Novashell


Pleng

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 28, 2006
Messages
3,030
For years I have been searching for a game creation system which was both powerful and simple to use. Everything I tried was either too simple, and hence not powerful enough to develop the games I wanted (ie MultiMedia Fusion) or too complex and difficult to learn.

Then I discovered Novashell. It's only in beta stages but it is an astounding system ideal for 2d platformers and RPGs. It has a visual development environment and uses a lua-based scripting system, and it runs on Windows, MacOS and Linux!

I am currently (slowly) developing my first complete game for the system and would love to port it to Pandora. I was wondering if any of the more techincally apt guys could have a look at Novashell and provide any feedback on how difficult (or easy) it would be for the engine to be ported to Pandora.

Thanks
 
Looks nice - and complicated. ^^
I wish there could be a ARM-Linux Version of this to:

http://sgdk2.sourceforge.net/

with this you can make 2D Scrolling games even without coding-experience. ^_^ I try to leran this program to make some graphic-Tests with many many Parallax-Layers just for fun. :)
 
fusion_power said:
Looks nice - and complicated. ^^
I wish there could be a ARM-Linux Version of this to:

http://sgdk2.sourceforge.net/

with this you can make 2D Scrolling games even without coding-experience. ^_^ I try to leran this program to make some graphic-Tests with many many Parallax-Layers just for fun. :)



All you'd need is to make sure that Mono ran on the Pandora and then made sure that the thing worked nicely with it.

Now, having said this, anything C#-ish is chasing MS' tail until we dictate how the language, CIL, etc. work, not the other way around. You probably don't wanna go there. While it's "nice" and all, I keep questioning the wisdom of ANYONE doing anything with MS' dev tools like that- you're going to trip across a patent of theirs or somesuch like that. Every one of their tools is designed from the get-go to lock you into using just their stuff.

Lineus said:
Shouldn't be too hard, all the source is available... It uses ClanLib, not sure if that's x86 dependant or not, though. Looks fun, reminds me of GameMaker back in the day...</nostalga>
ClanLib works on x86 and PPC. All one would have to do is probably make sure we didn't trip up on endianness on building it and make sure we don't hose ourselves on resource usage (Not all desktop-centric cross-plat libs will be something that'll play nice within our memory constraints, large as they are... :D). If so, I'd say this is a good 2D engine choice for some types of homebrew titles.

As for complicated... It's a scriptable engine, more than anything else, intended for making 2D and 2D Iso games. It's little more complicated than any other engine, really. ;)
 
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My first reaction was revulsion, but after thinking on it a bit mono will most likely fit very well on the pandora and open the door to all sorts of stuff like this. Don't see the ram req but it works with maemo on the nokias. Just don't put it in core so they can easily delete it and it's apps to remove it if the m$ legal beast stirs.
 
Thanks everybody for all your feedback, although I'm not so sure I understand too much of what's being said! I kinda know about clanlib. It's sdome kind of games programming library that Novashell uses. I don't understand what Mono is, or what part of Novashell is M$ centric?
 
Pleng said:
I kinda know about clanlib. It's sdome kind of games programming library that Novashell uses. I don't understand what Mono is, or what part of Novashell is M$ centric?

They were talking about sdgk2 that uses C#.

On my side I would like to see some shoot'em up construction kit :D
 
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Sphinxter said:
My first reaction was revulsion, but after thinking on it a bit mono will most likely fit very well on the pandora and open the door to all sorts of stuff like this. Don't see the ram req but it works with maemo on the nokias. Just don't put it in core so they can easily delete it and it's apps to remove it if the m$ legal beast stirs.
You should go with your initial impressions in this case. As a rights holder of Copyrights and Patents (Though thankfully nothing even remotely resembling the crap MS has been filing... ;)), I can assure you that this
is not a game you need to go into with this sort of thinking, you can lose HARD.

IF MS has anything that sticks on the patent frontier, everyone responsible for it's promulgation, since it's an open project and you made such an assertion, will be held actionable for the infringements in question, be held liable for damages, and be made to make it go poof.

Mono's a non-play wherever it shows. Honest.

Laurent said:
On my side I would like to see some shoot'em up construction kit :D
That would be the toolchain associated with Quake3:Arena... >:) :D
 
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I took a quick look at ClanLib source code, looks like it uses SDL only for video, for input it uses X11, for sound it uses OSS and ALSA, its main focus seems to be for OpenGL not SDL. So it doesn't look like it will be a too easy port.
 
Hitnrun said:
I took a quick look at ClanLib source code, looks like it uses SDL only for video, for input it uses X11, for sound it uses OSS and ALSA, its main focus seems to be for OpenGL not SDL. So it doesn't look like it will be a too easy port.
Heh... If all you have for a tool is a hammer... ;)

1) OSS/ALSA is the device level API for sound on this device. SDL is a step up from that.
2) If we have X11, you'll have that. If not, you only need to add an abstraction layer for those pieces.
3) If it uses OpenGL, all one has to do is clean it up for ES support.

SDL is a means to an end.
ClanLib is a differing means to that end.

I'm not so sold on SDL that I'm going to exclude something that uses a complimentary or competing layer that can also be made available on the platform.
 
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Svartalf said:
Sphinxter said:
My first reaction was revulsion, but after thinking on it a bit mono will most likely fit very well on the pandora and open the door to all sorts of stuff like this. Don't see the ram req but it works with maemo on the nokias. Just don't put it in core so they can easily delete it and it's apps to remove it if the m$ legal beast stirs.
You should go with your initial impressions in this case. As a rights holder of Copyrights and Patents (Though thankfully nothing even remotely resembling the crap MS has been filing... ;)), I can assure you that this
is not a game you need to go into with this sort of thinking, you can lose HARD.

