IDE
Monkey Forums/Monkey Programming/IDE
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| After all this Monkey is still nothing but a raw text editor with no interface and no editing capabilities that notepad doesn't have other than the capability to link to the compiler and of course compile your raw text and .data folder. I think Monkey's IDE needs DND like GameMaker and Stencyl have or least something more than a notepad clone with syntax highlighting. That's why people use Notepad++ if they want auto syntax checks and highlighting. With DND it can provide much more rapid and friendly development to new, inexperienced users, advanced, and experts alike. Just a thought. It doesn't need to be DND, there just needs to be something more than just a notepad because the IDE in it's current state to me shouldn't even be called an IDE it's way too bare bones. |
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| It needs DND but it also doesn't? There are some good IDE's and editors available. |
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| The point of this thread is? Cause if it's just whining, which is what I'm seeing, we have a ton of similar posts. You know Monkey is there for the compiler not the text editor. Python includes a similarly capable text editor (or at least it did the last time I used it...years ago). Then languages like PHP don't come with one at all. So for Monkey to come with one is more like a nice gesture. Use Jungle or one of the other numerous text editors out there (Sublime comes to mind) and stop creating posts to critique the editor. (That last statement was directed at everyone complaining about the editor) |
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| The other thing to consider is that for many inexperienced users, a powerful editor with lots of bells and whistles is actually kind of scary! TED is at least simple and doesn't get in the way or have a bewildering array of commands... |
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| I can totally understand your point, I think it's the fact that the difference between TED (monkey-x being the language not the IDE) and its nearest competitors in terms of IDE's is like the difference between the size of the sun and the size of the moon, with Ted being the moon. That being said, and as others have suggested, you should look at some of the other IDE's that are available namely Jungle if your looking for that professional feel, it will still lack a ton of the stuff your looking for, I assume asset management and built in tools but it's no simple text editor by a long shot, and ziggy works his ass off on it with a steady flow of updates so you really cant rule anything out that may appear in a future update. Just out of Curiosity, TKG, if you had a wish list of features that you would like TED ( or any other ide) to have, what would it be, what are you really missing what in your opinion are the things it simply should not be without and most importantly WHY!. |
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| Monkey X is a cross-platform tool, so a Windows-only IDE like Jungle doesn't help much for many people. Found Mollusk and JumpIDE for Mac OS X. Both not at a professional level, but at least little bit better, at least for the start. Monkey's Editor is Open Source and I would like to change some things. But if you come here, you come to use Monkey, not to code the editor for Blitz Research. At the end it's their job. If they want to present their product with such a simple editor, it is OK with me. It is their product. Just not easy to understand for some people, and I think it is what TKG wanted to say. If you, as a company, want people to buy your product, you usually polish it a bit and try to make it good... and then even better. Of course you need to invest a full month of time, or maybe more (if you are not fluent with QT), to make it useable and shine, but in my opinion it would be worth it. Worth the time, because it would make the whole product better and could possibly attract more new customers. Some people think Monkey X is for kids, and when they try it out, professionals are laughing about the editor. You really must be very interested to look deeper and understand what Monkey could be useful for. First thing you do when you want to evaluate Monkey, is starting the editor right after installation. And what you see is... ... ...TKG already put it nicely. First impression is what counts here. Just saying, maybe it gives some things to the Monkey developers to think about. It is the first impression some of your (potential) customers get about Monkey X. Maybe it helps to talk about it. ;) |
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| i've had some ideas on how to make a live editor with monkey, but i don't know if the effort would be worth it. as for drag n drop, i think people just need to find a good workflow from a (good) level editor to the code. there are few good generic tile editors. Scope2d is nice: http://www.monkeycoder.co.nz/Community/posts.php?topic=1702 |
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| Some people think Monkey X is for kids, and when they try it out, professionals are laughing about the editor. Have you seen Python's text editor. If everyone based their first impression of a programming language on text editors then we likely wouldn't have Python, Ruby, PHP, and ton of other languages. Monkey X is a cross-platform tool, so a Windows-only IDE like Jungle doesn't help much for many people. What? 90% of people use Windows. So for the majority of users, it helps. Secondly, you can develop in Windows and then when you want to compile for another system, just take the code to that system and use Ted (or the command line) to compile it. That's kind-of the point of Monkey. I'm baffled when people complain about Jungle being Windows only. Also, a thought for all of you complaining. Would you rather see a buffed up text editor or Monkey be more capable? Cause I'm pretty sure Mark does most if not all of the programming by himself. I would personally rather see Monkey be more capable than worry about a text editor. I swear, I don't know how any of you people would have survived programming in the days before fancy text editors. |
