On 13 December 2013 22:37, Szymon Gatner <noemail@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thursday, 12 December 2013 at 10:43:24 UTC, Manu wrote:
>
>> So, I'm a massive fan of music games. I'll shamefully admit that I was
>> tragically addicted to Dance Dance Revolution about 10 years ago.
>> Recently,
>> it's Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
>>
>> I quite like the band ensemble games, they're good party games, and great rhythm practise that's actually applicable to real instrument skills too.
>>
>> The problem is though, that Neversoft and Harmonix completely fucked up
>> the
>> GH and RB franchises. Licensing problems, fragmented tracklists. It's
>> annoying that all the songs you want to play are spread across literally
>> 10
>> or so different games, and you need to constantly change disc's if you
>> want
>> to play the songs you like.
>>
>> I've been meaning to kick off a guitar hero clone since GH2 came out. I started one years ago as a fork of my Guitar Hero song editor for PS2, and I added support for drums before GH4 or RB were conceived, but then when they announced those games they stole my thunder and it went into hibernation.
>>
>> I'm very keen to resurrect the project (well, start a new one, with clean
>> code, in D).
>> Are there any music game nerds hanging around here who would be interested
>> in joining a side project like this? It's a lot more motivating, and much
>> more fun to work in a small team.
>>
>> It's an interesting union of skills; rendering, audio processing, super-low-latency synchronisation, mini and communications processing, animation, UI and presentation.
>>
>> I have done all this stuff commercially, so I can act as a sort of project lead of people are interested, but haven't tried to write that sort of software before.
>>
>> It also seems like a good excuse to kick off a fairly large scale and performance intensive D project, which I like to do from time to time.
>>
>
> Hi, I am experienced C++ programmer, recently switched to indie gamedev (1
> title released commercially, another on the way). I am really interested in
> this for 2 reasons:
> 1) a chance to work with someone of your experience
> 2) as soon as it is possible (that would be D working on iOS) I would like
> to do a transition from C++ to D in our projects so new experience in D
> (and in the industry) is just perfect
>
> Please consider me!
>

Awesome.
Consider yourself considered! Although open-source doesn't really have
try-outs. Just make pull requests, and if it's suitable it gets merged;
you're now a contributor! :P

I'd really like to use this as an excuse to push D-on-iOS/Android forward. The arm compiler more-or-less works, we should definitely try and apply it. iOS or Android are both relevant modern targets.

I'm encouraged by the number of interested people actually!
I thought it would be a nice idea - fun community side project which
stresses lots of the aspects of D which I feel don't get enough attention;
real-time, low-latency, cross-platform...
One of the key reasons I put it to the forum like this, was because I'm
interested to get other contributors who might not be typical game coders,
and try and get contributors who would write more idiomatic D code than I
would involved to keep me in check.
My D code is kinda C-ish... I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing,
but I want to see what an ambitious (commercial-grade) game looks like
written in D, not in C-ish-D. It'll be a great case study, and a fun
project.

I'll get a project skeleton together soon. I'm off to do the family
christmas thing from tomorrow, but I'll get to it after that, next time I'm
sitting here wondering what to do. Or perhaps sooner, about 5 minutes after
the next time my girlfriend fires up Guitar Hero ;)
I'll populate the issue tracker with a task-list for a first-playable
milestone as I see it, and people can join and grab bits that they like.

On 13 December 2013 23:06, Rikki Cattermole <alphaglosined@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Friday, 13 December 2013 at 12:37:21 UTC, Szymon Gatner wrote:
>
>> Hi, I am experienced C++ programmer, recently switched to indie gamedev
>> (1 title released commercially, another on the way). I am really interested
>> in this for 2 reasons:
>> 1) a chance to work with someone of your experience
>> 2) as soon as it is possible (that would be D working on iOS) I would
>> like to do a transition from C++ to D in our projects so new experience in
>> D (and in the industry) is just perfect
>>
>> Please consider me!
>>
>
> From the sounds of it, it'll be a community project so no worries, just
> join in.
> Have a talk with the GDC compiler guys about helping with ARM support and
> getting on iOS. They could definitely use the help!
> Although from my knowledge there probably will be issues with tool chain
> not verified by Apple.
>

One step at a time :)
It doesn't need to be released on the appstore, a running proof of concept
would be a nice first step.
Probably easier to start on Android though, and perhaps even more relevant
these days.

