About Portability

Deathworks on 2007/09/01 07:46 of Deathworks

Hi!

Considering that this is a real time challenge and that some contestants, like me, have never done something like this, maybe providing links to portability FAQs would be useful.

Especially single person entrants are likely to have experience only with one platform, which may make them unaware of issues that other platforms may have.

For instance, the fact that the default Python build options automatically converts any new line definitions encountered in files to its own format can be found easily in the reference and would be something people are likely to search for.

But the fact that some systems are case sensitive concerning file names and others are not may not be obvious to people, depriving them of possibilities to minimize debugging necessities.

Thus, I think it would be helpful (actually not only for the contestants) if the help or rules included such links/information.

Deathworks

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Comments

ServalKatze on 2007/09/01 10:58:

Additionally, you should avoid using mp3s in your game. I'm not sure why but I can't play any Python games with mp3-Musik... neither on GNU/Linux or XP. It would be nice to have all that info in one place, I agree. ;)

Neppord on 2007/09/01 13:21:

you are not aloud to use mp3 in games with out paying license. So bad idé any ways.

Deathworks on 2007/09/01 16:08:

Hi!

I don't think that the mp3 format has a patent on it like GIF. Of course, if you have an mp3 with the latest song by Michael Jackson, there would be a lot of legal issues, but if the mp3 is your original work, it should be fine, legally, I think.

Well, since I want to avoid having differences between players on different platforms, personally, I wouldn't have included mp3 type data anyway. I am using wxPython and it seems that the command to play generic media data has not been implemented to work on Linux machines yet. There is a different command to play wav files which seems to work on all machines, so if I need SFX, I can use wav.

Deathworks

gly on 2007/09/01 17:38:

There are patents (not valid in every contry though, but enough to make most Linux distros ship without mp3 support by default..)

http://mp3licensing.com/royalty/games.html

But from the FAQ under question 5, it says:
However, no license is needed for private, non-commercial activities (e.g., home-entertainment, receiving broadcasts and creating a personal music library), not generating revenue or other consideration of any kind or for entities with associated annual gross revenue less than US$ 100 000.00.

I'd stick to .ogg

eugman on 2007/09/01 19:25:

Right, png and ogg all the way. Even ignoring patent issue it's always best to support open formats.

richard on 2007/09/01 23:30:

And PNG and OGG are superior technologies anyway :)

If you want to have ogg playback you can try to use the python libraries from http://xiph.org/ directly.