pouët.net

packed with upx...

okay, i think i'll stay with delphi for a while now... thx alot :)
if i would get those darn quaternions to work, gna...

Delphi simply rulez.
Especially if exceptionally talented people were able to create such a great, and fantastic piece of art as this with it...
I believe in delphi power!!!

Personally, I dont think there's anything wrong with delphi, what really matters, is the production itself, not the language used to create it.

even worse.
but just work with that what works for you.

I've been using both C and object-pascal for a while. C is somewhat faster and smaller, and i prefer using it for software rendering and intros. But for accelerated demos i use pascal, because its a much more elegant language, especially when it comes to OOP. I find OOP in C++ a complete mess. The syntax is based on wierd characters rather than words, which i think makes C/C++ code much hearder to read, at least for those who have not written the code themselves. But the whole language thing is just a matter of taste and touch. But i would not reccomend delphi for intros an cpu-heavy code

Compiler performance isn't really that important anymore since we have radeons/geforcefx, if you know how to program shaders that is. I don't know how fast Dephi's D3D(X)/GLUT routines are (they're ported right?) but you can always write your own routines or maybe some pascal guru has put a fast math library online. I've just watched RTR by AINC which seems to use opengl, it ran smooth and looked very good so maybe that's an option for you.

[quote]The bottleneck in modern demos arent CPU, but GPU, ...[quote]

well that pretty much depends on what you're doing. it's not very common (yet) with a raytraced demo which requires a strong GPU. and, i know you opinion on raytraced demos, thanks. :)

bb code sucks.

maybe cpu isnt very important if you're just rotating some static objects or doing some post filters, true.

smash:
Ehh, forgot about vertexshaders or what?

And still, if you do some "dynamic" vertexprocessing with CPU , then your CPU will most likely stand and wait on the blockings to be able to upload the data..

And seriously, how many demos does dynamic stuff that cant be done with shaders (add and take meta shit).

remarks like these also make my toes curl in agony.

Jcl et.al., I'm not shouting at you, but this is the real world:

So what if C# runs fast or your graphics card does all the work for you, your programs will be inferior to mine. Why?

Because your software only runs on MS dot-whatever.

They do not run on *ix. Or MacOSX for that matter which nowadays is included in *ix. Oh, look! A growing market! Still, they run just fine on MS Windows. So far anyway..

Mine does, well, at least you don't have to rewrite the whole program, some tweaking is needed of course...

I don't rely on any MS technologies, technologies that would take more time to re-implement on other platforms than writing the actual software with existing solutions. EOD.

Or maybe you have found a way to compile and run C# + DirectX on HP-UX or IRIX workstations?

This should be reason enough to stay away from MS "inventions".
When we have multi-platform tools, why don't people use them damnit! Why make things more complicated when you can just stick to C++?

However, if you're just doing silly simple stuff for yourself - heck use C#! And use Visual Basic too!` I hear old Visual Basic versions makes nice, big jucy EXE files. ;)

However, if you don't look forwards and upwards, your evolution will stall. Oh well, not my problem...

Notes:
I'm still using WinXP for development as long as I like to, but there's not much left that binds me to this platform anymore... I'd rather spend $1000 dollars for my company on a party or a trip than paying MS licenses for their next dot-whatever.

I code in C++, use mingw32 for compilation (dev-c++ IDE), gfx API is OpenGL.

Macosx runs on the same gfx chips as windows computers these days, ati and nvidia. So does SGI hardware. My friend's HP-UX workstation has FireGL of some generation i beleive..

My 2 cents...

j/jaw: who really cares about you and your "*ix" (it's actually called "*nix") compatibility? noone really watches demos on irix. not that they would run fast enougth anyway.

"When we have multi-platform tools, why don't people use them damnit!"
because they suck. mingw is a horrible compiler compared to msvc. and oone really cares if you are platform-bound or not. Most of us make demos on our spare time, for fun. Therefore we use what we are most comfortable with. Some use windows, some use linux, some use delphi, some use c++. Hell, even some use c#.