On 13 December 2013 23:53, Szymon Gatner <noemail@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Friday, 13 December 2013 at 13:06:16 UTC, Rikki Cattermole wrote:
>
>> On Friday, 13 December 2013 at 12:37:21 UTC, Szymon Gatner wrote:
>>
>>> Hi, I am experienced C++ programmer, recently switched to indie gamedev
>>> (1 title released commercially, another on the way). I am really interested
>>> in this for 2 reasons:
>>> 1) a chance to work with someone of your experience
>>> 2) as soon as it is possible (that would be D working on iOS) I would
>>> like to do a transition from C++ to D in our projects so new experience in
>>> D (and in the industry) is just perfect
>>>
>>> Please consider me!
>>>
>>
>> From the sounds of it, it'll be a community project so no worries, just
>> join in.
>> Have a talk with the GDC compiler guys about helping with ARM support and
>> getting on iOS. They could definitely use the help!
>> Although from my knowledge there probably will be issues with tool chain
>> not verified by Apple.
>>
>
> Thing is, I feel nowhere near qualified to work on a compiler. And compiler is really just a beginning. Even with Xcode preparing iOS app that is written in C++ and not Objective-C is still far from easy.
>

Really? Everything I've ever written on iOS was in full C++, with just one
.m file to boot, and marshall the view and input events :)
I think doing the same with D would be equally trivial. A game doesn't need
access to the full iOS UI library. Any OS service calls can be wrapped in C
functions in the marshalling .m file.

On Friday, 13 December 2013 at 14:48:13 UTC, Manu wrote:
> On 13 December 2013 23:06, Rikki Cattermole <alphaglosined@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Friday, 13 December 2013 at 12:37:21 UTC, Szymon Gatner wrote:
>>
>>> Hi, I am experienced C++ programmer, recently switched to indie gamedev
>>> (1 title released commercially, another on the way). I am really interested
>>> in this for 2 reasons:
>>> 1) a chance to work with someone of your experience
>>> 2) as soon as it is possible (that would be D working on iOS) I would
>>> like to do a transition from C++ to D in our projects so new experience in
>>> D (and in the industry) is just perfect
>>>
>>> Please consider me!
>>>
>>
>> From the sounds of it, it'll be a community project so no worries, just
>> join in.
>> Have a talk with the GDC compiler guys about helping with ARM support and
>> getting on iOS. They could definitely use the help!
>> Although from my knowledge there probably will be issues with tool chain
>> not verified by Apple.
>>
>
> One step at a time :)
> It doesn't need to be released on the appstore, a running proof of concept
> would be a nice first step.
> Probably easier to start on Android though, and perhaps even more relevant
> these days.

As a indie I can tell you that Android is ridiculously hard (or impossible) to make a living on... Google made it so easy to install apps that piracy is a norm. Apple has its flaws (Xcode was a horrible horrible thing before very recently when they switched to clang) but there is a chance to get your investment back at least.

On Friday, 13 December 2013 at 14:50:18 UTC, Manu wrote:
> On 13 December 2013 23:53, Szymon Gatner <noemail@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Friday, 13 December 2013 at 13:06:16 UTC, Rikki Cattermole wrote:
>>
>>> On Friday, 13 December 2013 at 12:37:21 UTC, Szymon Gatner wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi, I am experienced C++ programmer, recently switched to indie gamedev
>>>> (1 title released commercially, another on the way). I am really interested
>>>> in this for 2 reasons:
>>>> 1) a chance to work with someone of your experience
>>>> 2) as soon as it is possible (that would be D working on iOS) I would
>>>> like to do a transition from C++ to D in our projects so new experience in
>>>> D (and in the industry) is just perfect
>>>>
>>>> Please consider me!
>>>>
>>>
>>> From the sounds of it, it'll be a community project so no worries, just
>>> join in.
>>> Have a talk with the GDC compiler guys about helping with ARM support and
>>> getting on iOS. They could definitely use the help!
>>> Although from my knowledge there probably will be issues with tool chain
>>> not verified by Apple.
>>>
>>
>> Thing is, I feel nowhere near qualified to work on a compiler. And
>> compiler is really just a beginning. Even with Xcode preparing iOS app that
>> is written in C++ and not Objective-C is still far from easy.
>>
>
> Really? Everything I've ever written on iOS was in full C++, with just one
> .m file to boot, and marshall the view and input events :)
> I think doing the same with D would be equally trivial. A game doesn't need
> access to the full iOS UI library. Any OS service calls can be wrapped in C
> functions in the marshalling .m file.