IF MS has anything that sticks on the patent frontier, everyone responsible for it's promulgation, since it's an open project and you made such an assertion, will be held actionable for the infringements in question, be held liable for damages, and be made to make it go poof.

Mono's a non-play wherever it shows. Honest.

Laurent said:
On my side I would like to see some shoot'em up construction kit :D
That would be the toolchain associated with Quake3:Arena... >:) :D



Everyone from the village idiot on up who ever published anything is automatically a copyright holder whether they know it or not and it doesn't qualify anybody to say shit about anything. If you've looked at what's been patented it's hardly a qualification of any kind either, that you seem to believe it makes you some sort of authority on it and give legal opinions without being a lawyer is more than a bit disturbing.
 
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Laurent said:
Pleng said:
I kinda know about clanlib. It's sdome kind of games programming library that Novashell uses. I don't understand what Mono is, or what part of Novashell is M$ centric?

They were talking about sdgk2 that uses C#.

On my side I would like to see some shoot'em up construction kit :D
Ouch. I used that before. Found it very difficult to use and unintuative.

So now I'm totaly confused. Is Novashell a possibility or not?! :unsure:
 
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Laurent said:
No I mean real shoot'em ups not a bl..dy FPS :p
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot_'em_up



Oh... Forgive my lack of caffeine induced stupidity, Laurent. ;) However, I think the engine that's the original topic of the thread seems to be capable of making one of those- though I think that's a bit of overkill using it in that mode.
 
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Svartalf said:
Hitnrun said:
I took a quick look at ClanLib source code, looks like it uses SDL only for video, for input it uses X11, for sound it uses OSS and ALSA, its main focus seems to be for OpenGL not SDL. So it doesn't look like it will be a too easy port.
Heh... If all you have for a tool is a hammer... ;)

1) OSS/ALSA is the device level API for sound on this device. SDL is a step up from that.
2) If we have X11, you'll have that. If not, you only need to add an abstraction layer for those pieces.
3) If it uses OpenGL, all one has to do is clean it up for ES support.

SDL is a means to an end.
ClanLib is a differing means to that end.

I'm not so sold on SDL that I'm going to exclude something that uses a complimentary or competing layer that can also be made available on the platform.

Oooops we are on the Pandora forum, sorry I was saying all that for the gp2x! :ph34r:
 
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Pleng said:
So now I'm totaly confused. Is Novashell a possibility or not?! :unsure:
C# is used by the OTHER framework mentioned, subsequently, in this thread. It's intended to be used for 2D sidescrollers. They're applying the "if all you've got is a hammer" thinking to the problem. They're thinking that C# coding is going to be less complicated than pinning events and lua scripting the results. And, this doesn't even get into the fact that Novashell's intended for quite a bit more than sidescrolling or that Mono's not exactly the brightest idea right at the moment. Not to rag on them, really, it's a cool framework, but it's just not the right thing for this stuff. They're more than welcome to do it on their own- just don't expect me to be interested in it's use on this platform.

Now, Novashell is pure C++, using ClanLib. Someone thinks that because it goes direct to the sound driver layer instead of through SDL, and emphasizes OpenGL instead of SDL, that it's going to be difficult to make it over here. This would be somewhat correct- they implemented the "2D functionalities" under SDL in ClanLib and that probably would have to be re-done to work with OpenGL/OpenGL ES before it could be used right as there's no good sense in having what is intrinsically two different thin shims with very similar functionalities linked at the same time... ;)

ClanLib's more of a replacement for SDL that more aggressively uses the systems base resources it sits on (Linux x86, Windows, and MacOS...). As such, with a little cleanup in the right directions, it can be very much used and Novashell probably would come over with little pain as long as it's endian clean.
 
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Thanks for clearing that up, Svartalf. I might see if the designer of Novashell has heard of Pandora and is at all interested in doing a port. Would open up homebrew games on the system to a whole new audience!



Laurent said:
No I mean real shoot'em ups not a bl..dy FPS :p
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoot_'em_up



Novashell could be used to create a shoot-em-up and a basic demo of how the engine would work has been posted here. It would require a lot of custom enitiy code, however, as many features required are not in the Novashell system as it currently stands. Of course, once somebody has created a shoot-em-up, hopefully the entity scripts will become avaliable as part of the system, meaning anybody will be able to create them :)
 
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Pleng said:
Thanks for clearing that up, Svartalf. I might see if the designer of Novashell has heard of Pandora and is at all interested in doing a port. Would open up homebrew games on the system to a whole new audience!
That was kind of my thoughts on the matter when I followed up on what it was. :D
 
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Svartalf said:
Sphinxter said:
Everyone from the village idiot on up who ever published anything is automatically a copyright holder whether they know it or not and it doesn't qualify anybody to say shit about anything. If you've looked at what's been patented it's hardly a qualification of any kind either, that you seem to believe it makes you some sort of authority on it and give legal opinions without being a lawyer is more than a bit disturbing.
Heh... Considering that while I'm not a lawyer, I have several Patents pending, been involved as an expert witness in several different patent litigations... You know what, keep going right on ahead- you know EVERYTHING, don't you? No skin off my nose, but you'll note that MWeston DID check into things when I brought up a concern that was legit as all get out. This is the same sort of thing.


Heh... Yeah Sphinxter.

Also remember that Svartalf has 20 years experience in the computer industry, which makes his views on any given topic all the more valid. And him quite old.
 
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Sphinxter said:
A load of off topic dull legal arguments and name slinging.
Svartalf said:
A load of off topic dull legal arguments and name slinging.
Sphinxter said:
A load of off topic dull legal arguments and name slinging.

yawn

Back on topic. Seth, the creator of Novashell, has been introduced to the Pandora project and seems quite keen on seeing it run on Pandora.
 
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