My First Steps in Game Development on Linux
I've had a passion for developing games most of my life.
Starting out programming at a young age on a TI-99/4a then a C128 followed by an Amiga 600.
I loved programming in MACRO Assembly on the C64. And in AMOS and Blitz on the Amiga. Followed by SAS C + GS library (something I have never heard anyone else mention although I surely couldn't have been the only person using it).
Around 1998 I moved from the Amiga to my first "PC clone" and really liked DOS game programming in C/C++ with DJGPP + Allegro. It was an awesome dev environment writing code in a simple text editor limited to 64KB files.
Anyway, I continued ever since that time creating games & other programs in many different languages, libraries and engines on Windows for desktop and web.
I used to have many games listed on GameJolt and Itch.io until I got so burned out of new regulations and the way the Internet was changing that finally I removed all of my work including all of my YT dev videos. LOL :)
I also completely ended my online income ventures closing accounts and websites but that's another topic for a future post.
However, I still developed tools & games... I just never shared them beyond posting on my FB page and sharing the source on some game dev forums I was still active in.
This development passion will likely never go away, so it's not surprising that I soon found myself setting up dev environments in Linux.
I am really looking forward to developing on and for Linux! Small console apps, desktop GUI tools and of course games.
In fact, I have already started. :D
Last year, I was very happy to try PureBasic on Windows 10. After just a month of testing I knew this was exactly what I was looking for so I purchased it.
PureBasic is also available for Linux so I downloaded it to my Linux Mint laptop, installed the necessary files (for general development) and presto PureBasic worked fine.
AND I was able to just transfer my previous Windows PureBasic work over via USB and everything loaded right up in the PureBasic Editor, compiled and the resulting apps "just worked" for the most part.
I think PureBasic is fantastic and I really wish I had found it long ago.
Anyway, I also installed the ncurses library and use it along with the gcc compiler to do C console development.
This a very nice development environment for me. I simply write the C code in xed or gedit, save the files and use the console to compile & link the program with gcc. It definitely reminds me of DJGPP + Allegro in DOS command line in the late 90s.
I am working on a simple console simulation game for Linux in C & ncurses. :)
Speaking of Allegro, I learned it's STILL being developed and is available for Linux. 25+ years ago Allegro was AWESOME and I am guessing it is even more so now.
I also tried out GDevelop5 briefly but I'm not a fan of big game engines. I spent many years doing projects in Unity and never could really connect with it.
However, GDevelop5 seems much better than Unity from a simplicity & less bloat perspective.
In the coming weeks and months I will surely be sharing some of my Linux development experiences including probably writing some dev log posts.