PB Roadmap

Xombie · Post by **Xombie** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 3:22 am

I think Unicode support should be one of the big issues. As the world gets more global and applications are developed for other languages this will be important. Also for getting PB "out there". I can imagine a lot of countries would be interested in something as nice and inexpensive as this if it had native support for displaying controls in their language.

(also, I really really would like to implement Unicode in my own program

So of course I'm speaking out for my own interests! I mean... no... for the globalization of Purebasic!

)

akee · Post by **akee** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 8:19 am

Hmmm... Direct to the Console capability would be worth looking at rather then opening a separate window with OpenConsole.
Let the PrintN() perform like printf() in C/C++.

hello.pb

Code: Select all

PrintN("Hello World")

C:\>hello
Hello World

Then I could use PB to write more command line utilities....

akee · Post by **akee** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 8:22 am

freak wrote:The french are strange people...

and 1 of them named Fred is a great programmer.

akee · Post by **akee** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 8:29 am

Amiga5k wrote:Being a huge fan of the Amiga (I still own 3)

Can we still buy Amigas? I saw the Amiga-500 when it was released back during college days then but I was influenced by news articles that IBM clones and Windows 3.11 will be the next big thing. I guess if you have $$$, you will always be right... :roll:

blueznl · Post by **blueznl** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 8:41 am

amiga? you can buy mine...

unicode? yes please! and euh, wouldn't it be NICE to combine that with fixed length strings? <innocent look>

we'd need functions like:

Code: Select all

a.c[20] = ""
b.s = space(20)
;
a = AsciToUnicode(b)
b = UnicodeToAsci(a)

yes, i know, these are merely wrappers for api calls... but they would make life easier

(should this go into the wishlist request whatever forum? euh... nah... fred knows my... humble (ahum) point of view by now

Amiga5k · Post by **Amiga5k** » Sat Apr 23, 2005 2:58 am

I like the idea of the virtual processor. And yes, it would be cool if we could inline that, because then even inline asm would cross compile... (I think PB's ultimate goal should be the extermination of Visual Studio, er, I mean it should be complete code transparency across all supported platforms. Am I a dreamer?)

As far as Amigas go, I have three because:

- In 1986, one year after the 1000 was released, I was still figuring out how I could afford one ($1295US at the time - Think of what kind of power you can get for that money nowadays...). I already had a Commodore 64, so the thought of getting an Atari ST just didn't appeal to me (Besides, I hated Jack Tramiel who used to be in charge of Commodore). Anyways, although the Atari's processor was slightly faster than the Amigas (8mhz 68000 versus Amiga's 7.16mhz), the Amiga had the other features that were way ahead of anaything else out there at the time: Including the fairly new macintosh and the 'business computer' IBM - They were still barely pushing 64 simultaneous colors at the time compared to Amiga's 'revolutionary' 4096 simultaenous colors.
Mine had 512k (kilobytes!), of which the OS loaded into half. The extra 256k I bought later cost me over $300 (memory prices were insane back then). Anyway, I still have this one, although it dual-boots Kickstart 1.3/2.04 roms.

Then the A500 came out. I bought this one because, um, well because! Loaned that one to my brother for a few years, until the software dried up (couldn't buy it anymore

)

Then when the A1200 came out, with OS3.0, AGA graphics , etc, I had to have it! I even got the MASSIVE 80 MEGAbyte (for a measely $300+ extra) with an 'ec020 accelerator with a whopping 8 MEGS of ram (over $300).

So there we are. Now I do most of my Amiga playing...on WinUAE!

Russell

Shannara · Post by **Shannara** » Sat Apr 23, 2005 4:07 am

Amiga5k wrote:I like the idea of the virtual processor. And yes, it would be cool if we could inline that, because then even inline asm would cross compile... (I think PB's ultimate goal should be the extermination of Visual Studio, er, I mean it should be complete code transparency across all supported platforms. Am I a dreamer?)

Russell

I agree, I hope it takes out the likes of Visual Studio, but not that VS.net crap, that's a huge joke.

PB · Post by PB » Sat Apr 23, 2005 4:16 am

> I even got the MASSIVE 80 MEGAbyte (for a measely $300+ extra) with
> an 'ec020 accelerator with a whopping 8 MEGS of ram (over $300).

The thing was, though, that most full apps were only 1 MB in size, so an 80 MB
hard drive was more than enough. Same for RAM: 8 MB sounds small today,
but most apps for the Amiga only needed 1 or 2 MB to run. The Amiga rocked!
And like you, I enjoy playing my old Amiga games with WinUAE and on my Xbox.

Amiga5k · Post by **Amiga5k** » Sun Apr 24, 2005 4:32 am

That's true, PB.

Heck, the OS, before it went onto ROM, was on a single floppy!

That's why I have such a HUGE respect for the programmers from those days: They had to do so much with so little. Look at the amazing things that have been done with the "64K" (48k realistically) Commodore 64, for example, or the 2k (!) Atari 2600 VCS. Everything had to be written in very optimized assembler or else. No CD-ROMs to story massive amounts of level data, music, cut-scenes, etc. No huge storage devices, no super fast processors, or huge amounts of memory (I used to think my 64k extender for my C-64 was more than I would ever use

)

Anyways, in some ways it's good that we have the way we have it now, but in other ways it has made us a bit lazy...

