delphigamedev.com

2007-12-27T12:24:00.000Z

Updated forums and site tweaks

As some of you may have noticed, over the last 24 hours I've made some changes to delphigamedev.com. The main change is that I've updated the forums to the latest and greatest. Let me know if you have any problems, but so far all seems to have migrated well, and hopefully you'll find the changes useful.

I've also made a bunch of tweaks to all the pages which should make them load a lot quicker than they have previously this year, a lot of redundant code is now gone, and generally the site is now easier for me to maintain.

You've probably also noticed that there haven't been any new tutorials here for quite some time. Unfortunately at present I just don't have the time to continue making them. That's not to say that will always be the case though, and I'm always happy to hear from anyone who would like to write a tutorial on any aspect of game development in Delphi.

If you're trying to get up to speed with Delphi, might I recommend checking out 3D Buzz's Delphi video tutorials. There are presently 9 tutorials, and I've created a Youtube playlist of them so you can easily watch them.

High resolution versions of these videos are available from 3D Buzz within their Delphi classroom, so if you like what you see on youtube, go and sign up there, download the higher resolution versions, and leave some comments in the forums about what you think of them, or any questions you have.

That's all for now, hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season. Have a good New Year!

2006-10-06T20:37:00.000Z

3D Buzz Delphi Training Series: Programming 101 - Episode 1 (and Episode 2)

Following on from the recent release of the free Turbo Delphi version, I thought there might be many of you who will be interested in some video tutorials introducing Delphi from the ground up. Well just such a thing exists, thanks to our friends over at 3D Buzz.

This is the first part of a new training series on programming in Delphi, and they use Turbo Delphi Explorer Edition throughout. Nobody does training videos quite like 3D Buzz, so give it a shot and whilst you're at it, go take a look at 3D Buzz for more videos.

If you enjoy this video, please click anywhere on it to head over to youtube, and give it your rating or comments.

You can also check out the second video in the series as well here!

2006-10-05T19:54:00.000Z

Turbo Delphi Explorer Edition available for free

As posted sometime ago, Turbo Delphi Explorer Edition has indeed been released over on Borland's dedicated site for it here.

Well worth checking out, here's a quick guide to getting it all installed.

Head to http://www.turboexplorer.com/mirror and download and install the following in this order:

Turbo Explorer prerequisites
Turbo Delphi Explorer edition
Turbo Explorer hotfix rollup (the first download listed on the page)

Turbo Explorer Prerequisites
The Prerequisities can be downloaded as one zip file from the above site, but some of them you will probably already have. They are as follows:

Microsoft Internet Explorer v6.0 SP1
Microsoft .NET Framework v1.1
Microsoft .NET Framework v1.1 SP1
Microsoft .NET Framework SDK v1.1
Microsoft XML Core Services (MSXML) v4.0 SP2
Microsoft Visual J# .NET v1.1 Redistributable

When you go to install Turbo Delphi, the setup is supposed to start Borland's bootstrap utility to check for these prerequisites before continuing, but it didn't in my case - meaning it can install without meeting these conditions. Run the 'prereqs.exe' in the Install directory wherever you extract the temporary files to, and you'll be asked if you want to install any prerequisites that aren't present already on your PC. If you've extracted the prereqs zip file to the same directory as you put the temporary setup files in, you should be able to install these as part of the Bootstrap Utility.

Turbo Delphi Explorer edition
In order to run Turbo Delphi Explorer Edition itself, you need to head to http://members.borland.com/download/trial.aspx?sid=620 to get a product key. Create yourself a BDN login with borland.com if you don't have one already (which is free).

You can install without having the product key in place, but you won't be able to actually use it until you've placed your product key text file in your Home directory. The home directory is outlined in the e-mail Borland will send you, but it will normally be 'C:\Documents and Settings\' if you're using Windows 2000 or XP.

Turbo Explorer hotfix rollup
Once you've installed Turbo Delphi Explorer Edition, you should install the hotfix rollup. This is just a rougly 8MB download, and the actual install of this hotfix rollup only takes a few seconds.

You're now ready to start using Turbo Delphi - enjoy!

2006-08-09T12:09:00.000Z

Turbo Delphi Explorer (Free!) and Professional Editions due early September

Just when many had given Delphi (and Borland) up for dead, Borland have announced that the old Turbo name of days gone by is to return.

This September (2006) you'll be able to download for free Turbo Delphi and Turbo Delphi for .NET Explorer Editions. Since the demise of free Personal Edition downloads of Delphi, the interest in the language has been rapidly declining, so this is good news indeed.

There are also going to be Professional Editions with slightly more competitive pricing than we've seen previously, but the real interest will be in the Explorer Editions.

