* Original Area: comp.os.os2.programmer.misc

From: daveb{at}netcom.com (Dave Briccetti)
Subject: OS/2 Warp Game Development Seminar, One Developer's Report

    One Developer's Report of the 
    
    OS/2 Warp Game Developer's Seminar
    
    by Dave Briccetti
    
    August 19th, 1995
    
    DRAFT
    
    
    
      I.   Introduction
    
    On August 16th, 1995, I attended the OS/2 Warp Game Developer's 
    Seminar, presented by the IBM Personal Software Products Solution 
    Developer Organization in San Mateo, near San Francisco.  This is a 
    brief report about my experiences at that event.  
    
    Please forgive any errors in product and company names and the 
    like, and send me corrections.  I haven't double-checked facts and 
    figures.  I have no association with any of the products or compa-
    nies mentioned herein, except that I'm a member of several IBM 
    vendor support programs.
    
      II.  About Me
    
    For those of you who don't know me, I'll tell you a little about 
    myself.  I have been developing applications for OS/2 since 1987, as 
    an independent developer and consultant.  I am a cofounder and the 
    president of the OS/2 Bay Area User Group, a large, independent 
    organization of OS/2 users and developers.  Most of the develop-
    ment work I have done has been with C and C++ and PM, in the 
    areas of business and scientific programming.  
    
    Recently I have felt compelled to do something flashy and fun; 
    either games or edutainment software development for OS/2.  I 
    bought several great books on graphics and game programming, and 
    now IBM has released Beta 1 of its OS/2 Warp Entertainment 
    Toolkit.  I'm ready!
    
      III. Presentations
    
    After a continental breakfast I took a seat with about 80 other 
    developers in the classroom at the Solution Partnership Center.  Like 
    the airlines, IBM had overbooked the event, but they weren't offer-
    ing free future classes to people who would go away.  (Their classes 
    are free anyway.)
    
           1.   Welcome & Introduction
    
    E. Lloyd Webber, Worldwide Games Brand Manager from Boca 
    Raton, Florida, started the presentations.  Lloyd announced the OS/2 
    Warp Entertainment Toolkit Beta 1, which is part of the now ship-
    ping Developers Connection 8.  He made it very clear that IBM 
    wants to help game developers, and told us that they want to hear 
    from us about how they can help us.
    
           2.   Video Performance
    
    Next up was one of the Entertainment Toolkit developers, Luis 
    Rodriguez, on video performance with Direct Interface Video 
    Extensions (DIVE).  Luis showed an animated jet fighter in a win-
    dow (some of you have seen this before), and it was running so fast 
    it was just a blur.  It was running at around 135 frames per second.  
    In full screen it was about 36 frames/second.
    
    Luis took us through the steps involved in using DIVE from a pro-
    gram.  I won't go into the details since they are documented so well 
    elsewhere.  Take a look at the IBM OS/2 Games Home Page for 
    more information.  See the last section of this report for the URL. 
    
    One interesting feature of the toolkit allows a PM game developer to 
    switch to full-screen modes such as 320 x 200, which is typical for 
    games, and get the same performance as DOS games while still 
    using the PM architecture.
    
           3.   3D Graphics (BRender)
    
    After a break we had a fascinating and awesome demonstration of 
    BRender, a 3D real-time, high performance rendering program, an 
    evaluation copy of which is included with the toolkit.  BRender 
    stands for "Blazing Render," and it truly blazes.  Rich Seidner of 
    Argonaut Technologies (formerly with IBM and then Kaleida) 
    showed the product, along with several games such as FX Fighter 
    which use BRender.
    
    Here the topic drifted far from OS/2 as people asked esoteric ques-
    tions about other platforms, and most of the stuff Rich showed was 
    under DOS.  Nonetheless, the technology is fascinating, and running 
    under OS/2.
    
    Rich announced a special offer: For a limited time, developers may 
    license BRender for unlimited, royalty-free use under OS/2 for a 
    onetime fee of $2,000.  For multi-platform use, the fee is $10,000.  
    
      IV.  Lunch and Technology Demos
    
    IBM fed us sandwiches and cookies and we wandered around to 
    various rooms where we could meet the toolkit developers and other 
    IBMers from Boca and Austin.  One of those developers was Mike 
    Brown, the author of PMMPEG, a program to display MPEG mov-
    ies.  Several months ago Mike added DIVE support to PMMPEG, 
    and he showed me the difference.  The color and speed improve-
    ments are quite impressive.  
    
    I also saw programs with the new network games APIs demon-
    strated.  There were some glitches but the concept is pretty cool: 
    OS/2 APIs to connect players up to a game over the internet.
    
      V.   Presentations, Continued
    
           1.   Audio
    
    Next up was Larry Kyrala who talked about Direct Audio and real-
    time MIDI.  These features allow more precise control over audio in 
    the dynamic game environment.  One buzzword I heard was "score 
    richening."  I think this means that when you're getting your ass 
    shot off in a game the music gets louder and busier.
    
           2.   Input Devices
    
    Herman Rodriguez was the next speaker.  Herman leads the toolkit 
    development team.  He struck me as being very knowledgeable and 
    capable.  In this segment he talked about device driver support for 
    generic input devices, and joysticks specifically.  He has developed 
    an API which not only supports current analog joysticks, but which 
    will support new digital joysticks being developed.  He said his goal 
    was to generalize the interface to support devices such as data 
    gloves.
    
           3.   Multi-player Network
    
    The toolkit includes warpnet.dll, which provides an API to support 
    multi-player games over a network.  The API currently supports 
    TCP/IP.  There are functions such as WarpNetInitialize, Open, 
    Broadcast, PackSend, PackRecv, and Close.  Herman Rodriguez 
    made this presentation.
    
      VI.  Technology Demos
    
    After the presentations we were invited to wander around and meet 
    the developers and look at their demonstrations.  I saw an early ver-
    sion of Avarice, from Stardock Systems.  It has stunning graphics, 
    but the guy running it (an attendee like myself) didn't know how to 
    run it and we just didn't get it.  It was very soothing and mellow, but 
    I'm a Dark Forces kind of guy, I guess.  Psygnosis' Lemmings for 
    OS/2 was cute.  SimTown was there but I didn't see it.  I think I saw 
    Star Emperor, which I believe is the follow-on to the highly suc-
    cessful Galactive Civilizations.  It looked good.
    
      VII. Conclusion
    
    I very much enjoyed taking a day and immersing myself in this new 
    entertainment development technology.  I remain convinced that 
    IBM is committed to supporting OS/2 developers.  IBM's develop-
    ers of this new technology appear quite knowledgeable, and they 
    obviously enjoy what they're doing.  Now let's see if I can satisfy 
    my own creative needs and develop something fun!
    
      VIII.   More Information
    
    I can be reached at daveb{at}netcom.com, and 74475,1072 on Com-
    puServe, or by phone at 510 945-7565, Ext. 210.  
    
    The IBM OS/2 Games Home Page is 
    http://www.austin.ibm.com/os2games.  
    
    Herman Rodrigues, Toolkit Manager: hermanr{at}vnet.ibm.com.  
    
    Rich Seidner, Argonaut: rich{at}argonaut.com.
    
    Bradley Wardell, Stardock Systems: wardell{at}ibm.net  
    
    IBM Solution Partnership Center, OS/2 Program Manager, Keith 
    Lew, kflew{at}nvet.ibm.com.
    
** END **    
        

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