Heads up: I'm mostly discussing my Linux setup adventures in here, a lot of thoughts, a few plans made, but nothing directly on topic with my game's development. My post on next tuesday should be something more to see however.
As a python guy, I love python as much as the next python guy. But I've also always wanted to learn C++, it's a lower level language and anything python can't do well, C++ can.
C++ is generally considered "the" language to do "it" (it being practically anything that takes a long time, like game engine for example) since it allows the programmer the most control over what he is doing. Sadly however though because it offers so much control, you're more likely to make mistakes in it than most languages i've used, and it's not as easy to just pick up and use as C#, Python and HTML which i'm familiar with.
I'm hoping QT or QML at least iwll be about as easy as CSS though.
Whats driving me into QT now is that I want to be able to properly customize my login (display) manager in linux which uses QML, and I thought, since I want to learn QT anyways, why not now?
Strike 3 birds in one stone even and learn to use C++ with it.
Whats more is that I can also use this for android development.
If I learn QT properly, I could probably also offer the articy developers to port articy: draft to linux for them (not for free of course) which would be quite convenient for me since apart from video games, that is the only program I need to use that doesn't work on linux.
Report for today:
While I ain't working directly on my games, anything programming related can be considered game development since every line of code I write will contribute to my capabilities to create the game I want (without outside help that is)
I am still considering the mobile market as a means of getting funded. I do not want to use crowdfunding. I don't want to make early access games. That's not how I roll. If I will shoot for that, I will be making some 1$ games like drinking games, dirty little platformer RPGs and otherwise creative rpg style games. I'm sure they'll sell like freshly baked muffins.
I am going to pick up QT and C++ starting today. This will happen alongside with Python as well, since I already have some (prototype) code in python that is very very close to a finished state (i've nearly written an RPG base in Python already from the time before I put development on hold)
From this day onward until Lime is in a highly usable state, I will be using Sublime 2.0 text editor. No more Notepad++, and no more (fucking) Gedit. (Gedit got a major "update" and a graphicla overhaul, and it looks like something apple would make. It was such a massive turn off for me I instantly felt a need to get rid of it even if I had been living with it so far as the closest thing to notepad ++ linux had up till now) since I'm aiming to learn QT already, and i'm quite talented when it comes to programming (once I learn the languages that is) by nature. I may end up contributing to Lime so that I can replace Sublime faster.
Why replace sublime? it's proprietary, and it's not free, and I don't like these 2 facts about it, the latter in particular bothers me. Lime's developer also says ever since sublime 2.0 hit stable, sublimes develpoers have been rather unpredictable, for example they didn't do anything for a whooping 6 months after that release, and now they're working not too fast on sublime 3.0, not actually fixing the bugs in 2.0. But sublime will do, it's a good editor and much better than anything i've used up till this point, although I will need to take some time to learn it.
My Linux setup is closer to the stable state I want it to be in than ever before right now. My keyboard works (first thing I did, hardest thing I've ever done in a computer) my speakers work (barely, i have some pulseaudio problems that need solving... mother of fuck... work already!), I've got Enlightenment installed as my preferred desktop environment, but I have a perfectly fine KDE setup installed right next to it if I want something more... stable... (I installed it to troubleshoot pulseaudio problems since I know enlightenment has some associated with it and I can't be dealing with 2 things at a time when troubleshooting, that's bad practice) i've got SDDM display manager set up and partially configured to my liking (need QML knowledge to finish the job) in short, all i've got left is some configuration. "Details & Eyecandy" if you will.
Report for the next day:
Woops. My internet broke and I couldn't post this on time, but I'm not worried since I haven't been active here anyways. Life is becoming more and more clear with time but right now I'm in the middle of a bit of confusion.
But as a bonus this entry has more stuff in it. Woo.
Amazing things happened today, the ghost in my machine turned to my side instead of against. My sound FINALLY fucking works. If anyone has an X-Fi titanium card in linux that doesn't output surround sound properly (which I assume can happen if you use a minimalist distro that does not use pulseaudio) installing pulseaudio fixed it for me. Surprisingly enough though I didn't actually need pulseaudio for my sound to work. I was having (major) problems with pulseaudio, so I decided I wanted to give alsa a second try. I just said "fuck it all" and uninstalled this disgraceful piece of software and my sound still worked. Without the problems I had with pulseaudio (which were like 6 big ones). I am jumping to the conclusion that one of pulseaudio's dependencies fixed my sound, but I'm not overly inclined to find out.
Other than this, apart from a bunch more of linuxy stuff, not much happened. Not much but this means my Linux installation is finally stable and usable enough for me to use it instead of windows for everything except for playing windows games, but even that I may end up fixing with some VGA-Passthrough goodness (attempt 3 if I recall correctly) one particularly wonderful thing is that I can configure linux to automatically upscale any and all 2.0(stereo) sound source to 5.1(surround) through code, whereas in windows' case I have an option to do it that has a 50% chance to work. It's broken with flash player if I recall correctly (big deal.) and depending on settings, it can break in media players as well. But in linux, just a little bit of code in asound.conf and all is well. (Sound was really the only thing holding me back) But to get back on topic before I go, here's a snippet from my DA journals about my priorities regarding the game.
In game development what's next?.
1: Storyline development for the first game i'm making
2: Global lore and world map creation and design (god damnit the world map part really gets me, but I just had an idea that maybe I should try to design it by racial preference, for example humans are capitalists so their cities will usually either by position as needed for military or economical reasons, garax don't care, undeads build all their stuff to defend from others so military, again, demons build wherever the fuck they want.... yeah I can work out some system like that, but first i'd need to develop the geography, the base land)
3: Code, Code, Code, Code, Code (Prototyping, Testing out various programming languages for this and that (like QT and C++ which are next in line) as well as other game engines)
4: Moneymaking; develop this or that mobile phone app. I may end up doing this sooner rather than later depending on how keen the government is on renewing my pension.
5: Everything else (including but not limited to data gathering (real life stories or research on things my games touch on), playing other games to learn more about their design, 3D modeling and animation.
There you have it. Expect a more on topic post 2 days from now. This one was mostly just preparations for developing on linux. I only wrote this in fact because I was loosely playing with programming. In other words, this whole post may seem off topic, but it is loosely related to my game's development. After all I intend to develop in linux as it is a most convenient work environment, and I need a working linux installation for playtesting (this was only hard to set up because I idiotically bought hardware that's less than compatible with linux) in other words, I have been setting up my preferred work environment. Today (hopefully), on the day after these two, i'll give VGA-Passthrough one last try before giving up on it. I have high hopes this time around. I didn't actually get around to learning QT or C++ in these days, but I did install the QT creator, so soon enough I will get around to it, but theres no rush in that, it's a side-track kind of thing.
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