[Ocaml-biz] Java and Games

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Steve Taylor wrote:
>
> Getting back to OCaml:  I think a proof of performance piece like this
> would be excellent for furthering the adoption of OCaml.  I
> doubt you'll convince many PHBs with it, but you will get the
> youngsters (or people interested in game development).

Yes, and winning The Language Shootout benchmark is probably the best
way to do that, as previously discussed.
http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/  Doesn't require 3D skills either,
just optimization skills.  It's a way easier problem than the 3D engine
problem, it's mainly about cleaning things up over there.  Just today,
someone again posted that C# Mono has bogus scores.  Any of us could
volunteer to attach ourselves to the Shootout community, cause real work
to get done there, and rectify OCaml's standing due to these benching
errors.  But it is work, and I personally haven't committed to doing the
work.  I've got more mundane things like "is Eclipse good?" to worry
about first.

> Something I'd
> really like to see is OCaml ports of Nehe's OpenGL tutorials posted on
> NeHe's site.  I swear I've seen the first few somewhere else (maybe
> packaged with Lablgl?) but it'd be great to have them on the site.  If
> there were 40+ real examples of Ocaml + OpenGL I think it
> would be a lot
> easier to convince aspiring game and visualization devs to
> try out OCaml.  What do people think about this?

Well, it's all very good.  My problem is, the several times I've made a
solicitation for allies on the 3D engine problem, none have stepped
forward.  So I just keep working day-by-day on whatever problem is
easier to work on, for this grand OCaml game of strategic conquest I'm
playing.

There's also the question of strategy.  I see 2: wrapping Nebula2
http://nebuladevice.cubik.org with SWIG http://www.swig.org vs. "from
scratch" OpenGL examples.  I've yet to decide which strategy I'm
pursuing.  They're both a lot of work, they both have major functionalty
that's missing.  LablGL, for instance, does not support GL Shader
Language currently.  In fact I think the binding may be against OpenGL
1.1 or something similarly old.


Cheers,                     www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every           Seattle, WA

Taking risk where others will not.