Besides from that, the day demos are considered anything but nasty platform-hacks, i will quit the scene.

now to the payoff: j/jaw... you suck.

j/jaw: i can tell from your lameass post that you have never been developing on anything else than windooozze and read ZlzzhashDoottt.

What software costs in licenses are NOTHING compared to development costs, why the fuck do you think MS dominates the developer world with their Visual Studio?

Sorry, but Xcode/Project builder on OSX is complete crap compared to VS, so is all other opensource stuff for other un*x systems..

Oh, and forgot .NET *IS* an *OPEN* platform? wich is FREE! Compiler is free! SDK is free! Meaning: you get prety much same shit as you get with GCC ! Hurray!

Oh, and forgot about mono? or DotGNU ? Baah, lamer :)

Anyways, theres nothing wrong on GCC as a compiler, exept that its fucking slow, but VC++.NET 2003 is also starting to get slow now that it supports templates and such ;) But still faster than GCC anyhow..

Oh and yes, i do write code that is portable, you should try it, fucker.

j/jaw: i've been coding C++ for some time already, before that I used to write C, and most of my code (except for DOS-based demos) worked easily on multiplatform... in fact, porting any of my windows demos to any *nix would be a matter of rewriting the window handler...

but I code demos for fun, and doing C# is funnier than doing GCC, Windows is easier and more comfortable than unix... i don't have a f***ing macintosh... and I'll write portable code whenever i'm REQUIRED (that means: for work) to do it... meanwhile, I'll code in whatever I want... if you can't watch it on your l33t hax0r r3d h4t, is your problem... i don't write demos for you, i write them for me :-)

Consequently, you appear not to release'm at all? ;)

lately, you're right knos... i don't have time for fun :D
(damn work ;D)

sorry guys, i was a bit stressed out/out of focus/biased last night.. my apologies for the sometimes harshe tone in my post..

i hope i don't mess up this post as well ;)

kusma/excess, yes, for demos I totally agree with you.. I'm not primarily talking about demos though. Maybe my post didn't show that.. my fault.. well, it's like. the stuff I do is similar to demos but a bit more general..

I would think it gives extra karma points if a demo or whatever could run on more than one platform though, don't you?

In what advantages does msvc give over mingw? Result-wise, as compiler, not IDE.. I'd love to know so I can switch if that gives me an advantage!

arneweisse:
I did not just mean MS visual studio, there's office and OS licenses too.. For a non-corporate person or a startup it's real money. The opensource equivalents are really catching up.. MS Office is expensive, OpenOffice cost 5 minutes download time on broadband..

I agree that most opensource IDE's have a long way to go. I don't use them for that reason. DevC++ is the only one that I like a bit so far of these attempts. And it has room for improvement as well..

I just can't see a need or the advantage of another (wee, now multi-language) Java (.NET) when you have gcc which is already implemented almost everywhere? ;) Maybe .NET will be useful for multi-platform stuff once it's available everywhere..

I'm not considering DotGNU or mono for the same reason I don't consider .NET at the moment..

Yes, gcc is a bit slow in compiling.. not that big of a deal though. (Unless you compile the whole project all the time which you don't want to!)

Oh, I _am_ trying to write portable code! If i succeed is another matter though... :>

Jcl: yes, I guess it works for small things and for fun. I code not as much for myself as I code for others. But also it has to be fun! we'll see about the fun part later on, I will have some crap for you to play with in a month or two maybe.. see you on irc.. on a final note I find it to be fun supporting multiple platforms..

Oh well..

ok, that was a much better post, so I'll make mine better too ;D

Overall, I think writing portable code would be better, IF, a) your target audience actually uses other platforms.. or/and b) it doesn't cause a lot of trouble for the way you write code.

As far as I'm concerned... except for its obvious lack of maturity, I've never seen anyone saying bad things about C# once they have actually used it (and that doesn't mean writing a 'hello world')... yeah, it lacks templates, it lacks access levels for some stuff, and kinda other things, but hey, it's version 1.0, let it mature.