That is exactly what I do too, all C++ + some .mm files. I rather meant debugging capabilities of Xcode (well now mych better in v5 but still crap compared to VC), code signing, provisions and a need to use command line instead of IDE for archiving etc. Tbh I am using CMake to keep my projects portable so that is a part of a problem but still ;)

On 14 December 2013 00:54, Szymon Gatner <noemail@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Friday, 13 December 2013 at 14:48:13 UTC, Manu wrote:
>
>> On 13 December 2013 23:06, Rikki Cattermole <alphaglosined@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>  On Friday, 13 December 2013 at 12:37:21 UTC, Szymon Gatner wrote:
>>>
>>>  Hi, I am experienced C++ programmer, recently switched to indie gamedev
>>>> (1 title released commercially, another on the way). I am really
>>>> interested
>>>> in this for 2 reasons:
>>>> 1) a chance to work with someone of your experience
>>>> 2) as soon as it is possible (that would be D working on iOS) I would
>>>> like to do a transition from C++ to D in our projects so new experience
>>>> in
>>>> D (and in the industry) is just perfect
>>>>
>>>> Please consider me!
>>>>
>>>>
>>> From the sounds of it, it'll be a community project so no worries, just
>>> join in.
>>> Have a talk with the GDC compiler guys about helping with ARM support and
>>> getting on iOS. They could definitely use the help!
>>> Although from my knowledge there probably will be issues with tool chain
>>> not verified by Apple.
>>>
>>>
>> One step at a time :)
>> It doesn't need to be released on the appstore, a running proof of concept
>> would be a nice first step.
>> Probably easier to start on Android though, and perhaps even more relevant
>> these days.
>>
>
> As a indie I can tell you that Android is ridiculously hard (or impossible) to make a living on... Google made it so easy to install apps that piracy is a norm. Apple has its flaws (Xcode was a horrible horrible thing before very recently when they switched to clang) but there is a chance to get your investment back at least.
>

It's true. But this project isn't intended to make money, so at least if we can proof-of-concept, then we're one step closer than we were.

On 14 December 2013 01:09, Szymon Gatner <noemail@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Friday, 13 December 2013 at 14:50:18 UTC, Manu wrote:
>
>> On 13 December 2013 23:53, Szymon Gatner <noemail@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>  On Friday, 13 December 2013 at 13:06:16 UTC, Rikki Cattermole wrote:
>>>
>>>  On Friday, 13 December 2013 at 12:37:21 UTC, Szymon Gatner wrote:
>>>>
>>>>  Hi, I am experienced C++ programmer, recently switched to indie gamedev
>>>>> (1 title released commercially, another on the way). I am really
>>>>> interested
>>>>> in this for 2 reasons:
>>>>> 1) a chance to work with someone of your experience
>>>>> 2) as soon as it is possible (that would be D working on iOS) I would
>>>>> like to do a transition from C++ to D in our projects so new
>>>>> experience in
>>>>> D (and in the industry) is just perfect
>>>>>
>>>>> Please consider me!
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> From the sounds of it, it'll be a community project so no worries, just
>>>> join in.
>>>> Have a talk with the GDC compiler guys about helping with ARM support
>>>> and
>>>> getting on iOS. They could definitely use the help!
>>>> Although from my knowledge there probably will be issues with tool chain
>>>> not verified by Apple.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Thing is, I feel nowhere near qualified to work on a compiler. And
>>> compiler is really just a beginning. Even with Xcode preparing iOS app
>>> that
>>> is written in C++ and not Objective-C is still far from easy.
>>>
>>>
>> Really? Everything I've ever written on iOS was in full C++, with just one
>> .m file to boot, and marshall the view and input events :)
>> I think doing the same with D would be equally trivial. A game doesn't
>> need
>> access to the full iOS UI library. Any OS service calls can be wrapped in
>> C
>> functions in the marshalling .m file.
>>
>
> That is exactly what I do too, all C++ + some .mm files. I rather meant debugging capabilities of Xcode (well now mych better in v5 but still crap compared to VC), code signing, provisions and a need to use command line instead of IDE for archiving etc. Tbh I am using CMake to keep my projects portable so that is a part of a problem but still ;)
>

