Entries Tagged 'development' ↓

For a long time my primary language was C++. I know this is uncommon for someone of my age (21) but C was actually the first language that I learned. (Keep in mind although this wasn’t that long ago, it was hard to find good advice online so I bought a book on a language I’d heard was commonly used and spent a couple months digging into C.)

When I went to college I had to learn Java, on my own I got into Perl, Python, and Lisp. I fooled around with PHP, learned to respect Javascript as a real language, and even wrote some Ruby. When it came time to explain what I did to my then-girlfriend it was Python not C++ that I helped her write a small game in.

Despite all of this linguistic infidelity I have faithfully kept up to date on C++, following the draft standard and reading Herb Sutter’s fantastic GotW. But something that’s been coming a long time happened when I read GotW #88: A Candidate For the “Most Important const”.

In this posting he discusses the difference between assigning to a const reference and a non-const reference. Spoiler alert: in the examples he provides it is only legal to assign to a const reference.

I’d actually played around with this “feature” so I was still able to follow along, and then it hit me. I simply don’t care.

I used to think that part of programming was memorizing these syntactic quirks (be sure to put a space between the >’s in a nested template declaration!). As a C++ developer I always kept them in mind but accepted them, surely other languages must have their own. I suppose this is still true, and a handful of others do come to mind.. but what has changed in my way of thinking is that they are a necessary part of a language.

So getting down to what I need to say.. C++, I know when I put you down years ago I said I’d be back - that these other languages were fun but you were the one for me. I just think we’ve grown apart, it’s best we both move along. It’s time I made an honest language out of Python and admitted I’m a Python programmer.

Popularity: 5%

So the title of this post probably sounds a bit more ungrateful than I mean it.. it just astounds me that people still apparently are downloading ZEngine with some regularity.

A little over five years ago according to the CVS logs, I started a 2D game engine which due to my frustration with “all the cool names being taken” was named ZEngine. I was about 16 at the time and it was actually my second attempt at such an engine. ZEngine was designed to be cross-platform, easy to use, and extensible. I guess looking back for a 16 year old it wasn’t a bad job, but I haven’t really looked at the code in about two years, and I haven’t worked seriously on it in much longer than that.

I recently got a request from someone to use the name ZEngine, and I took a look at the Sourceforge project statistics to make sure nobody was actually using it. I knew there were still a few stragglers out there, I do get an email every now and then and usually have to apologize for my own ignorance and inability to answer their question. I found out that in an average month ~100 people still download it. Which may not sound like many but for an obscure and obsolete 2D game library doesn’t seem too bad.

As the chart above shows, most months there have been somewhere near 100 downloads of ZEngine.

The ZEngine front page clearly indicates that development stopped years ago and even redirects to a similar (but also abandoned) project of mine, photon. I haven’t had much luck finding if there are unknown references to ZEngine out there that people are following, or if they are finding it on it’s own. Either way I’d be interested to know who these people are and what they are doing. Is there still such a shortage of 2D game engines that ZEngine compares favorably to any of it’s competitors?

If you’re using ZEngine and find your way here somehow, post a comment or get in touch with me, I’d be interested to hear your answers to these questions. (But no, I probably can’t answer ZEngine questions anymore)

Popularity: 6%