good Things to make look more Professional Coding and for NO Collisions meaning You have make own Collisions which Put me off! >:( Last edited 2011 |
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| Case sensitivity annoys the hell out of me, too, but the rest looks good so far. |
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| Heh, the non-case sensitivity in Blitz3D/Max has always annoyed me so I'm happy. ;) |
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| Me too. Non-strict / case insensitive languages are more annoying. I prefer case sensitive filesystem too, its faster and means your code<->datafiles will work on any platform (as most mainstream filesystems are case sensitive except of course MS ones). Because monkey has multiple targets this makes even more sense. Last edited 2011 |
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| The HTML5 examples stutter roughly every second in Chrome 10 for me (i7 iMac). The stuttering has actually stopped me shelling out for Monkey, as I want to investigate further. I love the idea of Monkey (it could tempt me away from Corona SDK), but I'm worried that it's currently very limited in what it can do. That might not be the case, but I'm struggling to determine exactly what it can do. The docs don't look great. |
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| Monkey is rather naked in it's current form and lacks some important features as well as some love to detail here and there. With its curent HTML-5 support you can't compete against full fledged Unity or Flash content but it's great language!, it's affordable solution for cross releases and will certainly improve (hey we already got v30) and if you choose the right game design it can still work out fine. So far i like it very much. Actually i was more excited about the release of monkey than of the long overdue Unity bugfix release which still contains so many issues. Oh well, that's another story. |
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| For me, for now, Corona SDK still makes more sense. I'm only really interested in iOS/Android development, and Corona is a much more mature framework. I'll keep a very interestd eye on Monkey, but it's a little too naked at the moment, imho. Last edited 2011 |
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| Looks good, my only doubt is using HTML5 for the demo, it kinda shows how HTML5 sucks in certain browsers, rather than how good Monkey is... this could leave the unwashed masses with a bad impression of the language if they try it in a sucky HTML5 browser. |
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| my personal opinion about 'monkey' (after testing it only for HTML5 output, I've not time until weekend to test it on Android or anything else). + language is 'simple' as BlitzMax/Blitz3d/BlitzBasic + language is 'fast type' (End Method --> end... handy!) + simple OO'structure': a main() function, one class to extends app, three methods; it's quite logic to understand. + some new 'type' (for BlitzBasic users): void! + list are 'class' based (nice) - case sensitive (I never understand this thing - for every language not for monkey..) - monk IDE: is in an early-stage... save source code with .bmx extension (maybe V30 - out the past night for me - has resolved this) - monk IDE: hightlighting - after years of MaxIDE I require an automatic hightlighing for commands considering the CaseSentiviness... documentation: + considering the 'first monkey scream' is very good and organized (it's based on HTML+Javascript so I understand why there's no Linux dev version: FLTK doesnt' support javascript... so an IDE without proper documentation is useless... a good choice at the moment, in the long term I suppose a solution must be found). - F1 on commands: no info at the moment... monkey is very 'easy to use' - write, F5, choose target and... voitlą! Nice job! 5/5 bananas! Last edited 2011 |
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| Looks good, my only doubt is using HTML5 for the demo, it kinda shows how HTML5 sucks in certain browsers, rather than how good Monkey is... this could leave the unwashed masses with a bad impression of the language if they try it in a sucky HTML5 browser. Agreed, or simply not be able to run the demo version at all, because their browser doesn't support HTML 5. |
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| For the Mac and PC at least, a list of HTML-5 compatible browsers and DL links would help. |
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| For the Mac and PC at least, a list of HTML-5 compatible browsers and DL links would help. It's a short list: Google Chrome (currently the best HTML5-compatible browser) Mozilla Firefox 4 Beta Apple Safari Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 Release Candidate still has compatibility problems. |
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| Thanks Winni, but I meant that the list should be included on the Monkey demo download page (or in the quick start docs if they are not listed there) I have not tried to get Monkey yet, probably this weekend though. |
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| Google chrome has terrible alias artifacts. See the monkenstein demo on Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer 9. Chrome just does have lots of artifacts. |
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| Just trying out the demos, the second one I tried was basicgame (with the rocket), straight away I was commenting out the code for the y-axis and starting to invoke some logic to implement gravity, a rocket thruster kind of thing. Then I thought, stop now and see if the kids need breakfast. To go one better than degac, 6/6 kiwi's BRL (harder to get at than bananas but so much more satisfying!). The kids don't need breakfast yet, back to Monkey ;) Last edited 2011 |
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