There's more information on the complete Turbo range (there's Turbo C++ and C# as well) at turboexplorer.com, plus specific information on Turbo Delphi here and Turbo Delphi .NET here.

Hopefully it's not too little, too late...

2005-04-23T23:02:00.000Z

Delphi 2005 Personal starts appearing on magazine discs
The first UK magazine to hold Delphi 2005 Personal Edition on their disc is PC Pro. You'll need to buy the DVD edition to get it, but it's a small price to pay I guess. Germany's "PC-Magazin" is also reported to have it on their cover disc.

If anyone else sees it do let us know and this post will be updated.

2005-04-09T17:43:00.000Z

All old forum posts now archived
If you take a look in the 'Old Forum Posts' section of the delphigamedev.com forums you'll discover that ALL posts from our old forums from the previous incarnation of this site are now there and archived for your browsing pleasure.

This is completely and utterly down to the hard work of one of our members - Ferasso. He has over the last few months copied over about 160 different threads covering all sorts of areas of Delphi games programming - an excellent source of information!

So huge thanks to Ferasso, and I hope you all find it a very useful resource :)

The old forums will now be completely shutdown this weekend to avoid any confusion with those found here.

2005-02-12T13:11:00.000Z

Delphi 2005 Personal to be released
Yes, Borland are finally to release Delphi 2005 Personal. The news has been spreading like wild fire with rumours suggesting it will be free for download, and may have a different license setup with what you can do with it.

Well, something appeared on Borland's site yesterday that appears to confirm that Delphi 2005 Personal is definitely coming out.

If you head to here you'll notice that they've added the ability down the bottom of the page to request a key for it (if you have the CD already). If you actually do request it, it says you've been sent the 'Delphi 2005 Personal 30-Day Trial Activation File' but this could be a mistake.

Still no actual download, but this brings us ever closer to an actual release :) It's possible I guess that they will make it available on PC magazine CDs like they did with version 7, so that you just get the key from Borland, but time will tell.

2005-01-01T23:00:00.000Z

Happy New Year
To all delphigamedev.com visitors old and new, I wish you a Happy New Year. I hope 2005 will be a good year for you all.

I'm sure all of you have been touched by the recent Asian Tsunami earthquake, and for those that wish to donate, I encourage you to visit the DEC and give whatever you can.

2004-12-30T21:13:00.000Z

RSS News Feeds now available
For those that like them, there are now two RSS feeds available for both news posted on this page, and for the most recent 10 forum posts. You'll find the appropriate links to these feeds in the left hand 'Recent Forum Posts' bar and at the bottom of the page.

If you're sensible enough to be using Firefox as your Internet browser, you'll also be able to add these feeds using the 'Live Bookmark' feature by clicking on the icon in the bottom right of the browser window (a full explanation can be found here). Clicking on that icon on the front page gives you the News feed, and clicking on it when browsing the forums gives you the 'Recent Forum Posts' feed.

2004-12-25T14:25:00.000Z

Happy Holidays
Just a quick post to wish you all Happy Holidays. Hope you all have a Merry Christmas (if you celebrate it) and a great New Year!

In other news, Ferasso has done a great job of starting to move the old forum posts over, starting with the 'General' section. Thanks to him for that.

Finally, if you're in the mood for some psychadelic Christmas greetings from Stevie56 I suggest you go look at this post.

2004-12-20T13:41:00.000Z

old forum posts to be archived
The Forums now contain an 'Old Forum Posts' section. This area will gradually contain more and more of the old posts from the forums we used to use (http://p208.ezboard.com/bdelphigamedev). This is to make it easier for you to find old posts made.

At the moment, the only person able to post there is Ferasso and myself. Ferasso has volunteered to move over some of the old posts, starting with the oldest. If anyone else wishes to assist, then please let me know.

If you want to continue a particular thread in the 'Old Forum Posts' section, make a new post in the relevant section in the main forums, and link to the old forum thread.

2004-11-08T15:23:00.000Z

The forums are now also back up. Hopefully there won't be any issues, but let me know if anything seems amiss. The 'Recent Posts' area in the left hand pane will only work on the front page at the moment as I need to change the code for that on all pages. This will be done over the coming days.

2004-11-06T13:17:00.000Z

Okay, this time I mean it. We're back, and we're not going to disappear again. How do I know that? Well, we've moved to a more reliable server host, which I think this time can be trusted. Not only that, but it should also provide a faster loading time for you all.

Apologies for the time it has taken to sort this mess out, it took some bother to get hold of a backup of the database that the forums used to move over but that has now been successful, and that part of the site should be back up sometime on Monday at the latest.

