Re: Ada suitablity as a game dev language

[Dani <danielcheagle@ig.com.br>]

Hi! My primary intent when I learn Ada was
making games. I'm not create a game yet but
it is my "heart's dream game" working in progress,
in my spare time.

The Key points (initially) in my choice was: (my game
is a massive on-line rpg; server part is in linux and the client
part is in linux and windows, but can be "easyly" portable
to others platforms if the tools used exist on these other
platforms(normally "true"))

* "tasks" (concurrency directly in the language) the compiler
takes care for us of OS dependency part. the source code is
very very more portable. pthreads, native threads,
 win tasks,etc ? no... just ada tasks.
 the program takes advantage automagically if exists
 more that one processor/cpu, e.g. a server side game ( to support
the load carge and the responsivitness necessary). switch
from time-slicing only to true real-time and time-slicing without
more ado.

* speedy: because the Ada compiler known much more aspects
of the program ( see *.ali parts for one example ) it can easyly make a
program in Ada  2,5 more rapid that the same program write in C. ( this
is controlled with compiler switches)

  Other caracteristics that made me more very very happy was

* Making a program, thinking 'in Ada' is much more pleasure e
much less fatiguing.

* Reading a program writted in Ada (e.g. to maintain a program or
to understanding what other programmer writted) is more understandable
e much less stressing. the Ada privileged the reader.

* the compiler caught much more mistakes in the code, making the final
program much more bugs free.

the libs and bindings I intent use are:

*adasockets for the network part of the engine.
*adaopengl combined with gtkada-gl-area for the part of opengl. (note: 
gtkada-gl-area
in MS-Windows environment is more or less trick to compile (the lib). 
but just for
now this is not a problem.)
*GtkAda for the gui and other administrative parts.

The tools that I recomend is

*Glade-2 for the initial GtkAda design and looking the source code
generated is a good teaching for the guys that are
 not genius guru in gtk (my case :-)  ) (please not confuse glade-2(gui 
generation)
 with the glade (gnat part of annexe E distributed Systems))
*Gnat-GPS to deal with source code.
and
* Gnat compiler (or gcc 3.4.x with Ada support)

Well..., I hope it was helped you.

</flame on> please no flames :-)   <\flame off>

[]'s of seven roughs, Dani.

p.s.: Thanks for understanding my English.