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| Adam you should give it a shot and see. As for Ted and at, I tried making some edit s but couldn't get the thing to compile :( |
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| What? 90% of people use Windows. <snip> I like the Mac the most, because it is just the best OS in my personal opinion. <snip> |
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| Monkey X is a cross-platform tool, so a Windows-only IDE like Jungle doesn't help much for many people. What? 90% of people use Windows. So for the majority of users, it helps. Don't take my words out of context. You said many, implying large quantities, which is false based on statistical data. Also, what does most of your first paragraph have to do with this? I run a business, have 5 computers, a Vita, and other crap. So what? That doesn't invalidate or validate my valid point about user statistics and how to work with Monkey efficiently. You don't know anything about how other people work, so calm down and don't just see your own view of things, please. Yes, I can't possibly know how other people work. I only have 5 other people I work with and they all do things in different ways, but I'm just an ignorant plebeian. Enlighten me. We suggest things to help Blitz Research to make a better tool. If this is not wished here, Mr. Mark Sibly himself can say one word about it and we shut up for sure, never ever making any benevolent suggestion again. I don't see how constant harassment about the text editor never being up to everyone's apparent standards is benevolent. Maybe you've just not been in the Monkey forums long enough judging by your user ID. However, this kind of topic and post has come up more times than I can remember, stemming back from the first few months Monkey was released. Back then when Jungle wasn't as good and there weren't other options, this was more of a problem and I might have sided with you. Since then, though, Jungle has jumped leaps and bounds above the competition and tons of other free (including my Notepad++ UML), and some paid, solutions have emerged. So the need for Monkey's text editor to be more 'professional' is no longer a real issue. |
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| Jungle is Windows-only and totally useless as a cross-platform IDE for Monkey. <snip> |
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| You still don't get it, Jungle is Windows-only and totally useless as a cross-platform IDE for Monkey. Go and read my posts again. You're missing the point of my posts completely. It's about user statistics. Your basis is opinionated while mine is based on facts. OK, you are the boss here, although you have no feeling how the rest of the world ticks. Really funny, but I don't have time for that kids stuff anymore... :D Putting a smiley face ASCII emoticon doesn't really help this statement. Only people who can't refute statements attempt to bring their age into a conversation. Maybe you should just shut up if you don't have to say any important thing. But I guess you like to talk non-sense all the day, just to hear yourself... Uh huh. Hey, just a thought, but before you throw around accusations about other people out, read your own post. You like to fluff up content about yourself to make yourself look like a god of everything business and programming related with no factual basis behind your statements. |
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| Of course, everything is fine. <snip> |
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| What? When did I ever say Monkey was superior? I'm starting to have the feeling that you don't know English very well and that we're both not understanding each other at all. Also, I'm not American and with a statement like, ' I get the feeling you are American, which is much different from Europeans,' you sound extremely elitist, possibly xenophobic. Just so you know, I program in 30 other programming languages. I by no means think Monkey is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I do think it's neat and has a lot of potential, but is still not a mature language and library at this time. |
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| You are right, I can't speak english very well. <snip> |
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| Is that attempted sarcasm or fact? I can't really tell with you. You have a very incoherent way of communicating via English. Also, you went off the deep end in the last comment and have not debated me with valid points to my argument which is boring me, so I'm done. |
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| ok, the topic has strayed. everyone step away from the keyboard or i will bombard this thread with pictures of cute kittens. |
