Hi Trouble,
What you say is certainly true, but I think you missed the point I was attempting to make. Dakotah had asked about the possibility of cross-platform development and I merely wanted to point out that BBGT would not fulfill this requirement. Weather developing games for Mac, Linux, smart phones, etc is practical is another issue altogether. Ditto for Linux accessibility. Neither have any bearing on what programming languages might help a developer program games for Linux if a developer is thinking of doing so.
As for the issue about Windows being the primary target market there is no arguing that point. I know as well as any software developer that Windows holds a solid 85% of the mainstream PC market, and the blind market is probably even higher than that because of state agencies that purchase only Windows PCs. That does not however excuse the fact there are communities of blind PC users using Mac OS and there is a thriving community of Linux users that would like to have games written for their platform as well. Most audio game developers just don't care because its not their problem, and will stand by the old "its not practical" song and dance.
In many cases that's true. However, as I'm discovering it can be done if a developer really and truly has a desire to do it.
For example, let's face it Pygame is not in the same class as DirectX, but if a game doesn't require any kind of advanced input and 3d audio etc its still possible to create some decent games with Pygame which is based on SDL. I think we all agree Entombed is an awesome roguelike RPG,and we could certainly write something like that in Python with Pygame as all we need here is basic keyboard input and a sound API to pan sounds. Add pyttsx for Sapi and Espeak support and we now have a fully cross-platform compatible game that is very decent.
Am I saying it is practical to create every single game using these APIs and technologies? No, but I can clearly see games like Time of Conflict, Entombed, Spoonbill Software's games, Jim Kitchen's games, etc being ported to Mac and Linux with very little difficulty if a developer wants to put the time and effort into it. Its just that most don't want to put the time or effort into it because they personally don't use Linux or Mac. In that light its not a case of being practical or impractical, but a lack of interest and motivation on the part of the developer.
Cheers! On 4/1/2012 7:37 AM, Trouble wrote:
Well Ryan is not far off on his thoughts for platform. If you would think a moment. Just where do the majority of the blind or disabled get there computer/ The go to the government and orgs. Witch have contracts with FS and that means windows based computers. Not many orgs want to go against contract and get a Mac from Apple. Just because cross platform sounds nice, it's not practical think in the blind community. There are still only a handful that run Mac or linix. Those are mostly thought of as private ventures. That is why support for linix stuff is not really that good for us disabled. Yes, your going to say it is, but in reality it is being left behind and broken with every build. When doing programming for the mas community. You have to look at the reality and not what is fantasy only the game goes that rout.
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