Indeed, but I would just never try and debug the iOS build :)
I always debug the PC build, and then occasionally you need to fix a
straggling iOS specific issue... but they're typically few and far between,
particularly if your tech has good portability to start with.

On Friday, 13 December 2013 at 15:28:41 UTC, Manu wrote:
> On 14 December 2013 01:09, Szymon Gatner <noemail@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Friday, 13 December 2013 at 14:50:18 UTC, Manu wrote:
>>
>>> On 13 December 2013 23:53, Szymon Gatner <noemail@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>  On Friday, 13 December 2013 at 13:06:16 UTC, Rikki Cattermole wrote:
>>>>
>>>>  On Friday, 13 December 2013 at 12:37:21 UTC, Szymon Gatner wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>  Hi, I am experienced C++ programmer, recently switched to indie gamedev
>>>>>> (1 title released commercially, another on the way). I am really
>>>>>> interested
>>>>>> in this for 2 reasons:
>>>>>> 1) a chance to work with someone of your experience
>>>>>> 2) as soon as it is possible (that would be D working on iOS) I would
>>>>>> like to do a transition from C++ to D in our projects so new
>>>>>> experience in
>>>>>> D (and in the industry) is just perfect
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Please consider me!
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> From the sounds of it, it'll be a community project so no worries, just
>>>>> join in.
>>>>> Have a talk with the GDC compiler guys about helping with ARM support
>>>>> and
>>>>> getting on iOS. They could definitely use the help!
>>>>> Although from my knowledge there probably will be issues with tool chain
>>>>> not verified by Apple.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Thing is, I feel nowhere near qualified to work on a compiler. And
>>>> compiler is really just a beginning. Even with Xcode preparing iOS app
>>>> that
>>>> is written in C++ and not Objective-C is still far from easy.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Really? Everything I've ever written on iOS was in full C++, with just one
>>> .m file to boot, and marshall the view and input events :)
>>> I think doing the same with D would be equally trivial. A game doesn't
>>> need
>>> access to the full iOS UI library. Any OS service calls can be wrapped in
>>> C
>>> functions in the marshalling .m file.
>>>
>>
>> That is exactly what I do too, all C++ + some .mm files. I rather meant
>> debugging capabilities of Xcode (well now mych better in v5 but still crap
>> compared to VC), code signing, provisions and a need to use command line
>> instead of IDE for archiving etc. Tbh I am using CMake to keep my projects
>> portable so that is a part of a problem but still ;)
>>
>
> Indeed, but I would just never try and debug the iOS build :)
> I always debug the PC build, and then occasionally you need to fix a
> straggling iOS specific issue... but they're typically few and far between,
> particularly if your tech has good portability to start with.

LOL so I am not the only one he does iOS programming more on Windows than on Mac. Btw I was very surprised to see that most (if not all) attendees of DConf had Mac Books. I hate mine with passion.

On 2013-12-13 15:50, Manu wrote:

> Really? Everything I've ever written on iOS was in full C++, with just
> one .m file to boot, and marshall the view and input events :)
> I think doing the same with D would be equally trivial. A game doesn't
> need access to the full iOS UI library. Any OS service calls can be
> wrapped in C functions in the marshalling .m file.

No need for an Objective-C file. The Objective-C methods can be accessed through the C functions available in the Objective-C runtime from D. Although, as been mentioned many times before, that's verbose and cumbersome. Both are ugly solutions, don't know which is the least ugly.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg

On 13/12/13 16:35, Szymon Gatner wrote:
> LOL so I am not the only one he does iOS programming more on Windows than on
> Mac. Btw I was very surprised to see that most (if not all) attendees of DConf
> had Mac Books. I hate mine with passion.

How many of them had installed Linux in place of Mac OS? ;-)