Dreamcast Article on Gamedev.net Wiki

[LuciDreamTheater]

Is there anyone who could read through my article on introduction to Dreamcast development, so that it's more polished when I submit it to gamedev.net?

I'd appreciate it.

[BlueMonkey5]

Wow, really impressive. I didn't read the whole thing because I'm technologically illiterate... but with me being a hobbyist writer, I really thought it was very well written. I'm interested in seeing what the ES team will say about the details of the article though. If anyone will know about it, it would be them

[LuciDreamTheater]

Thanks for the encouragement, BlueMonkey.

[Falco Girgis]

I thought that the article was extremely useful. Very nice.

Also, with regards to C++ on Dreamcast: for the most part, you are fine using C++. I began with straight C when I started in the DC-Scene. After a few years, I migrated over to C++. There is some functionality that is incomplete on DC (iostream, exceptions, some other things), but almost everything that you would want is usable.

The thing that they probably warn about is overhead. Things like STL on Dreamcast come at a price. Just compiling it with your project can add 800kb+ to your executable (we just learned that the hard way, haha). You also have to remember that it's a 200mhz processor. While this is going to be plenty for the wise programmer, using some extremely inefficient OO paradigm to do things that would be 1000x faster in straight C is a no-no.

Basically you just have to remember what you are developing for. Classes, polymorphism, inheritance, and that stuff is really nice in C++, but there are still lots of things that are better achieved with a straight C approach. Also, if you find something that hasn't been completely implemented for C++ on DC, you are forced to use the C approach anyway.

Another thing is that the C++ language is still changing. I tried to compile the Boost library for Dreamcast, and it was a hellish nightmare. The version of GCC for DC is too old for some of the extreme OO bullshittery that Boost uses. It doesn't do the metatemplate stuff.

But C is pretty much static. It's completely there on Dreamcast, and it isn't going to be changing anytime soon. If you are a C programmer, you should totally use C. If you're a C++ programmer who doesn't want to switch, you should be fine, but you have to keep some of these things in mind.

Elysian Shadows is using C++ on DC.

[LuciDreamTheater]

Thank you so much.

[ismetteren]

I havent read the whole article, but it seems very well written. I am not the right person to ask if the facts are right, but GyroVorbis seems to agree with you, and i have seen hes project run on DC, so they probably are :D

Agian, i havent read the whole article, but it seems to be very linux specific, maybe you should state that in the title, or in the start of the article. Maybe im just a noob that dosent know what he is talking about :P

[LuciDreamTheater]

Agian, i havent read the whole article, but it seems to be very linux specific, maybe you should state that in the title, or in the start of the article. Maybe im just a noob that dosent know what he is talking about :P

Someone else mentioned the same thing. It will be done