I am very, very surprised but I am so glad. DW still participates in game programming competition. However, I don't know whether DW used BBCSDL or BB4W to program the entry for the competition.
I sincerely suggest that our administrator and our moderator contact DW there. Why? Encourage DW to come back to this forum because DW's participation may be able to make this forum much more active.
kigohhere wrote: ↑Sun 11 Dec 2022, 23:45
I don't know whether DW used BBCSDL or BB4W to program the entry for the competition.
I suspect it's neither. If you look at the download it consists of a Zip file containing an exe and a resources sub-directory. That means it can't be BBCSDL and is unlikely to be BB4W because that can embed everything in a single self-extracting exe, there's no need to make a zip.
He's probably 'moved on to better things': mercifully not in the sense that I had earlier assumed, but in respect of programming language.
kigohhere wrote: ↑Wed 14 Dec 2022, 10:23
Anyway, I hope that DW will win again at SyntaxBomb forum.
If he reveals anything about the language used please let us know. I do occasionally get asked what I would recommend as a 'step up' from BBC BASIC (usually this is from people who only care about Windows, I genuinely don't know of an alternative language which can target multiple platforms, including in-browser, as easily as BBC BASIC can).
DDRM wrote: ↑Wed 14 Dec 2022, 21:48
The evidence supports BBC Basic: the supporting files include GFXLib (which is all BBC files)
I hadn't noticed that, but I still don't think it's BBC BASIC.
The main reason is that it consists of a Zip archive containing an Exe file and a resources directory. The only way (that I know of) to create an Exe file from a BBC BASIC program is to use the 'Compile' utility in BB4W, but that can - and does by default - embed all the resources (graphics, sound etc.) in the Exe file itself. There is no need to make a zip, and indeed it would be extra effort to do so because you'd have to prevent the Compile utility embedding the resources (otherwise they would be there twice).
So how to explain the presence of some BBC files? One possible explanation is that they're there by mistake, perhaps as a hangover from an earlier version. An interesting experiment would be to delete the entire GFXLib directory and see if the program still runs. I tried it, and it does!!
Perversely, you might think, I'd actually be rather disappointed if it did turn out to be BBC BASIC. That's because it would have to be BB4W rather than BBCSDL, and considering the effort I put into writing gfxlib.bbc last year (which emulates, as closely as I could, DW's assembly-language graphics library for BB4W) I would naturally have hoped any new game would use that.
Wouldn't you think that a cross-platform solution created using BBCSDL, particularly with the potential to run in a web browser, would be particularly attractive for a game submitted as a competition entry?
DW's entry is a platform game. Platform game is a difficult category for many indie game developers. Perhaps DW encountered some horrible difficulties when DW was developing the entry with BB4W. Therefore, DW decided to select another tool which was easier for platform game development to make the entry.
kigohhere wrote: ↑Sat 17 Dec 2022, 10:12
DW's entry is a platform game. Platform game is a difficult category for many indie game developers. Perhaps DW encountered some horrible difficulties when DW was developing the entry with BB4W. Therefore, DW decided to select another tool which was easier for platform game development to make the entry.
Possibly. What makes platform games a "difficult category"? There have been platform games written in BBC BASIC before (not by DW), although I don't know how they compare with his latest one in complexity. For example Joop and Citaquexyle.
There are download links for both Joop and Citaquexyle if you want to try running them to see how they compare. I did consider porting Joop to BBCSDL, since the source code is available, but I was never able to contact the author for permission.
Hated Moron wrote: ↑Sat 17 Dec 2022, 10:54
Possibly. What makes platform games a "difficult category"? There have been platform games written in BBC BASIC before (not by DW), although I don't know how they compare with his latest one in complexity. For example Joop and Citaquexyle.
DW: "I suddenly had an urge to make a platform game having never really done one before (most of my games have been shmups), and it turned out to be harder than I thought. Lessons have been learnt along the way though. "
( https://www.syntaxbomb.com/game-coding- ... g347056442 )
This is the first platform game made by DW. DW might really encounter some strange problems while developing this platform game.
On the other hand, I tried to read a tutorial about platform game development(another BASIC language) some years ago but I could not fully understand it. Thus I always think that programming platform game is hard.
There are download links for both Joop and Citaquexyle if you want to try running them to see how they compare. I did consider porting Joop to BBCSDL, since the source code is available, but I was never able to contact the author for permission.
Okay. I see. I will download these two games to play if I have time. Thanks.
Porting a platform game to BBCSDL is a nice idea. Besides, several very classic games should also be suitable for placing in the example folder of BBCSDL. If DW is here, DW may help to write these several classic games! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km8bc_oBRgk&t=59s