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| As I said on numerous occasions, I would love some sort of code completion. Even if it is "Blitz3D style": Press F1 over a keyword, the editor shows the function+parameters in the status bar - I know Monkey can open the help file if I hit F1 twice over a word - but I would prefer not to leave the code window, but still being able to see at least functions/methods parameters. Of course, the ideal would be some small label popup, when you type "(" or "." showing parameters and functions/methods available... but I'm not holding my breath for that. That is the one feature I miss most in TED (and also in the BlitzMax editor). |
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to late... Really tho, come on guys this community might be small but its far better than this, squabbling is or should be bellow us, step back take a breath and realize that both of you have made good points, and it looks like your arguing over syntax more than anything else. Personally, I agree with Dan, the website now with its new skin, and the IDE simply do not to any justice to monkey as a language, people take one look at it and as is evident come and complain, With the competition as fleshed out as GameMaker and Unity its not all that hard to understand why people might expect more, this site is still right out of the stone age, and so is TED, but I love monkey and I love the community and fortunately for me I use windows so code with Jungle and Mollusk so its not all that bad, But I can totally get where Dan is coming from. We cant expect people to register, and then search the forums for answers before posting when the websites search function is so broken and ugly to use, we also cant expect them to simply know that their question or comment has been said a million times already, and that in itself should highlight how much of an issue it is anyway that so many people have brung it up. |
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| I forgot to mention.... I think something that really could help here, would be a full on tutorial on how to edit Ted, starting at where to download and how to install QT to how to load the Ted Project file and then how to edit and how to build a new Ted with some ones edits in place, it's not as simple as it sounds, and I think that's possibly why we have not seen a community version like we did with MaxCE. I also think that giving TED its own GitHub repo might be a good idea, then people with the skills in QT and C++ or C# could jump in and help expand the IDE with the things people want, this would free up dev time for Mark and allow him to focus more on the language and less on the environment. |
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| Paul the problem with a full tutorial is that it can get rather big and complicated to maintain with the number of desktop OS's involved. There have been a few posts with people having problems setting up the build environment for Monkey never mind setting up QT to rebuild Ted. The IDE could do with one or two improvements, but remain clean and simple and not bloated with features you will never use. Like slotman, I miss having code completion but I would like to see 'Lock Build File' relegated to a file in a project rather than a file that must be open in the editor. Though the IDE is usable, it's not perfect. |
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| I tend to think of Ted as fine mostly in that it is a working IDE that comes with the language, and is good enough that you can complete projects with it if you don't want to spring for something better. the one thing that irks me a lot is the way the targets are named "HTML5 Game", "Android Game" etc. I know that games are the projects it is most suited to and that most Monkey projects will be games, at least for the foreseeable future - but I think it should revert to "HTML5 App" or better still just "HTML5". Some people may form the opinion anyway that it looks or feels like a toy, but let it at least declare itself otherwise! |
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| Really tho, come on guys this community might be small but its far better than this, squabbling is or should be bellow us, step back take a breath and realize that both of you have made good points, and it looks like your arguing over syntax more than anything else. I don't what you mean. Did you read the conversation? It was like I was talking to a brick wall. The responses had nothing to do with what I was saying and then they started being xenophobic, arrogant, and outright rude. I was staying composed for the most part and attempted to stay on topic. Anyways, I think this is a really good idea I also think that giving TED its own GitHub repo might be a good idea, then people with the skills in QT and C++ or C# could jump in and help expand the IDE with the things people want, this would free up dev time for Mark and allow him to focus more on the language and less on the environment. Although projects like this have a tendency to fall apart if the leader of the project isn't leading it. I also don't know how many people are familiar with developing decked out IDEs. I've done minor development of a fancy text editor and it was ridiculously hard work. It could be that I'm just extremely inexperienced with it, but it seems like it's something not everyone can do. Personally, I agree with Dan, the website now with its new skin, and the IDE simply do not to any justice to monkey as a language, people take one look at it and as is evident come and complain, With the competition as fleshed out as GameMaker and Unity its not all that hard to understand why people might expect more, this site is still right out of the stone age, and so is TED, but I love monkey and I love the community and fortunately for me I use windows so code with Jungle and Mollusk so its not all that bad, But I can totally get where Dan is coming from. GameMaker is