The site is now only accessible through www.delphigamedev.com so if you come across any links to where it used to be hosted (delphigamedev.name2host.com) then let me know and I'll let the appropriate webmaster know of the change.

Hopefully we can return to getting tutorials out and keep the delphigamedev.com fire burning!

Ben Watt
delphigamedev.com

2004-09-27T10:17:00.000Z

delphigamedev.com downtime now over

What can I say? The timing of my host going down was bad, and unfortunately it took delphigamedev.com out for almost a whole week. Suffice to say, I'm now looking elsewhere to host my site somewhere more reliable.

Apologies to all of you that have tried to access the site over the last week without any success, but hopefully this won't happen again.

2004-09-05T20:00:00.000Z

delphigamedev.com is back!
You've waited patiently, and here it is. The new look, the new forums, and the return of (fairly) regular tutorials.

The first of our new tutorials is now available, and introduces you to glscene, the OpenGL component set for Delphi.

The forums are completely different now. Gone are the adverts and clunky setup, and instead we have an interface more integrated with the rest of the site. You'll be able to see the last few posts on the first page of the site when you visit now, and if you sign up on the forums you'll be able to send private messages to each other. The old forums are still at http://pub78.ezboard.com/bdelphigamedev so that you can refer back to them if need be. If I get a few willing volunteers to help, I hope to copy these old posts into the new forums to make it easier to refer back to old posts, and to continue with threads you've started recently.

So, that's your lot for now, but there are more tutorials almost finished, as well as a few other nice things. I know I've made a few promises to some of you to add code you've written to the site's download section, and if you get back in touch that will certainly happen ASAP ;)

Finally, if you've written a game and want to tell us all about, please do get in touch and we'd be very happy to host it here on the delphigamedev.com servers. We're also always interested in hearing from you if you'd like to write a tutorial for the site.

Enjoy!

2003-07-17T20:03:00.000Z

New Look and Forums soon: I know it's been along time (as ever) since the last post, but I hope to get things rolling again shortly. As well as new tutorials, I also plan to have new forums which will be based on our servers, and will finally get rid of all those slow banners and popups. I'm interested in your opinions about this, so if you have any comments please post them here on the existing ezboard forums.

If any of our visitors are artisticly minded, I'd like to hear from you to get help on the new look. You can e-mail me at ben@delphigamedev.com if you'd like to help out designing a new logo and other aspects of the site. I can't offer you money, but you will get credit where credits due.

2003-03-27T11:34:00.000Z

FlexBattle Updated: User137 has been busy, and you'll find that the source code and executable of his FlexBattle game has been updated. You can download it from the Files section. These are the changes:
New version (Robot special edition)!
+ Improved AI
+ Beam weapons

2003-03-24T22:13:00.000Z

New Tutorial: To mark the launch of the new 3D State (formerly known as Morfit) 3D Developer Studio V6 for Delphi today, you'll find a new tutorial in the usual place taking you through your first steps with this 3D engine. This SDK is free for non-commercial use, and provides an extremely easy way to write 3D games using Delphi. In the first of a new series of tutorials I show you how to load in a world file, and then move the camera around.

You can download the 3D State Delphi SDK by clicking on the link in the Downloads bar on the left, and I recommend you do - it's well worth a look. Later tutorials will cover more in-depth topics on using the engine.

In other site-related news, I've uploaded a new demo from one of our regular message board users, User137. His game is called FlexBattle and is an excellent demonstration of what you can do with DelphiX given a bit of time and dedication. It's similar in style to Worms, and is a lot of fun. You can find it in the Files section of the site, source code and all. If you look in the DelphiX section of the message board, you'll find a thread all about the game.

While we're on the topic of the message board, do come and visit there often. It's been staying relatively busy, and you can often pick up some useful code from various threads. I know the adverts are a pain, but until I can find a better alternative they'll have to stay.

Finally, I'd like to reassure visitors to the site that I haven't forgotten 2D games. Over the coming month, I'll be going back and updated the site with some of the tutorials currently marked as coming soon. Apologies for not having updated this site much lately, I've been rather busy of late. I do have a bit of spare time over the next month though, and should be able to get a few more tutorials written for you all. Thanks for your support :)

2002-12-24T15:52:00.000Z

Merry Christmas: Sorry I haven't updated in a long while, I've been rather busy. Sometime in January though I should have some new tutorials for you so don't worry :) By now many of you will be aware that Delphi 7 Personal Edition is not going to be available to download. It has however turned up on various magazine's CDs so if you haven't already got it, look out for it. You can still download Kylix as before though (which incidentally for those that don't have a fast internet connection and live in the UK, will be on the new PC Plus DVD out on the 27th) so it isn't all bad.

