PS2 Arcade style flight sims, and OpenGL v DirectX

mundane

Diamond Member
Jun 7, 2002
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1) Can anyone recommend a PS2 flight sim, that's less simulation and more arcade? I'm having a blast with GTA:SA helicopter and airplane flight/combat, and was wondering if there were other titles that offered a similar experience. However, I don't want a simulation - I don't want to have to monitor oil pressure in the left engine while changing the radar band frequencies and raising the right aft flaps 5 degrees. I'd rather X is go, square is air brake, and the other buttons left for weapons =). Any options? Thanks.

2) Cousin asked me to help him and friends program a side-scroller game. He has nearly no programming experience, but has made games (RPG maker 2K, etc). I, on the other hand, have some programming experience, but never really felt much of a pull towards programming games (playing, yes. Coding, no. I'll leave it to the pros).

Q: Should I recommend OpenGL or DirectX? Or something else? I just finished a Computer Graphics course, and we fooled around with OpenGL, so I suggested that. However, if windows is his target platform, I suspect the DirectX API might be cleaner, especially for sound and input. I'm concerned because I made a commitment to help, and don't want this little project to turn into a mess. =)

Thanks in advance,
Josh
 

JaakRandmets

Junior Member
Aug 27, 2004
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I can only reccomend you ogl, only thing dx has better than opengl is 2D rendering speed
ogl takes up much less memory
its easier to port game once its built it opengl
opengl is faster
and easier to code, dx is quite a cryptic
 

mundane

Diamond Member
Jun 7, 2002
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Thanks, that's the kind of feedback I was looking for. I've coded with OpenGL, but haven't dabbled in DX.
 

drag

Elite Member
Jul 4, 2002
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Well I am biased towards OpenGL because I like Linux. OpenGL is crossplatform, and DirectX is not.

There are a few toolkits and such that can help out a lot for when your making games and dealing with sound and such.

A couple examples:
openal is a cross-platform 3d audio library. It's free, it's open source. Used in everything from Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, even versions for Playstation 2 and Xbox. For instance its used in Ut2004. (also Ut2004/Doom3 uses .ogg files for it's audio.)

Then their is Opensource's answer to directX. (As you probably know Directx isn't just for 3d, it includes input/ouput contols and mice and all sorts of other stuff. OpenGL deals with 3d graphics only). it's LibSDL, or just SDL, or Simple Direct Media Layer. Uses OpenGL for the 3d portion. Again like OpenAL it's free and it's open source.

There are lots and lots of games and such being made for SDL, which is what it's designed for. But you can do otherthings with it.

Then something else you can check into is Python. Python is a scripting language like Perl. The nice thing about it is that it's a very simple language, but powerfull and it's easier to make relatively bug free code compared to using something like C, C++ or Java. It's also able to use modules and such built in C for when high speed performance is required. You can use OpenSDL with Python for when you want to bang out some nice, simpler games and such. Also completely usefull for everything from aplication development to CGI webpages.

All of that stuff is completely cross-platform, too. So it would be relatively easy to port things to other platforms in the off chance that one of your friends gets a IBook or installs a Linux server or whatever. ;)


(also if you want to get realy weird you can use things like SDL.NET to use .NET and make it cross platform thanks to the Mono project.)
 

mundane

Diamond Member
Jun 7, 2002
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Most excellent advice ... LibSDL is the DirectX counterpart I was fishing for. I've used Python before (on my internship), I'll bring the suggestion up. I don't know how much time I'll have to contribute to their effort, so the easier for them to code the language, the better.

And Ace Combat 4, thanks. It look as if it is in the Greatest hits collection.