Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum
Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: renobastian100 on September 30, 2009, 07:28:17 pm
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or anyone with extensive experience in arcade game programming...
I want to develop a simple arcade game that runs on Linux. Which programming language is the most reliable for something say as simple and graphic rich as say tetrix/connect 4?
Should I go with Flash/Java/C or is it all a wash depending on programmer expertise? The arcade game will be built from scratch and I want to hook up a bill acceptor... I've found a few guys on elance and guru, but I'm completely clueless else wise on the matter.
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You could do a game like that in just about any language. Is the bill collector hooked up as a keyboard input?
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For simple stuff, SDL is great. It's reasonably fast, lightweight, and it's portable. From the sound of it, SDL would be perfect for your application and would probably do all that you need.
For more complex things, OpenGL is good for 3D (and can work with SDL to make your life easier). OpenAL is a good audio library. Both are portable. You could use ALSA directly for audio, but it's kinda a mess, and it isn't portable. There are lots of toolkits for OpenGL available to help you with UI type stuff. SDL has rudimentary audio support if you prefer.
SDL provides some input abstraction, but you'll probably end up just handling input directly since there's no real equivalent to DirectInput on Linux, though Linux provides some very nice facilities for "raw" input access (it's just not portable, but neither is DirectX).
Most commercial arcade games use a custom I/O board hooked up via a serial port or USB. Serial devices are readily accessible as /dev/ttySn, while "raw" USB is available via libusb. If your I/O device looks like a HID device, you can either let the standard input layers handle it (good for keyboard/mouse/game device emulating input devices) or you can attain more "raw" access using hiddev or hidraw, depending on what you need. None of this would be readily portable to other OSes except libusb, which works on just about anything you'd run on a PC.
If you need a physics library, Bullet is free and I'm told quite good.
All of these libraries mentioned are programmable from C. There are some libraries to provide C++ bindings if you prefer. Almost all Linux development is done in C and C++. Not a ton of Java. I just don't think it appeals to most Linux devs. It works fine, however. Almost no flash since the flash player/plugin architecture on Linux is pretty poorly supported by Adobe (complete lack of hardware acceleration).
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For simple stuff, SDL is great. It's reasonably fast, lightweight, and it's portable. From the sound of it, SDL would be perfect for your application and would probably do all that you need.
For more complex things, OpenGL is good for 3D (and can work with SDL to make your life easier). OpenAL is a good audio library. Both are portable. You could use ALSA directly for audio, but it's kinda a mess, and it isn't portable. There are lots of toolkits for OpenGL available to help you with UI type stuff. SDL has rudimentary audio support if you prefer.
SDL provides some input abstraction, but you'll probably end up just handling input directly since there's no real equivalent to DirectInput on Linux, though Linux provides some very nice facilities for "raw" input access (it's just not portable, but neither is DirectX).
Most commercial arcade games use a custom I/O board hooked up via a serial port or USB. Serial devices are readily accessible as /dev/ttySn, while "raw" USB is available via libusb. If your I/O device looks like a HID device, you can either let the standard input layers handle it (good for keyboard/mouse/game device emulating input devices) or you can attain more "raw" access using hiddev or hidraw, depending on what you need. None of this would be readily portable to other OSes except libusb, which works on just about anything you'd run on a PC.
If you need a physics library, Bullet is free and I'm told quite good.
All of these libraries mentioned are programmable from C. There are some libraries to provide C++ bindings if you prefer. Almost all Linux development is done in C and C++. Not a ton of Java. I just don't think it appeals to most Linux devs. It works fine, however. Almost no flash since the flash player/plugin architecture on Linux is pretty poorly supported by Adobe (complete lack of hardware acceleration).
thank you.
\are you a game developer?
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You could do a game like that in just about any language. Is the bill collector hooked up as a keyboard input?
is that method efficient?
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thank you.
\are you a game developer?
I know one guy in this thread is for sure.... ;D
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are you a game developer?
Not a game developer, but I have developed hardware platforms used commercially for gaming applications (and non-gaming but dedicated software applications as well), and I've been using and developing non-gaming applications on Linux for quite some time.
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So that only leaves the other guy....
Shame your game just got banned in Oz. (What doesn't, though?)
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You could do a game like that in just about any language. Is the bill collector hooked up as a keyboard input?
is that method efficient?
That would work fine. Just wire it up like it is a button via a keyboard encoder.
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So that only leaves the other guy....
Shame your game just got banned in Oz. (What doesn't, though?)
We resubmitted. Hopefully it'll get through.
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You could do a game like that in just about any language. Is the bill collector hooked up as a keyboard input?
is that method efficient?
That would work fine. Just wire it up like it is a button via a keyboard encoder.
Now im really getting somewhere...this forum is awesome!
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so if i buy this ------->(http://www.agtglobal.com/upload/product/21876.jpg) then wire it up to either a micro switch or keyboard encoder then.....Bingo?
are they powered via PC power supply? If so, I'll just buy the cheapest bill acceptor and hook it up to my keyboard...
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Gary:
You should get a kick out of this, then. Funny stuff, but very true.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/extra-punctuation/6549-Extra-Punctuation-On-the-Left-4-Dead-Ban
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Now im really getting somewhere...this forum is awesome!
..........
so if i buy this....then wire it up to either a micro switch or keyboard encoder then.....Bingo?
are they powered via PC power supply? If so, I'll just buy the cheapest bill acceptor and hook it up to my keyboard...
....I'm seeing (at the very least) forum police in this future....