What target do you use for testing?

Monkey Archive Forums/Monkey Discussion/What target do you use for testing?

Shinkiro1(Posted 2012) [#1]
Hey,

Until now I have always used html5 because it's really fast to compile but now that I've integrated music and sound I thought I could use Glfw. But it isn't good for testing either because ..
a) it takes ages compiling
b) you can't play any music

How fast is the BMax target and can it playback music?


benmc(Posted 2012) [#2]
I use GLFW.

GLFW on my machine compiles as quickly as any other target. The first build with an empty build folder is a bit slower, but after that it's quite fast.

For testing with GLFW, I also just use WAV versions for all music and sounds and both work fine.

My next target is a mix of Android and Flash.

1) Flash because I will ultimately want to make sure my game will work on Kongregate.

2) Android because I will be selling the game on mobile platforms, and if it runs on Android, it almost certainly works on iOS, and I can build directly to a device for testing from within monk/ted.


Neuro(Posted 2012) [#3]
I actually use XNA when testing since it builds the fastest for me and doesn't go into those odd memory issues like in GLFW during run time. For debugging purposes I would throw it in HTML5 to see whats causing the issue. Although its known that a bug on one target doesn't necessarily show up on a different one.

How fast is the BMax target and can it playback music?

Pretty fast, and supports music. My project here is using the BlitzMax target.


DruggedBunny(Posted 2012) [#4]
GLFW, same reason as benmc.


therevills(Posted 2012) [#5]
I go between HTML5 and MonkeyMax (BlitzMax target) :D

MonkeyMax compiles very quickly and it does support music playback.

@Neuro - How did MonkeyMax go for you? Any strange issues?


Shinkiro1(Posted 2012) [#6]
Thanks for your responses, I will try MonkeyMax then.


Neuro(Posted 2012) [#7]
@Neuro - How did MonkeyMax go for you? Any strange issues?

No big issues really, everything seemed to worked the way its suppose to right on. And ran very well too (though i still think the XNA target is the most stable). But a few things i should mention from my experience with MonkeyMax :

1) Logical operators statements that worked in all the targets in Monkey didn't always work in the BMAX target. Not a huge issue though, just required cleaner statements.
2) In my Tevada Trigger game, I used the tiling code for the background grid tiles. The Monkey targets didn't have this issue, but in BMAX it tended to "flicker" occasionally - only on the PC platform though, not Mac.
3) I never did got the music loading routine to work right BMAX. We talked about it before in the MonkeyMax thread since Monkey doesn't actually a "LoadMusic" function, everything is streamed from the file itself thus causing a momentary pause if you decide to switch music. This isn't acceptable so i went ahead and just kept one music file playing in Tevada Trigger.

Other than that, MonkeyMax is definitely the way to go for building games on the PC/Mac platform.


therevills(Posted 2012) [#8]
Could you make a post in the MonkeyMax thread and expand those issues, so when I have the time I can look at them (especially #1).


Gerry Quinn(Posted 2012) [#9]
My main targets are Flash and Android, so I test regularly in those. But I also use HTML5 for the quick compiling and GLFW for heavy-duty debugging.