Hydroponic is a cross-architecture cross-OS game platform. It provides:
- A common target for which to compile games. Hydro
is implemented as an object server, similar in concept to
CORBA. The best way to make a game for the platform is to
design either a PlugIn (discussed later) or to create
a privileged client for the Hydroponic server that feeds it
the necessary commands and data. Each has its advantages and
disadvantages.
- PlugIns are faster, since they directly interact with the object environment; the speed advantage can be considerable.
- Privileged clients have the advantage of being able to reload themselves without an interrupt in server service. They also allow you to run a customized Hydro server without compilation ability on the host machine.
- PlugIns. The idea of the plug-in should be familiar to most programmers and software users. The special thing about Hydro plug-ins is that they may either be in the host environment's native dynamic library format (.so/.dll) or in a generic Hydroponic plugin format usable on any platform.
There are lots of other neat things about Hydro, but that's a topic for later diaries -- I need to go work. :)
Until next time, -- djur