graphical tool and has garnered a reputation for being a product for children. I don't know if Monkey has gained enough notoriety to be shelved into the children's toy category, yet. Then there's Unity which is now considered a AAA grade game engine and development suite. I don't really see how these things are easily comparable to themselves or Monkey. If all they have in common is that they can make games, then we can stick about 10,000 other things in there as well. People will choose whatever makes them feel most comfortable. I for instance have used Unity and think it's fantastic. It was very easy to get stuff up and running and the new 2D stuff is well done. However, I also think that it's overwhelming when I want to do certain things. Then there's GameMaker, I looked at it for a bit and said, no, it's not for me. It felt very amateurish. Monkey meets me in another place when I want all of the control with no major drawbacks. None of this was decided upon because of the text editor. I think what will really sell Monkey is a large library of code. However, Monkey does not have that at this time and could be more than reason enough that people look elsewhere. For instance I've had to develop my own hash map, linked hash map (ordered map), vectors, matrix, and numerous other common functionalities because Monkey doesn't come with them by default. Like I said in my other statements, there's a little too much focus on the text editor from the community when in reality languages like (repeating myself here) Python, PHP, and Ruby, for example, all do well because they have gigantic libraries of code. Less work for people equates to more productivity. Programmers have a strange way about them to defy any pre-existing libraries if they don't "come" with the language. So, yeah...hmm, I have nothing more to say on this topic. I've written all of my racing thoughts. I need to get back to the Candy Jam. I'm getting a bit too distracted from the forums here. |
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| Goodlookingguy I get what your saying, however when you mention languages like Python, PHP etc you have to also agree that programmers looking at those languages are probably not all that interested in making games, however some one looking to make an app or game for mobile or web, when they search through google we would hope that along with Unity and GameMaker , monkey-x would also show up, and anyone doing their research into which to pick will almost always go with what looks the most professional, simply put TED and the website let monkey-x down in a big way. It's a shame really that Mark is a one man Team, he's got a loyal following of dedicated fans but there is only so much he can do, which is why I think making entry into improving Ted via github would be such a good idea, while the majority of us wont have QT experience I would be willing to bet that among the thousand odd users here, there will be a few who do, and possibly even some who have the time and desire to help expand its functionality. Mark Sibly simply needs to stop working on the code, Invent a Cloning Machine, clone himself a few times and then get to work, everyone wins. |
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| Goodlookingguy I get what your saying, however when you mention languages like Python, PHP etc you have to also agree that programmers looking at those languages are probably not all that interested in making games What about Pygame? In Ruby's case, I've seen it as a backbone for systems before. Look at the RPG Maker XP/VX series of tools. Then something like Lua is off the charts with how many tools implement it. Probably the most well known one is LÖVE engine. However, I will give you the fact that these, as far as I know, are not for mobile or web development. Also, I'm not sure why you keep bringing the website look into this. The old website screamed unprofessional, but this new one speaks of a decently modern atmosphere to users. Although I will give you that the forum is lacking usability wise and that the search function is less than adequate. I typically find better results using Google. Mark Sibly simply needs to stop working on the code, Invent a Cloning Machine, clone himself a few times and then get to work, everyone wins. We have the technology to clone him, at least partially. All we need is 6 million dollars. |
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| With the website It's mainly the forums I'm talking about and their archaic nature, Dev is doing a stunning job of trying to spruce them up a bit but anything he does needs to still sit on top of these archaic bones, and I admit, it irks me to no end. 6 Million ? EASY!.. Kickstarter "Help us Clone Mark" muahhaha. |
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| Some users like TED as it is and are quite happy with it, so I am not sure the Monkey X team wants TED improved by the community? Maybe they like external 3rd party add-ons or fork TED? |
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| I am not sure the Monkey X team wants TED improved by the community? As TED's license text say GPL any modifications made would have to be available to everyone any how. |
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| @GoodlookingGuy: When was the last time you have looked at GameMaker; especially GameMaker:Studio? And regarding LUA, did you heard about Corona and Gideros Studio? |
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| The last time I looked at GameMaker was probably in 2005/2006. Have they really improved much? Cause back then it was definitely a children's toy. Also, I forgot about Corona and I've never heard of Gideros Studio. |
