Hi there,

I have browsed some answer but not found that much info, and wondering oif you could help me with providing me advantages and disadvantages of the below progrmaming languages for making games in.

Java
Actionscript
C++
C#
VB

Thanks in advance

Java - Works best as a high level Enterprise Web applications.
Advantages: Huge, Robust, Infinitely scalable for web applications, high level, marketable skill, mixes with xml like peanut butter and jelly, platform independent, will handle all the hardware you can throw at it, A lot of code that you need is usually already published and free on the Internet.
Disadvantages: May not be suited for low level programming. A resource hog. May not perform well on older computers. May be overly complex for very small programs.

ActionScript - Works best for animating movies, adds and cool applications that work as if they are applications on the computer, but the application plays inside the browser.
Advantages: Can get visual and interactive effects like no other language within a web browser. Highly marketable skills. A lot of pizazz, most people use it on the index.html page for commercial web sites.
Disadvantage: Not really suited for non web applications. Not suited for low level programming. This language resides inside of html code mainly. Does not venture from there.

C++ - Best suited for general purpose and low level programming.
Advantages: Extremely fast, works very well for GUI programming on a computer. Good language to write operating systems, drivers, and platform dependent applications with. Good language to learn to program with. Good language for engineers.
Disadvantages: Although it is platform independent, it is mostly used for platform specific applications. A library set is usually chosen that locks you into a single platform or operating system. Overly complex for very large high level programs. Overly complex and difficult to debug when used for web applications. Marketable skills are low level programming, vendor software, and video games, making it difficult to find jobs unless you have are very advanced in a target area.

C# - new language to take advantage of C++ foundation and add new features.
Advantages: Can be used for web applications on Microsoft computers. Works well with the Microsoft product line. Marketable skill set.
Disadvantages: Almost completely locks you into the Microsoft Platform. New language, so not a great deal of published free code yet.

VB - Used mainly to modify and complement the Microsoft product line.
Advantages: Extremely easy to use, even for people who are not computer programmers. Allows the typical computer user to modify MS Office applications to suite their needs. Works very well on a Microsoft intranet to complement the network shares and permissions. Can be used for low level programming on Microsoft computers. A marketable skill set. Excellent for writing little programs and pieces of programs.
Disadvantages: Completely locks you into using the Microsoft product line. Not a true Object oriented language although it claims to be. VB .Net is an object oriented language. Becomes overly complex and difficult to manage on very large programs.

I feel that you are mixing Java (J2SE) with J2EE a bit, and totally neglect J2ME.
So in my opinion the latest release of J2SE is capable to implement 3D graphics games, without any big performance penalty, that could be even justified by easier development/debugging. With webstart or applets distribution and updates can be greatly simplified, which can be an important factor, too. LWJGL supports OpenGL graphics, OpenAL and DevIL.
J2EE: it's the web framework, that generally have all the advantages and disadvantages you were referring to. It is mainly for serverside use, but client applications can also access entities directly. It might have greater resource overhead at startup, but it is justified when scaling comes into view (it only needs new threads instead of processes).
For distributed games, Sun has an Opensource engine, that pretty much handles everything, called Project Darkstar.
J2ME: very light resource usage, supported by all mid- and highend mobile devices, some of them even support 3D or vector graphics extensions.

C++: extremly fast is a bit funny if you compare it with assembler or vanilla C, but it's definitely much faster than ActionScript or VB Also, platform independence is present, but many limitations of the underlying architecture is exposed, so you must be careful, datatypes might not have the same range, etc. For engineering it's a hell of a mess language, so I would either go with C or Java and forget that raped object orientation present in C++.

Anyway, I think we could give much better answers if superfly007 would specify what kind of games he would like to write.

OK,
C++ -> Platform dependent games.
Java -> Platform intependent games.
ActionScript -> Small web games.
C# & VB -> Not really for games.
Blitz Basic -> Kick but game programming language.


This post has been edited by ajwsurfer: 24 Apr, 2007 - 07:48 AM

Mostly agreed, but I think C# is good for directx games on win, however I haven't done any extensive testing.

Info here has been great! thanks alot well what i am doing is creating a game for the Xbox 360 in XNA and it uses C#.

Just trying to get some advantages and disadvanatges for my report.



ajwsurfer you mention VB claims to be OO but isn't why isn't iot can anyone elaborate?

This post has been edited by superfly007: 25 Apr, 2007 - 12:04 PM

I too am using XNA at the moment. I haven't done any extensive tests, but I've heard that C# and managed DirectX is marginally slower than C++ and DX. But unless your creating bleeding edge technology, you probably won't mind/notice the small difference.