Rockbox Development > Starting Development and Compiling

First plugin

(1/1)

Darkknight512:
Hey guys I am sorta new here, I just got my first custom build with a few patches compiled for my Nano 2G. I have never really used Linux but that is slowly changing.

I know C++ and will be learning C this March break. My programming skills is pretty limited right now, I have only written software for win32 and VxWorks (FIRST Robotics Competition, role electronics and programming)

I have read the wiki article on HowtoWritePlugins+CONTRIBUTING and I want to know what else I should read so I can ensure my first plugin works across all platforms and is acceptable to be commited to SVN when it is complete.

I plan to write a simple text combat system, eventually turning into a text RPG using ingame menu's (ie. not going in and out of rockbox menus to do things)

I have written a crude text combat sim in C++ as my first major project but development on that stopped when I joined my highschools robotics team.

I will be doing my dev in windows, I am currently using Code::Blocks for win32 dev and Windriver Workstation for VxWorks.

Any tips and thank you everyone that helped make such a good firmware., Rock on! 

Edit: I don't really understand this in CONTRIBUTING

Patches
-------
Create a patch using 'svn diff > mychanges.patch
Trim your patches so they only contain relevant changes.

torne:
You might want to consider writing your game in Inform, and compiling it to the Z-Machine. Rockbox has a Z-Machine interpreter (a port of Frotz).

Inform is a language designed for text based games, and while it's mostly used to write interactive fiction it can also be used for menu driven games like you describe. Supporting this kind of thing was my original intention in porting Frotz.

It's just a suggestion, though; depending what you intend to do specifically it may or may not be suitable...

Darkknight512:
I would probably want to stick with C code for this because I don't just want to write this game, I want to use this as an oppertunity to learn C so I can help with other things for Rockbox and other platforms/projects.

However I would like to know the limitations and capabilitis of Inform.

I do intend to do maybe sound effects in this game eventually. I hope to see how this will be accepted and possibly expand it later on if it is popular enough.

Edit: Where would be a good place for me to get started with C? I do have experence with C++ so I guess a tutorial that goes a bit faster shoulden't hurt.

torne:

--- Quote from: Darkknight512 on March 03, 2010, 05:26:43 PM ---I would probably want to stick with C code for this because I don't just want to write this game, I want to use this as an oppertunity to learn C so I can help with other things for Rockbox and other platforms/projects.

--- End quote ---
Sure, it was just a suggestion.


--- Quote ---However I would like to know the limitations and capabilitis of Inform.

--- End quote ---
Inform is a general purpose object oriented programming language disguised as a system for making text adventures, which compiles to a format designed in 1979 that miraculously is still applicable and sensible today. See http://www.inform-fiction.org/ :)
Inform 7 is a radical departure from previous versions; for something which is not interactive fiction in the traditional sense you almost certainly want to use Inform 6, and much of the standard library is not appropriate (since a huge proportion of it is devoted to the difficult problem of parsing text) - however, a lot of the facilities are still very useful.

The limitations are mostly the screen model of the Z-Machine; it's designed around text printing and has limited support for graphics. Displaying pictures and playing sounds is possible, though (but the Rockbox port of Frotz does not currently support games which use these features). The Rockbox port also currently doesn't support fonts or colours or Unicode.. I am intending to implement all of these things when I have the time ;)

The Z-Machine is a portable VM architecture, though, so you don't have to develop or test on Rockbox; just run some other Z-Machine interpreter with the screen size configured to something similarly small.

Darkknight512:
Alright I think I will stick with C for this one. Do you have any good tutorials? Iam having trouble finding one.

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