I think this would be good to explore. Andreas Raab has made the 3D 
stuff in Squeak be able to use the OpenGL interfaces to the 
accelleration HW on most platforms (including the PC). This is 
probably a better route than using Direct X "directly".

Cheers,

Alan

---------

At 9:44 PM +1100 10/29/01, Patrick Castle wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I was paging through a computer magazine the other day and came across a
>development environment called Dark Basic.
>The concept was a simple language used to program 2D/3D games on IBM
>computers using Direct X etc.
>
>The concept was pretty good and I had a little play with a demo of the
>product.
>
>However, the more I looked at it, the more I thought that it made more sense
>to do this in Smalltalk - particularly Squeak.
>
>In my mind computer games seemed particularly suited to Object oriented
>programming with a aircraft being an instance of a class with its own
>individual behaviour flying over a landscape which could easily be an
>instance of a special kind of Squeak Morph.
>
>However, programming a game on an IBM PC would involve using platform
>specific tools like Direct X which would have to be built into the VM I
>imagine to maintain Smalltalk's platform independence. I'm assuming that
>Squeak's VM does not contain all these nifty tools, but is it likely to in
>the future?
>
>I know the ability to program 3D shoot-em-ups isn't exactly priority number
>1 for the Squeak movement, but I do believe it certainly fits into the
>scheme of things so I'm hoping the question doesn't seem out of line.
>
>So is the language that strives to offer more in the way of music going to
>go a little further into the realm of serious game playing?
>
>And no - don't ask me to do it. I still don't think I could reproduce the
>counter application at this stage.
>
>Regards
>Patrick
>
>"Happiness is the hidden behind the obvious."


--