Russell

DoubleDutch · Post by **DoubleDutch** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 9:23 am

The Atari VCS gave you 4k and 8k (at first) to fit your game into, Atari Space Invaders fit into 4k!!!!

Some people started coding the zx80/81 - that only had 1k standard, there were some quite good games published for it within 1k!

With the Atari 8-bit you had to fit a tape game into 16k (as most Atari's were 16k). Most Atari 8-bit carts were between 8k and 16k. The C64s standard 64K was a huge advantage.

The Famicom (NES) you has 32k at first, I did a game for that called Cabal - that used one of the biggest carts at the time ('cause of the graphics) - it was a massive 128k !!! That was in 1989, published 1990 ( http://www.rare.co.uk/games/timeline/all_timeline.html)

Then the Amiga & Atari's had to fit into 512k because too many machines has 512k!!! Nice... I used extra memory above 512k as a disk cache. What a waste...

imho, The main 'cause of the lazy programming (and therefore larger and slower code) was high level languages like C and compiled Basic.

I still use assembly for the MIPS and ARM machines, MIPS asm is just great, ARM isn't so bad either. Code is dramatically smaller when you use assembly. Some examples of what can be done on a PSX in asssembly are on my website.

For the PC I use PureBasic for most things now, it produces quite small code (still not close to asm though) and is fast to code in and compilation times are rapid.

I'm going to use PureBasic for the mac (when it arrives), 'cause i'm pretty lazy now.

I hope that Fred does a PureBasic for the ARM (PocketPC/Smartphone, etc) - A PocketPC PureBasic compiler would really increase his sales. As it also now shares the same Platform/SDK as the MS SmartPhone you could write programs that work on your phone too! Most of the OS calls are the same as WindowsXP, its just the processor thats changed.

-Anthony

GedB · Post by **GedB** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 9:36 am

Double Dutch,

You worked for Rare! Were you with them when they were still Ultimate?

DoubleDutch · Post by **DoubleDutch** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 12:31 pm

I worked for Zippo Games (They were basically a dev house working directly for Rare, they eventually got bought with the intention of becoming Rare-North). I left at that point, having been offered more control over what I "got up to" by Tiertex (arghh I hear you all say, and you would be right about Tiertex), Tiertex also offered me more money. I did game protection/disc protection for them and had pick of basically any Capcom project

I wasn't with Rare directly, but it was a Rare game if you know what I mean? Anyhow we weren't allowed to put our names in the games & Rare were a bit mean and didn't send me any free copies, so were Tiertex come to that. But I did get my initials at the top of the high score table, download a copy and see "ATB" at the #1 position! In "Mercs" (Commando 2 was its working title from Japan), USGold and Capcom didn't want the UK people to have any credits in the game, but on the ST (argh) and Amiga versions I managed to put my name if you press the keypad "*" key on the games frontend. The ST version of the game was accidently released unfinished btw! I was off work in the few days that USGold rushed the release and they picked up the wrong disks! I don't think that the version they release would allow the player to finish the ggame and it still has the clowns head weapon hidden in the water as you start the game, in the final version it would have been on level 5 or something. hehe

Anyhow, out of all the places I've worked with, Psygnosis has to have been the nicest (pre-Sony days of course). Sony took over and in my opinion things went downhill very quickly from there.

Most games software houses were like that (not letting you put your name in the game), as they wanted you to stay with them & not be "poached" by another company. One of my friends at the time had the nickname "fishkid" and a little known way of him proving he wrote a game was to make all the main characters turn into fish if you put the initials FSH or FISH in the high score table!

I think he's a postman now! Its a shame 'cause he was a really good games programmer.

Most of the good programmers are doing other things now, mainly because they didn't want to program in C or belong to a programming team, they liked (as I do) the single programmer/graphic artist approach. It tends to make better and more original games (in my opinion).

Sorry for going on a bit!

-Anthony

GedB · Post by **GedB** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 1:00 pm

DoubleDutch,

I really miss the early days of start programmers like Mathew Smith or Andrew Braybook. They worked hard to stamp out an individuals and just protect the corporate brand, didn't they.

I remember as a kid, becoming a games programmer was my dream. Sounds like I didn't miss out on too much.

DoubleDutch · Post by **DoubleDutch** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 1:42 pm

I really miss the early days of start programmers like Mathew Smith or Andrew Braybook. They worked hard to stamp out an individuals and just protect the corporate brand, didn't they.

They did work hard to spoil things - it was basically just greed. I have noticed though that new software houses (and now Nintendo) promote the authors of the games. In the case of Nintendo they have gone from one extreme to another!

I remember as a kid, becoming a games programmer was my dream. Sounds like I didn't miss out on too much.

I didn't mean to make it sound all bad, it was a great job. Loads of fun.

Just look at the videos supplied with retro collections (like Atari or Williams classics) and you will get some idea of how much fun it all really was. An inspiring time and the result was some great and classic games.

-Anthony

theNerd · Post by **theNerd** » Mon Apr 25, 2005 3:45 pm

DoubleDutch, thanks very much for your story! I appreciate it!

Game programming just isn't the same as it was back then when a kid in his basement could write a million dollar seller.