faber3d wrote: ↑Mon Apr 01, 2024 6:50 pm
Is important to say that at this moment LC only works for me to develop Minigames, not recommended for complex games.
Games come in many forms.
When complexity is mentioned, what is often meant is complexity with multiple moving objects, which leads to low frame rates - but we've also seen some fairly complex card games built with LC for example. And let's not forget the old classics like Myst (built initially with LC's progenitor), which while simple animation-wise was quite complex.
If/when the promised compiled scripts arrived, frame rates will likely improve significantly to the point of usability for 'action' games.
However, frame rates is not the real issue.
For complex games the developer/team need to design everything from scratch because there are no frameworks available. Nothing to assist the developer in creating maps/environments, storyboards, no graphics or sound libraries, etc.
Outside of LC, very often games are created in gaming IDEs, where there are frameworks and AV resources available to support the developer.
LC developers have to 'roll their own' for specific projects and to expand on this and build something that can be used generically and applied to any project, would be a large undertaking - but I would argue a valuable one.
Some time ago, in a thread discussing how to make LC more attractive to new users, I did post the idea that bespoke IDEs are
much more task-orientated and focus not on general programming, but on a specific domain might be actually more helpful.
Focusing on doing limited tasks with much more support for devs, doing it well and attractively and this may well be a more enticing entry point for new LC users. I would argue perhaps would do more than LiveCode Create to bring in new users - but understandably LC cannot let AI pass them by either.
The 2 IDEs I mentioned were an IDE for database-driven apps (similar to
FileMaker Pro) and and IDE for games (similar to
GameMaker).
I still use FileMaker Pro in my day-to-day because nothing comes close to the ease of use and speed of development, not even LC.
It can't do what LC can, but what it does it does well, attractively, and
very quickly. I can build an equivalent app in LC but will take at least x4-6 times longer, with much more troubleshooting and testing required. LC does have the potential to build nicer apps (also keeping in mind FMP can't produce standalones any more) - but nothing comes close to FMP as a RAD for database-driven apps.
Building such bespoke RAD environments is very much within the possibilities of LC and there are a few abortive attempts I've seen for creating database-driven apps (i.e where at least some abstraction has been applied) but these have never really taken because they don't really do enough and the argument then is why one should bother if you're going to have to do 80-90% of the app 'the normal way'.
I posted that comment very much with FMP in mind - because I, and I'm sure many others, have a need for it. I don't need GameMaker but I imagine it's a similar issue. You can do all that in LC, but it would probably take x10 as long.
These are large projects that would need significant resource to do well, so unless there is a super-motivated developer/team I doubt we'll see a
FileMaker Pro or
GameMaker equivalent in LC any time soon (sadly...). Or maybe it will just be a matter of the right level of AI built in to just do this all for you
