Hi everyone,

Does anyone have an opinion on which version of Pascal, which Pascal compiler is "The" very best one for game creation . . . any type of games, from puzzles to first-person-shooters, loaded with graphics (2D and 3D)?

I�m asking about freeware versions at this point. But I'd also like a separate opinion on commercial compilers.

And I�m sure that everyone must have an opinion! What about Turbo Pascal, or Lazarus Pascal . . . all in all, what do YOU think is best suited for programming of all types of games?

I�d really appreciate it if you would all let me know what YOU think. I�ll listen to everyone�s opinion. One reason, is that I want to find out if it�s really true, that if you put two programmers into a room together, that you�ll get three opinions when they come out!

But mostly, I just want some good advice on which kind of Pascal I should put my time into. There�s never enough of it, and I don�t want to waste what I have checking out every kind of Pascal that I can download. And, when it is time for me to spent my money, I'd like to put it in the best product. That�s why I�m asking for this survey!

Thanks to everyone,

Anthony

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Does anyone have an opinion on which version of Pascal, which Pascal compiler is "The" very best one for game creation . . . any type of games, from puzzles to first-person-shooters, loaded with graphics (2D and 3D)?

Well FPC has several games packaged as demoes. Tetris, Samegame etc. Also the Delphi SDL headers work with FPC.

Moreover, you can see here

http://www.freepascal.org/wiki/wiki.phtml?title=Road_to_2.0&PHPSESSID=d88453e40de263c32e894e646d6eca4f

that being able to correctly compiling Quake2 (delphi version) is a target for FPC 2.0

I�m asking about freeware versions at this point. But I'd also like a separate opinion on commercial compilers.

Free: FPC definitely. Commercial: keep your source compilable with Delphi _and_ FPC.

Delphi is still better performing, but there is not much chance that Delphi will see any improvement in this field.

And I�m sure that everyone must have an opinion! What about Turbo Pascal, or Lazarus Pascal . . . all in all, what do YOU think is best suited for programming of all types of games?

Turbo Pascal is ancient, and can't access modern OSes. There is no standard way to access anything above 640x480x16. Forget about (ever!) accessing hardware acceleration etc etc.

Lazarus is FPC with a Visual classes hierarchy. It's the same thing.

I use FreePascal with Jedi-SDL for my games. FPC has several features I like that other pascal variants lack, such as function overloading.

I think that the real question isn't which pascal to use, but which API to use for graphics. IMO it isn't really possible to do games with the standard Graph unit. OpenGL is included with the FPC package so it would be a good choice for making games with. Simple Directmedia Layer is another good choice, if you're only interested in 2D graphics. Or, you could use SDL as a wrapper for OpenGL and get the best of both worlds.

Here's the web page for my current game project, GearHead:

http://www.geocities.com/pyrrho12/programming/gearhead/index.html

Screenshots are available at:

http://gearhead.roguelikedevelopment.org/screencaps.html

-
JH.

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Delphi is still better performing, but there is not much chance that

Delphi

will see any improvement in this field.

The Delphi compiler does not even support MMX, 3Dnow or any other enhanced instruction sets (except through the built-in assembler). Does FPC's code generator support the use of MMX, 3Dnow or other enhanced instruction sets without us having to delve into assembly?

Sly

No, because NMX is useless for compilers since it can't be mixed with FPU code. Since 1.9.2 FPC supports SSE2 for single and double float operations. It can be enabled using {$fputype sse2}

For {$ffutype sse2} info see also:

http://www.freepascal.org/wiki/wiki.phtml?title=Language_related_articles&PHPSESSID=761051219fe1dfed37c15a15d293a942

> > The Delphi compiler does not even support MMX, 3Dnow or any other

enhanced

> > instruction sets (except through the built-in assembler). Does FPC's

code

> > generator support the use of MMX, 3Dnow or other enhanced instruction

sets

> > without us having to delve into assembly? > > No, because NMX is useless for compilers since it can't be mixed with

FPU

So theoretically, depending on the bulk of the operations, a FPC-compiled application could be faster than a Delphi-compiled application if {$fputype sse2} is enabled. That rocks for game development.

Sly