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| Goodlookinguy, dude yeah, a load of Professional Indies , you know guys with office's and teams of 3 or more people are now using it, first one that comes to mind is Vlambeer, they always say that their prototyping with GameMaker and then porting the code if it works to other languages but I have only ever seen them use GameMaker on their live streams, they made games like Ridiculous Fishing, Nuclear Throne etc. |
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| I think the other point to note is that monkey is a 1 time license and a cheap one at that. I think that Monkey is a great cross platform language, with plenty of platforms that are not available to other frameworks and the potential to create many more. Yes the IDE is basic, but there are other options available, and for me personally, I didn't buy it for the IDE I bought it for the cross platform functionality, the non LUA coding environment, and the ability to add in natively whatever you want. I think there are many many major points to monkey and I don't think the IDE ia a big negative, and if you take a look at 2 other of the popular 2d frameworks they don't have good ide's either and rely heavily on 3rd party. I understand that it may be an issue to some people, so maybe it would be worth have a forum post to help new starters, including pointing them to different potential IDE's. For the 1 time price of monkey's license it is certainly worth investing in a good ide. The other point to note is that the community here is very supportive and helpful and that is something that is rare these days. Not looking to start a flame war, I just wanted to pass on my opinion and show my support for the language, the community and all of Mark's hard efforts. |
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| Monkey is a programming language, GameMaker and Unity are game creation tools. So these 2 are in completely different categories. The beauty of a designing games with a programming language is that you always know what happens underneath. Now for monkey that's not completely true because it abstracts the most common operations away for you (drawing an image, playing a sound, etc.). Unity on the other hand has settings, e.g. that change how input affects your game without a single line of code. That's useful on the one hand, but it can be really frustrating to track down why something doesn't work the way you want it to. An IDE topic comes up every few months and I think it's completely legitimate to want a better one. The thing is tough, that Blitz Research has very limited output capabilities. According to the roadmap there is a 3d version of mojo underway. Try to do that monkey - crossplatform style and you probably have no time for anything else for some time. Features have priorities and the IDE, I think is not that high on the list. PS: I was on the Global Game Jam this weekend, we used Unity, and we wasted a few hours because the input manager didn't do what we expected. |
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| @Goodlookinguy: 2005/2006... well then you should look again. :-) Gideros is comparable to Corona. Same platforms and LUA as a scripting language. Comparing Monkey to Unity/Gamemaker is really not fair and imho you compare apples with oranges. Yes, all tools are made for games. But the workflow is a complete different one and you have dis-/advantages on both sides. What I love about Monkey is the openess of its toolset, the language and the libs that come with it. I can change everything. That would not be possible with a closed system like all the other tools are. But then, other tools have other features that Monkey lacks. Back on the topic, I love the portability of TED, it's simplicity and the way it works. And it works natively on OSX, which is my platform of choice. |
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| What is the best native GUI framework (Win,Linux,Mac) for Monkey X to write an IDE with Monkey X itself? |
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| What is the best native GUI framework (Win,Linux,Mac) for Monkey X to write an IDE with Monkey X itself? none. you can try to get my wxMonkey to work if you're willing to re-compile "trans" every time there is a new release. i've been working on an "out of the box" version, but have not gotten osx to work successfully yet (i'm on osx 7.x). i'm willing to convert maxgui but it may be a huge chunk of work and i'm not sure if it'd be worth it.... or even if the original authors would allow me. for now, i'm enjoying Avian VM + SWT using java. i could create an avianvm target that wraps swt. but why? i'm fine using java. my suggestion: contact one of the authors of these other IDEs (mollusk, jungle, jumpIDE) and see if they can't incorporate your wants/needs, especially if you promise to pimp their product. |
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| Thanks AdamRedwoods, it is not required to do the work for me. ;) Just checking out what is already available. Found your wxMonkey already, and found an old topic (2 years or so) by Brucey importing QT. No download for that, so maybe it was just a private project. Just came to mind to use Monkey itself, if QT bindings would be already available. I will check out more options. It is not about the IDE only, it is also about general native Desktop target application development with Monkey. |
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| @Danilo: Your nickname sounds familiar. Purebasic? |
