A versatile yet simple gaming development platform for a rather beginner?

Question

Hi,

I am interesting in game development. However, I am not sure what platform to choose. There are a few different platforms I have been considering so far:

• Microsoft XNA
  • Games only work in Windows and Xbox?
• JavaScript and WebGL
  • Bad performance. This is mainly due to JavaScript -- the language is essentially synchronous and even timers do not run asynchronously. The only good way to use JavaScript would be to utilize Web Workers, which complicate the development quite a lot.
• Flash
  • A dying technology that I personally dislike and unsupport.
• C++ and OpenGL
  • Cross-platform compliant all the way, but very hard to develop games.

Am I missing anything worth considering? What I am looking for is a simple yet enough powerful to make 2d and basic 3d games and being able to run it on as many platforms as possible.

Also, is it possible to run XNA games on Linux/Mac? What about mobile?

Answer 1

You should probably look at a framework that allows the use of Java/C++ but takes away some of the pain.

For C++ take a look at Ogre. For Java take a look at jMonkeyEngine.

If you're going to be targeting mobile devices incl. iPhone/iPads too look at something like Unity/Unity Pro which supports JavaScript, C# and a dialect of Python and can publish out to multiple platforms.

Answer 2

If you don't mind spending some money, you might want to look at Torque.

For anything advanced you'll need to use C++, but for simple games, the TorqueScript is fine. They currently support Windows, Mac and iPhone/iPad, athough the Mac and iPhone/iPad support is usually less than the Windows support. But still pretty good for most things.

You can also publish the PC games to the web browser with their ActiveX and NP browser plugins.

They also support some consoles. For XBox they have a version of the engine that is built on top of XNA, and you can also get a version that is built on top of the native XBox SDK. I believe they've also gotten it going on PS3 as well. For the XBox and PS3 native stuff, you're going to be looking at some real money though.

Answer 3

You'll get better answers in http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/

Answer 4

WebGL and Javascript and canvas are getting a lot faster now, thanks to typed arrays and native animation support and hardware rendering, see for example: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/08/more-efficient-javascript-animations-with-mozrequestanimationframe/

(download the nightly version of firefox minefield to try it out)

There are various webgl game frameworks available already (see the 'learning webgl' site for info).

It's not going to work on mobile/tablet platforms though probably for a good while.