Games for the FB3?

[Pangolin]

Hi guys,

Thanks for the note. Unfortunately, right now we are busy working on what we internally call "production software" (basically, things like drawing and timeline applications) and, since there are more users of that than there are people who want to make additional programs for the FB3, our priority has been on the production software.

Also, there is another question here. This question is resolved on our QM2000 because of how our LD2000.DLL works. But the question is this. Lets say you have two applications that want to access the output hardware at a time? Do they succeed in letting two applications access the hardware simultaneously and, essentially make spaghetti-like images (not the one Gary wrote, but the one we eat)? Let me know what happens with other cards you guys use.

We do have an idea of how to create an SDK that solves this for the FB3, and this solution will be part of our next-generation software which will work on the FB3 and QM2000. Basically our plan is to release an SDK after we release our next-generation software, which will include a native way to access the hardware, and maybe even access our dialog boxes and such, as mentioned above.

In the mean time, if anyone wants to program the FB3 using Delphi, that will make things quicker, since all of the example code we will have is using Delphi. If this is the case, we will get you to sign an NDA and then send you something you can use as an SDK. The reason for the NDA is that, we really haven't yet released an SDK for the FB3, and there are some rather secret things that we are doing to make it work as well as it does. Until we wrap all of this into an SDK where you can't get at the internals, we need to keep our secrets secret...

Best regards,

William Benner

[mikkojay]

Thanks for the update Bill- I guess it's like they say, good things are worth waiting for. I don't blame your move towards Delphi either, as you mentioned in a separate post. I have been using mostly C# & .Net lately because that is what I use at work, but I have had a few situations that have made me want to find something a little less "finniky". Its nice not having to remember that every malloc needs a free, but there are definite trade offs. I haven't tried Delphi yet, maybe this will be a good chance to learn while doing something I actually enjoy- that seems to be the best way to make new things sink in (for me anyway). Sign me up for the beta list
Thanks, Mike

[Zoof]

Bill, thanks for answering. Having the FB3 to play with (in the programming sense) would be great but for now I have Easylase. I'll be looking forward to the first release version of the FB3 SDK.

[mliptack]

Bill I don't know Delphi - but I have been meaning to learn and this would be a great reason to make me learn. If the offer is still on the table - I'll take you up for it.

By the way - I tried calling you the other day - I remember you saying that you were usually at Pangolin late night, so I called around 2am Central time.

-Max

[buffo]

Max;

I'm pretty sure Bill is still in Germany right now. Haden told me that Bill was scheduled to be back in the country on Wednesday. Might want to try him later this week...

Adam

[mliptack]

Good to know Adam, thanks for the heads up.

[carmangary]

Delphi is relatively easy to learn. It took me about a week to get comfortable with it after being a Visual C++ developer for some time. It's probably my least favorite language but it has come in handy to know it a time or two. To be specific, the language is not so bad, it's the IDE and documentation that I didn't like.

[mikkojay]

Hey Gary, Are there multiple IDE's to choose from or is there a standard? A free one would be nice! Any info you could share would be great.
Thanks, Mike

[carmangary]

Delphi is a package so you get an IDE with it. But, you can use any text/code editor and then compile outside of the IDE if you want. But you still have to buy Delphi so I don't see the point in it. I haven't taken a look at the latest versions of Delphi. Perhaps they have improved the IDE. I am not currently not sure what the status is of Delphi. Borland used to distribute it but they no longer do. I have a feeling that it will join latin as a dead language in the future.

[yaddatrance]

Just hopping in for a sec for my $0.02...

I dealt with multiple inputs by implementing a message queue, so if two
completely seperate software packages wants to write, they both get
to write to a nonblocking queue, but the queue itself handles ordering...

It was a pretty elegant way of handling stochastic data inputs from
several different programs at once...

Building a queue also makes it easy to do realtime processing to break
apart complex scenes across multiple scanheads.