Hi Lord,

There is more contents on Games with Smalltalk
 at Smalltalking list archive (and in your mother tongue :)

> I spoke about actual VM or Strongtalk because the
> speed of the VM for this things.

There is very small opportunities where you will
 need more speed from a VM like Squeak for
 writing games.
For example:
One of the circumstances will be for providing
 behavior for particle engines; most particle engines
 let you specify callbacks for manageements of attributes
 of each particle during it's "lifetime"... if you serve
 the callback with smalltalk the number of particles
 you can handle will be smaller that using native languages
 ... but your particles can be much more intelligent :-)

IMHO, you must not worry about this situations because
 are situations where you will know how to avoid the
 limitations when they sit in front of your tips.

As said here, most game production groups use scripting languages.
It is sufficient to do informal development of games;
 e.g. it is better than building games with formal design,
 but it is not enough to be competitive, nor to promote
 interdisciplinary development.
Games industry requieres profesionals of diverse areas and
 current tools do not help them to join efforts and expertice.
Smalltalk (as an open system a.k.a. Ambient :-P ) are a serious
 choice for non-formal development to promote
 interdisciplinary development.
Using a Smalltalk environment as a medium of expression
 is very important to help people that are not programmers
 to express in the game media/support.
The activities realized while developing using smalltalk
 are compatible with game development if used surpassing
 the limits of formal design.

best,
Ale.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lord ZealoN" <lordzealon at gmail.com>
To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list"
<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Saturday, October 14, 2006 5:33 AM
Subject: Re: Games with Squeak


> > Lord,
> >
> > I suspect which language you use is much less important than the tools
> > you use to make a professional game. The bar is very high and one
> > person, or even a small team, cannot make all the tools needed. Many
> > of those tools are purchase from 3rd parties for significant sums. At
> > least, that's true for the games that you mentioned. Also, quality of
> > game play is more important that the language it's written in, which
> > is a skill that takes years to learn by practice and failure and lots
> > of testing. For now, Smalltalk does not link to these tools very well.
> > Most are file based which is not so compatible with Smalltalk's image.
> > Managing large art content files and large quantities of them is
> > required which might put a strain on Smalltalk's memory management.
> > Professional games us a lot of tricks at the compiler level and code
> > architecture level to squeeze every bit of optimization at the expense
> > of ease of programming.
>
> I spoke about actual VM or Strongtalk because the speed of the VM for
> this things.
>
> >
> > Smalltalk's strength is that it's easy to change, but that may be a
> > weakness here. Often in professional games, you don't want the games
> > easy to change by the players because the temptation to cheat is too
> > large.
>
> I disagree. I know very goods games writen in python (ospace.net for
> example. The web is down now). Or python bindings for 3D engines, like
> Panda3D, or pyogre for OGRE3D. And, as all you say, squeak/smalltalk
> is faster than python
>
> >
> > If you have a game where it's good for the player to change the code,
> > then you may have an advantage with Smalltalk over other games.
> >
>
> I'm not thinking in develop a game (at the moment). Only I asked to
> myself about this, thinking in croquet but without collaboration.
> Croquet is a collaborative "space", I was talking about a
> solo/multiplayer game.
>
> I think smalltalk is great (well, forgot all the C/C++-VB-.NET-Java
> developers tells about it). And with an opengl bindings, ("easy" to
> do), and a "framework" upon it (not too easy), would be possible
> develop great games. With the croquet tools, the work about MDL files
> for example, are done, And Alice3D with Maxis in collaboration, would
> be a good tool. ODE is openSource and could be ported (well, but it's
> done i think) and Sound is done too. Multiplayer layer works (see
> Croquet) and Blender is the better opensource 3D suite, with scripts
> in python (easy to write an export to "squeak" files for example).
> Thinking in this, all the low layer, seems to be done, but, What about
> the speed?.
>
> I tried yesterday a "simple" application, BottomFeeder, writen in
> VisualWorks, and is slow. Then, a Game will be more slow than this.
>
> My knowledge about smalltalk is very low. I'm learning at slow steps
> because I don't have much time, but I'm ambitious. And I'm looking the
> Squeak's steps like an eagle :)
>
> Cheers.
>
> -- 
> ::Mi blog::
> http://blog.lordzealon.com
>
> Linux-User: #370919
>