-Still-, with those things it's a lot of fun to code with, easy as shit, and pretty powerful -even- if it only runs on .net platform (which, currently is unavailable on other systems -except for Mono and DotGNU, but those are far from being complete-). Yeah, so what, my target audience is the 95% of computer users which use Windows at home or at work... i'm not pretty much concerned about the rest, and I think my target audience is large enough to make one-way code...

DirectX vs OpenGL... well, I have used OpenGL so far, and I'm yet to decide if keeping using OpenGL within .Net, or go with the Managed DirectX classes... either way, I don't care. My target audience is Windows users, as myself... if one day, someone makes .Net run flawlessly on other platforms, or port DirectX or whatever, hey, cool... but if noone ever does, that's ok with me too

I've been a Unix systems administrator in the past, (used SCO, AIX, Irix and Solaris at work, have had installed many Linux distros at home) but, since Windows 2000, I see no reason to keep using any Unix or Linux as a desktop user... for home, there's warez, and almost everyone does that... for work (I own a company), well, I do pay all licenses I need, but I'm earning money with them, so that's not a problem either.

This is not a 'Linux vs Windows' thread, which are pretty much boring, and, even with the right facts, you'll never convince any *nix user that Windows might do better for desktop usage (some times, also for servers, but I'll keep that apart) than *nix for some people. They always come with the 'it's free' tag, and well... I say, and will keep saying, that Linux is free only if your time is free (and mine isn't), as any learning curve in Linux or, almost any task you do with the computer, takes longer to do in Linux than in Windows (and I can say that coz I've worked with both)... also, generally, most Unixes are way more expensive than Windows, not just because of the software (most Unix licenses are, not only not free, but also very expensive), but also because running most Unixes on x86 architecture comes pure shit... give me any Solaris running on a UltraSparc, any AIX running on RS6000, or any Irix running on a nice SGI, and I might tell you that Unix is nice, cool, and fast... but also expensive like shit, and still not that nice for desktop usage. Give me a Red Hat linux running on a Pentium 4, and I'll go with Windows XP any day.

It's obviously my personal choice, but at least I've tried and kinda know what I'm talking about

btw, i am willing to see that 'crap'... i'll surely implement it :)

someone should remove that old gif file that people keep choosing as an avatar.
[/offtopic]

i'm using delphi too. don't write demos though...

you beat me to it, ie... I was going to suggest that j compare with
Actually, there are a lot that could be deleted... there are lots of (nearly?) identical Optimus avatars in there.
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I've used DevC++/MingW and Visual C++, and I actually like DevC++ better. The executables are smaller, creating a new empty project is a lot less counterintuitive, and at my level of sophistication the only thing I miss is the graph.h library... which I don't think VC++ has anyway? So free availability makes it the better choice. I've never gotten any sort of debugger working; I just use carefully placed printout statements, so I can't comment on that part.

I agree with Jcl about Linux. I'm pretty much an operating system agnostic. I think there's an operating system for me, but it sure isn't Linux (software too buggy and hard to find, not to mention installing the OS is a pain in the backside) or Windows (OS too buggy and too tied in to other software, and I have my misgivings about Microsoft). So I'll continue to use Windows because it's what I've got, until something better comes along.

Just because you didn't manage to make it work, it does not mean it's buggy. In fact, Linux software has proven to be alot less buggy than other platforms in the long run.



No, it's not, as long as you know where to find it. Purely as an example, with the Debian distro, any program is just an 'apt-get install <software_name>' away.

I am not going to evangelize Linux here (I am a zealot obviously), I cannot deny that Linux has its problems. However, those two you mentioned are not among them. Please, get your facts straight.

Best regards.

To contribute to the subject at hand, I am also known as a Pascal zealot. Having worked with Delphi, I consider it a pretty viable demomaking platform. I mean, if you can make demos with C# (an optimized bytecode interpreter), you'll be fine performance-wise with (compiled) Delphi.

The only big problem you will face with Delphi is that most demo-related libraries, code examples and APIs are in C/C++ making them a little more difficult to use. The Pascal syntax, of course, is only a matter of personal taste. My two cents of course.