I haven’t been blogging about the progress of rQuest lately because well, there hasn’t actually been much progress done. I have a break from work at the end of next week so that gives me some time to steam ahead and get some features coded.

I’m moving the code to use SDL rather than SFML. The main reasons behind this transition are:

• SDL already supports Mac. Its coming in SFML but I’d rather that it was already implemented. The Mac market is a particularly important one for my game, so having a cross-platform graphics library from the get go is pretty handy.
• I don’t actually need any fancy 3D effects. I’m not planning on using hardware accelerated rotation, scaling, lighting or alpha blending so all those features of SFML are not really required.
• I perfer SDLs blit based model of placing graphics on the screen.
• Hundreds of games already use SDL and it seems pretty solid.

SFML has some really good ideas behind its framework, but for this type of game. I think SDL suits my needs a little better. If I do ever get around to creating another 2D shooter, then I think SFML would fit the bill a little nicer.

In other news I finished playing Psychonauts, and it is the best game ever. I’m a huge Tim Schafer fan and if you haven’t played it yet and want to experience one of the most original action adventure games ever you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Also, over the last couple months I’ve helped out with an entry in the retro-remakes contest. If you ever remember a platformer from back in the day called the New Zealand Story, be sure to check out the AGW entry into this years retro-remakes competition available here.

I’ve also started to play Persona3 and its one of the most interesting jRPGs I’ve played. As a general rule I perfer western RPGs, but thats probably because so much of what we get over here are simply Final Fantasy clones. I’m only 10 hours into the game (apparently its a 70-80 hour game) but I’m already inspired to check out other games in the Shin Megami Tensei series.