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| As Shinkiro alluded to there are two completely separate concepts of "IDE" here. 1. The programming IDE. 2. The high-level game-creator IDE. At the moment Monkey seems to be generating a steady stream of simple programmer IDEs that add Monkey specific support over a generic text-editor with syntax highlighting. Jungle is by far the most advanced but still doesn't have code navigation abilities like find all references, basic refactoring like rename or implement interface or the (relatively simple to implement) ability to run commands before and after a build. I only mention this because the fact that they all stall out on features after adding target drop downs and taking a stab at auto-complete points towards a lack of interest/market that will support such an effort. As far as I'm aware the attitude towards TED (and Monk before) is just to have a basic app to avoid users having to use the command-line to build. You click the exe, tap out "hello world" and build to a target inside of a couple of minutes. The thing is that pulling together something like TED is doable for one person in short order with modern UI toolkits that essentially have text/code editor drop-in components. Going beyond that as a programmer IDE requires significant work with language parsing and trying to bend the previously helpful UI framework to your desires. It starts to look like a full-time job for more than one person. The situation gets worse for a game-creation IDE. Now you don't just need an IDE that can handle text. It now needs to handle images, tilemaps, physics objects, state machines etc. On top of that you need to construct an entire game framework that the IDE can sit on top of. There's way more work in doing that than in creating Monkey and Mojo in the first place. Monkey could very well be used as a base for a GameMaker competitor but you'd need a team to do it. I may be wrong but Mark doesn't seem interested in working in that sort of set-up. Maybe the community could step in and start something and next time someone talks about creating another code editor their energy could be redirected. |
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| To request a feature that could obviously benefit an entire community and the wallets of Blitz Research Ltd is not whining by anyone's deninition other than of course the mentally impaired I'm not here to argue like a mindless moron I posted something quite reasonable to discuss and there was nothing wrong with me posting this topic I don't want or need morons that live for the sake of arguing on the net. This is obviously directed at UglyLookingMoron so don't take offense to this post if it isn't directed at you. I'm tired of people not letting things go over things that happened month ago if there's anything more stupid it's someone who's this stubborn and annoying. The things I did months ago are not relevant to the time being it's so very weird to think anyone could be this determined to be so very immature. Grow up. Please, and leave people with any brains the hell alone I've had it with such weirdos. I didn't say it needed or didn't need DND all I made more than clear is that for any decent and successful game engine there has to be more than a raw text editor. What about resource management? What about importing images, sounds, and 3D models and modify the target SDK txt files actually inside the ide and not manually via the filesystem. Look at unity, GameMaker, Adventure Game Studio, and virtually every game engine out there other than this one - they have a real interface that exists and helps make the product worth investing time and money into and does a lot more than a syntax highlighted notepad linked to a compiler. I know monkey is technically considered a "programming language" but for real all purpose programming languages they need to do a lot more than draw images and play sounds. It would be one thing if monkey was an all purpose language that was at all near powerful as C++, C#, VB, etc but no it is a game engine specifically meant for games so as long as it only can make games technically it is not an official language but rather a game engine which means yeah there's needs to be a better IDE for this to even be remotely considered in today's market and game engine options. |
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| You know that many of the points I proceeded to make were reinforced by other people, just worded differently, right? Also, don't be so conceited, I never said that you specifically have complained before, that statement was a general statement about the topic. Insulting me, as well, just furthers my point that you can't debate me on the grounds of factual information. Same thing I said to Danilo who I was arguing statistics about to. Although I don't think we were on the same page. I think you need to read muddy_shoes post. The way he put it is about the same way I'm thinking of it. Albeit, worded differently. It would be one thing if monkey was an all purpose language that was at all near powerful as C++, C#, VB, etc but no it is a game engine specifically... Your quite inept to the power of Monkey if you believe it can't do much else. I've written at least 3 command line tools with it. It's not just for games. Hell, Monkey itself is written in Monkey. Please, and leave people with any brains the hell alone I've had it with such weirdos. Ha, ha ha ha ha ha. Alright, as you say commander. I'll just leave it at that. |
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| @Danilo: Your nickname sounds familiar. Purebasic? Yep. :)I don't regret it, as Monkey can also target HTML. Plus Android, iOS, XNA, Win8/Surface, C++, C#, Java, ... well, everything. ;) And the fantastic one-time price... :) Somehow I have the feeling I've seen your name before, too. But I have absolutely no idea where... (I mean even before I bought your book for Kindle) |