By the way, if you're after news on what's going on in games with Delphi over the Christmas period, be sure to drop by turbo, where I'll be posting news while Steve is away :)

Finally, enjoy the snow effect that I've added to the site (if you've got Internet Explorer), for that Christmas feel, and have a good New Year :D

2002-09-26T12:02:00.000Z

Delphi 7 Personal Edition coming soon for download: Never one to start spreading rumours, I thought many of you may be interested to know that it looks like the downloadable version of Delphi 7 will be available very soon. What makes me think this? Well, firstly the UK magazine PC Plus will have it on their cover CD in the new issue due out next week. Secondly, the link to download Delphi 6 Personal Edition has just disappeared suggesting something might be replacing it shortly.

Some of you on the message board have already started discussing getting Delphi 7 to work with DelphiX, and I guess that shortly many more of you will be wondering the same thing. I'll see what I can find out :)

2002-08-23T13:51:00.000Z

Kylix 3 Open Edition released: A quick post to let you know that Kylix 3 Open Edition is now available to download. The link on the left of the site has been updated to reflect this. Contrary to what I said previously, the download is about 90MB. It's Borland's fault not mine, that was how big they said it was on the site to begin with. It's faster, and now features support for C or C++ as well as the already supported Delphi. Enjoy (if you've got a fast enough internet conncection) :)

2002-07-24T19:16:00.000Z

Small update: I've just made a few minor alterations to the site, nothing major. Firstly, it's been brought to my attention that the link to DelphiX for Delphi 6 no longer works. I've therefore uploaded the copy I had onto my server but with the demos from the official version too. This will save you having to download both if you're using Delphi 6. Those of you not using Delphi 6 should just download the official version, there is nothing new in the other link (and in fact, the unofficial version does have some problems).

Secondly, you 'should' find that you can now post comments if you so wish on each post that I make on this page. I don't know how well this'll work but I'll give it a go for a while anyway. The comments are provided by Enetation if you're wondering.

Lastly, you'll also find that you can now check my ICQ status by looking at the flower icon at the bottom of each post. I'm not sure if this is working correctly at the moment, but it's a start ;)

Big stuff to come soon everyone. I've got over my loss of some good tutorials and code that I had ready for the site, and have started afresh with some of it. You'll be seeing the fruits of my labour pretty soon (as well as some work by other people too hopefully). More soon...

2002-06-07T13:41:00.000Z

In memory of Jan Horn: For those that haven't already heard, Jan Horn of sulaco.co.za passed away yesterday (6th June).

Those of you that ever visited the site, or contacted him by e-mail will know how much of a pleasure it was to learn from him. His site has provided many examples of using OpenGL with Delphi, and more recently he started the Quake 2 conversion project.

We will all miss you Jan.

2002-04-16T12:45:00.000Z

My hard drive's broken: Yeah, you heard me right. I turned on my PC yesterday, and a nice burny smell came out of the PC. Now all my hard drive does is make a couple of faint clicky noises and that's it. Suffice to say, I haven't backed up anything in a long time, and that means I've lost a lot of code I had done for the site.

So, if anyone knows of a cheap hard drive recovery company in the UK, or has any bright ideas, please let me know. What I've found so far, is well out of my budget range. Help!

2002-04-07T23:11:00.000Z

New example code and links: Hey everyone. I've been meaning to update the site for the last couple of weeks, but have only just found the time today.

Dmitry Pryadkin has come up trumps for us again, and supplied another example game with source code which you can find in the Files section. He's written a multiplayer chess game for playing over a network. Next week, I'll have another game with code from him too :-)

Elsewhere, I've just updated the Links page with a few additions, and updates. Firstly, in my quest to become a good 3D modeller, I discovered 3D Buzz today. Here you can find a huge amount of information about all things 3D modelling and animation. The best thing of all here, is the free monthly CD which you can sign up for, teaching you how to use 3DS Max, Maya or Softimage XSI. I can't recommend this site enough :-D There's also talk of a similar CD being released demonstrating the use of Delphi from the site, so head over their and make your voice heard if you want to see one being produced!

Keeping on the 3D theme, Dan Murphy let me know a couple of months back about a 3D engine called TrueVision 3D he'd been using, which was about to be made compatible with Delphi. Well, it now is, and having just tried it this afternoon, I'm very impressed! Expect more about this on the site soon.

Finally, again sticking with 3D, I've altered the link to the Morfit engine, as the company has changed names to 3D State, and I've altered the description of Blender, which for the time being is unavailable due to serious problems with the company. This is a real shame, but here's hoping things change for the better soon.

Keep posting messages on the board, I'm always eager to hear your opinions!