Hi Quentin, Actually, you can create cross-platform ports of your games using C# because it is largely cross-platform. I know for sure Mac OS and Linux have an open source .Net Framework called Mono that can run a number of Windows apps written in C# 2.0 and 3.0.I've even written several apps for Linux using Monodevelop, an open source IDE similar to Visual C# 2008, and using GTK-Sharp to create GUI apps for the Gnome desktop and that are completely compatible with the Orca screen reader.There is also a .Net wrapper for SDL called SdlDotNet for Windows, Mac, and Linux meaning porting games to those platforms are possible using SDL and the Mono Framework. Although, SdlDotNet is no better than PyGame or any other SDL based game API, but is an option for certain cross-platform games.
Not only that but Microsoft has several official versions of the .Net Framework for XP, Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server as well. There is even an official Microsoft .Net Framework for Windows Mobile devices which makes creating apps for smart phones and other devices that use Windows Mobile a fairly painless process. So if you are concerned about cross-platform development C# is fairly cross-platform compatible these days. I can't tell you it is fully accessible on Mac---as I have never tested it myself---but I've had excellent success developing apps for Windows and Linux using C#. As far as game APIs goes there are several available for C# .Net. First, there is SlimDX which is an open source .Net wrapper for DirectX. Its very stable, a lot simpler to work with than the native C/C++ libraries, and has replaced Managed DirectX for .Net game developers. Second, there is SdlDotNet---mentioned above--which is a .Net wrapper for SDL for cross-platform .Net game development. Third, there is a .Net version of SFML which I believe is also cross-platform, and is a wrapper for the open source SFML API for Mac, Linux, and Windows. In addition, to those any API that uses Windows COM such as FMOD Ex, Jaws, SAPI, Window-Eyes, etc can be used as well. Obviously the strongest support is for Windows APIs and technologies, but C# is rapidly becoming the Java of the future as there are both commercial and open source developers writing new APIs and libraries for the language all the time. Finally, as far as the C# language its very similar to Java in a lot of ways. The sintax is similar since both use a C-Style syntax, but you will also notice that the .Net Framework has a lot of namespaces, classes, and methods fairly similar to Java. For instance, to write a line to the console do something like System.Console.WriteLine (0, "Hello World!"); and to get a line of text from the console String cmd = System.Console.ReadLine (); which as you can see is fairly similar to Java in naming and convention. Its one of the big reasons why I began using C# as its easy to learn, is similar enough to Java that your past experience largely carries over, and .Net is now a core part of Windows Vista and Windows 7. Even better yet System.Windows.Forms.dll is a .Net wrapper for the Windows API which means screen readers have no troubles with the standard GUI controls etc, and you don't have to worry about things like the Java Access Bridge as C# apps are very accessible on Windows and can be made so on Linux by using GTK-Sharp. As far as your screen reader API goes you don't need it. You can rewrite it in C#, creat a COM wrapper for SAPI, Jaws, Window-Eyes, SuperNova, etc and it will work fine.In order to make your existing Speech API for C# .Net you will have to rewrite it in Managed C++ code anyway and i don't see the point of using Managed C++ when you can just do the same thing in C# saving yourself the grief of using two different .Net languages. Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