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| Monkey IS a general purpose language. Mojo is the game-orientated cross-platform graphics library. |
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| @Danilo. On the Purebasic forums I posted only 2,3 times. Got screwed by the "DataBecker Deal" who/which sold a boxed version of PureBasic V3.3 back in the days. Without mentioning that you couldn't update the damn thing. :-) But I spent some time with 3D Gamestudio, IBasic, thinBasic, GLBasic, AGK, Corona, Gideros, and the Blitz languages. Maybe in one of these places. Thanks for buying the book. |
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| Maybe in one of these places. No PowerBasic/DOS 20 years ago, after Commodore C64 and Amiga time? ;) |
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| LOL, Powerbasic, yes. Could be. But not 20 years ago. I created a 2D extension for thinBasic TBGL module pack then. But after I raised my voice a few years ago in their forum about something, I got booted pretty quickly and never looked back. :-) |
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| Have you tried the monkey package for Sublime Text? For me, it's exquisite, https://github.com/gingerbeardman/monkey.sublime (needs slight modifications, rename the targets and rename trans to transcc) That with Texture Packer, bmGlyph/Glyph Designer and a little target specific fine tuning - what more do you need? How would a DND editor work with the myriad of game frameworks, I assume it will only be mojo compatible? At best it would be a crutch for newbies (and I'm a newbie!) until they feel comfortable enough to do some 'advanced' coding. The reason I chose monkey is because it doesn't have alot of the 'training wheels' that things like unity and gamemaker provide, it produces lean binaries, and provides an abstraction layer over many different targets WHILST giving you the source for each target, should you want to modify it further. I prefer the roll-your-own for a lower price point whilst still having more support than the haxe/nme alternative. I also remember back in my flash dev days, asking for dead code elimination with haxe, the author & community was against it, so meh. I actually just saw haxe/nme is now OpenFL but then you are dealing with Haxe which is still quite a verbose language and I just saw the price points for Premium Libraries! $99 for just In App Purchases? What are they smoking? What I'd like to see from TED/Monkey, is assist in setting up build environments for the Pro targets. It was unclear to me what was wrong with my sdk setup with android and I lost a night to fix a relatively simple error (bug in adt bundle update to 22 didn't create a build-tools folder, SDK Manager wigged out) but all fixed now :) I also would like to see more modules (me personally Amazon In App Purchases, Fortumo Integration) - maybe a system where we can suggest modules and pool money together and someone who makes it gets awarded the money for creating it - like a mini kickstarter. |
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| I hear that Cocos2D is a famous tool for programming games. Therefore, I go to its website recently. I discover that the new version Cocos2D V3 has SpriteBuilder 1.0. Actually, SpriteBuilder is is a professional GUI editor. It should not be the same as GameMaker Studio. However, this kind of editor may help many users a lot. Anyone tries this editor? Is this editor very useful? Does Monkey X needs such editor? Can this kind of editor help Monkey X users a lot? http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/build-a-physics-game-in-9-minutes-with-spritebuilder/ http://www.spritebuilder.com/about/  |
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| Monkey could very well be used as a base for a GameMaker competitor but you'd need a team to do it. Although GameMaker Studio is a very powerful tool, there are only two developers for it. |
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| I tried cocosbuilder before (which spritebuilder is developed from) and its useful for DnD menu/ui layout positioning and some animation, but it can't help *that* much with the nuts and bolts of a game. Saves a bit of time with physics boilerplate code, if thats what you need. It does provide a nice visual starting point for newcomers, thats true. GameMaker seems to do much more, though I've not tried it so I dont know how the workflow is. These apps start off quite simple, and develop over a long time - they are a big job. But, as muddy_shoes said above, there is no standard game framework to build upon, and it cant really build on mojo alone (no standard sprite, font, label, button, resources, callbacks etc), unless it is just a trivial layout tool. I'd kind of like mojo to have those extra things, because I think new users do expect them, but it would soon become bloated, and harder to maintain or port to new devices. Well, I assume thats why mojo is kept so lightweight. I quite enjoy the simplicity of Ted, though I'd like to have code completion and better help integration, and perhaps a built-in webkit view(?). I'd be to happy work on some features myself if I knew it was worthwhile effort (I've used Qt professionally for 10+ years, all main platforms). I had no issues building Ted on Mac via Qt Creator, just made one change for Qt5. |
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| For everyone who is on OSX: Try out Textmate or Sublime. With snippets you will feel like flying while writing monkey code (no joke!) |
