Developing tools

[Gotanmarf]

Hi Brothers, good to see big progress.
I have question connected to process of creation Battle Brothers game. What kind of developer tools do You use for programming, painting and music?
For example for programming, do You use some kind of commercial game maker, or just C++ compiler (like from MinGW) with standard and free libraries (like SDL)?

[Rap]

Speaking for the programming side, we use Microsoft Visual C++ as a development tool. We make use of some free libraries, including SFML, PhysicsFS and Awesomium.

Out of curiosity, did you ever get the demo to run on your computer?

Overhype Studios - follow us!
Facebook Youtube
Twitter

[Gotanmarf]

Rap wrote:

Speaking for the programming side, we use Microsoft Visual C++ as a development tool. We make use of some free libraries, including SFML, PhysicsFS and Awesomium.
Out of curiosity, did you ever get the demo to run on your computer?

Thank You for memory!
I have problem with launching demo because I have old laptop with Windows XP, and with small disk space (I have about 700 MB free space for game), and I think how to do this without installing this service pack 3 (right now I can allow only SP2).
I think that Battle Brothers as a 2d game without advanced visual effects, should run easily on old computers too.
I can launch practically every good 2d game right now on my laptop (for example: Dwarf Fortress, Battle for Wesnoth, Age of Wonders Shadow Magic, Eador Genesis: New Horizons, Armageddon Empires, Stronghold, Tropico, Galactic civilisations 2, Patrician 3, Kohan 2, Alpha Centauri,… ), except those made by Game Maker developing tool.

[Gotanmarf]

Rap wrote:

We make use of some free libraries, including SFML, PhysicsFS and Awesomium.

Why not SDL lib (Simple DirectMedia Layer) ?
Extremely portable library and playable even on older hardware.

[Gotanmarf]

Why not SDL lib (Simple DirectMedia Layer) ?
Extremely portable library and playable even on older hardware.

I don’t see any answer, so I guess that lead programmer chose SFML because He likes object oriented frameworks, even at cost of portability of a project.

[Rap]

The use of SFML has nothing to do with the fact that a current version of Windows XP is required to install the combat demo. We use SFML precisely for cross-platform portability. SDL doesn’t add anything relevant to our needs that we haven’t already covered with SFML.

Advanced visual effects is a relative term; Battle Brothers makes use of shaders for some visual effects and to add variety to a limited selection of sprites, e.g. by changing their saturation and color, which allows us to get away with drawing fewer variants manually. Since we don’t have the time and resources to add compatibility for all possible hardware configurations, we concentrate on those that most people use (see: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/ – also keep in mind the game will be released in 2015). The game requires an OpenGL 3.0 compatible GPU because it made things more efficient for us and allowed us to concentrate more on the game itself rather than trying to get it to run using different rendering paths for different GPUs on OpenGL 2.1. It was a conscious decision to potentially forgo compatibility with video cards released before 2008 this way.

I’m sorry the game won’t run on your laptop, but as harsh as it sounds, we have to set priorities with our limited resources. Having the game run on old laptops with an OS that was released in 2001 and isn’t updated to a current version can not be one of them.

Overhype Studios - follow us!
Facebook Youtube
Twitter

[Gotanmarf]

Rap wrote:

…
I’m sorry the game won’t run on your laptop, but as harsh as it sounds, we have to set priorities with our limited resources. Having the game run on old laptops with an OS that was released in 2001 and isn’t updated to a current version can not be one of them.

Thanks for reply. Don’t worry. You just have different view on displaying pixels policy, just that. Pixels are just pixels. I’m from old school view – “re-playability and portability are above visual effects”.

[Gotanmarf]

Gotanmarf wrote:

“re-playability and portability are above visual effects”.

It is worth to mention here that word ‘portability’ should expands to hardware without graphical accelerator chips, but with sufficient processor, memory and pixels display. Those should be enough for 2d game, with option for switching visual effects on/off. But this is only my opinion.

[Author]

Posts