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| "Although GameMaker Studio is a very powerful tool, there are only two developers for it." It's possible they had two core developers but they clearly have many more staff overall: http://interactivetayside.com/news/yoyo-games-to-double-its-staff-to-50/. However, even accepting that they had two devs total previously, GM has been in development since before the turn of the century. To create a competitive product in a reasonable timescale would require a team (not that two people isn't a team anyway). |
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| Yeah having a team behind a project really makes a massive difference, there is no accounting for skill, but any individual only ever has so many hours in a day, having more people behind him I cant even imagine how much better monkey-x would be. if I ever win the lottery, I'm going to take a big chunk of money and slap it right down in front of marks face and tell him to hire a decent team of local developers. |
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| If BRL were a bit more organisationally inclined I'm fairly sure they could have leveraged the community talent pool to build a coherent engine and tool layer for very little cash. Not a full GM or Unity level editor but certainly things like a sprite/physics object editor with collisions, tilemap support, layers, an event/message system etc. A lot of this work has taken place in pockets anyway. It really just needed some shepherding to bring it together. |
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| I really went off I'm not always thinking before posting but I'll work on that sorry guys and everyone I've been rude to. =) Though I still think if the IDE was improved a lot of great things could become of it. IE if Jungle IDE was actually shipped with the official monkey distro and not a seperate payment that'd be probably the easiest and quickest option. From what I take it, Jungle was made by someone who isn't a part of Blitz Research Ltd so if that's the case why not collaborate and share profits? Another idea, look at Visual Studio or Code:Blocks instead of editing the configs and sdks directly in the text file in notepad what about a menu item opening a GUI window where you can press the three dotted browse button and select the SDK path from a open file/directory dialog? Also YYG actually have a lot of people working on their product, probably ten times as many game engine devs in YYG than BRL. Sandy Duncan, Mike Dailly, James Foreman, I can't remember the rest but somewhere on their site I actually saw their list of GMS devs and it was a relatively long list. Edit: also I feel like a complete dick because of what I posted here the other day I have no excuse. Again, my bad. |
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| What you suggest about Jungle has been suggested in the past and I think it's major issue is that Jungle is windows only, so I doubt anything would come of it, if jungle was cross platform and hit the 4 main OS's then I suspect Mark might be open to some sort of deal, but as it stands now I think it's highly unlikely that what you suggest will ever happen. As for your mood, don't worry about it, we all have bad days every now and then. |
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| Thanks. I wonder if there's an easy way to get jungle on those other OS. Is it not written in a cross platform language? If it's in C++, then a Qt port might do the trick. If it's C# or VB I don't know about Mac but I vaguely remember there being an equivalent for those on Linux. If all else fails I hope at least Wine could work. Edit: I'm considering to buy JungleIDE its features list sounds very appealing and I'm loving the screenshots. =D |
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| @TKG: There's no corss platform version of Jungle Ide. It's very dependant on windows APIs as all text redering is not done using managed code, but using pure native windows API calls. I usually check the new released of PlayOnMac to see the level of compatibility with Wine but it seems it does not work (yet). |
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| Jungle works fantastically on virtual machines under Linux and Mac. I used it on my Mac under Windows 7 for a year before I built my, now, current rig. If it's C# or VB I don't know about Mac but I vaguely remember there being an equivalent for those on Linux Yes, it's the Mono Project. It's gotten passed around a bit from company to company, landing back at its original creators doorsteps if I'm not mistaken. Now under the title Xamarin. I tried it back in 2009 and I remember it being way less friendly to use than Visual Studio, which is probably why its adoption rate is not picking up any faster than it's been going. Although, correct me if I'm wrong, I believe the creators of Unity have some sort of investment in it which could result in wider adoption. |
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| That's great news! I'm really excited to hear that. =) I've never used virtual machines but I'm probably going to find time to try it out. Is it possible to compile/test for Mac/Linux under a VM? |
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| Is it possible to compile/test for Mac/Linux under a VM? No? I'm not sure what you mean. If you mean, a Linux VM compile for Linux or a Windows VM compile for Windows, then yes. However, you could do what I did and have a platform agnostic network folder and then compile it from that folder to the various OSes. |
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