Recent Posts
but I seem to remember cost being an obstacleHey Jussi - maybe a DonationCoder discount is in order (can't hurt to ask, right?).-ivery (May 04, 2009, 07:34 AM)-mwb1100 (May 04, 2009, 11:58 AM)
There is a Zeus Lite version that is free of charge: http://www.zeusedit.com/lite/-Jussi Jumppanen (May 04, 2009, 11:53 PM)
I thought everything except the sound was excellent, for what it was. I didn't go into expecting it to be of LOTR proportions, but I'm certainly glad to have seen it. The sound really needs to be normalized, it hurt my ears in parts, and I wanted it to be louder than max in others.-Ehtyar (May 04, 2009, 01:26 AM)
Indeed. Mirror's Edge, Postal 2 (WTH!)... you're not missing anything if you do not play those two.I thought the premise of Mirror's Edge looked cool... why didn't you like it if you don't mind me asking...-Lashiec (April 30, 2009, 05:13 PM)
And I really hate sites that divide their articles into little snippets to increase their pageviews.-ghacks (April 30, 2009, 05:38 PM)
I have 90% of these games at home and played about 20% of them.-Crush (May 01, 2009, 06:02 AM)
i definitely don't agree with that list (only played a couple of them) but it's an interesting read.-mouser (April 30, 2009, 01:29 PM)
If you like Delphi but want something newer than v5 and you want it for free, you could try the Turbo Delphi Explorer.
Of course you are not going to be able to just drag & drop and have magical custom shaped GUI's. You are going to have to learn how to code them.
I have done some interesting image based GUI stuff in Delphi, coding all the stuff for the buttons & everything myself, in Delphi 6.
Attached is a demo of what I did (buttons don't actually do anything, but it does display how they look when clicked). Eventually, when I finish what I want to do with it (might not be for a long time), I plan on releasing it as a set of components, but don't hold your breath waiting on that.-app103 (April 25, 2009, 12:10 AM)
I'm not Jussi, but I've downloaded and installed it and it appears to be a 'registered' copy upon installation.-mwb1100 (April 23, 2009, 12:21 PM)
What mwb1100 is 100% correct. This is a fully registered version of Zeus that will never expire and can be used free of charged.
But remember this version is about 5 years old, so it is missing a lot of features found in the latest Zeus release.
If you find the software is missing a feature, chances are that feature will exist in the latest Zeus release-Jussi Jumppanen (April 24, 2009, 12:24 AM)
Is Zeus portable, i.e. can you run it off of a USB stick?I'll bear that in mind! But I'd guess that also makes it faster and lighter weight for older hardware like my Win98SE laptop - which, admittedly, even I will have to replace with Vista UAC hell when I get some time to set the new one up.-rjbull (April 24, 2009, 03:30 AM)
So just what is Lazarus?
Lazarus is the class libraries for Free Pascal that emulate Delphi. Free Pascal is a GPL'ed compiler that runs on Linux, Win32, OS/2, 68K and more. Free Pascal is designed to be able to understand and compile Delphi syntax, which is of course OOP. Lazarus is the part of the missing puzzle that will allow you to develop Delphi like programs in all of the above platforms. Unlike Java which strives to be a write once run anywhere, Lazarus and Free Pascal strives for write once compile anywhere. Since the exact same compiler is available on all of the above platforms it means you don't need to do any recoding to produce identical products for different platforms.
Yeah, but what about the GUI? What widget set are you using?
That is the neat part. You decide. Lazarus is being developed to be totally and completely API independent. Once you write your code you just link it against the API widget set of your choice. If you want to use GTK+, great! If you want it to be Gnome compliant, great! As long as the interface code for the widget set you want to use is available you can link to it. If it isn't available, well you can write it.
For example. Let's say you are creating a product on Windows using the standard Windows widgets. Now you want to create a Linux version. First you decide what widget set you want to use. Let's assume you want to use gtk+. So you copy the code over to your Linux development machine, compile, and link against the gtk+ interface unit. That's it. You've now just created a Linux version of the Windows product without any additional coding.
At this point in the development we are using gtk+ as our initial API widget set. Some work is also being done with Qt and the Win32 API. As soon as Lazarus reaches a 1.0 release developers will be able to start to create the interface unit to tie the LCL (Lazarus Component Libraries) to other widget sets.
So is this thing really RAD like Delphi?
It sure is. Is it totally completed? No not yet. The forms design portion is still in need of a great deal of development. The over all IDE is complete and can be used for most programming needs. Several aspects of the project are still in need of help. Hint. Hint.
Can I use my existing Delphi code?
Some of it yes. If the code is standard Delphi pascal and it uses the standard components found in Delphi then the answer is yes. If it uses some specific database, OCX, or DCU then the answer would be no. These items are specific to Windows and would only work on and within Windows. However, if you are only looking to create a Windows product using Free Pascal and Lazarus then the answer would be yes. This hasn't been added to the LCL yet but it should be possible in the future.
Can I create commercial products with this?
Yes. The code for the Free Pascal compiler is licensed under the GPL. This means that it is open source, free, whatever name you want to stick to it. You can modify the code if you wish but you MUST distribute those changes or make them available to others if they wish to use it.
The FCL (Free Pascal Component Libraries) and the LCL (which will eventually become part of the FCL) are licensed under a modified LGPL. In a nut shell this means that you can write your own proprietary software that just links to these libraries. You can sell your application without the need to supply or make available your code. However, as with the compiler if you make modifications to the FCL or LCL you must make those changes available to the general public and the world.
Thanks for that, wraith. Can I ask a favor, please? When I look at templates like these:
(1) http://www.4template...emplates/20/AX0398BL
(2) http://www.4template...templates/2/AX0237GR
I cannot easily tell whether the section links (the column of blue menu buttons in the middle in (1); the row of black buttons under the main banner in (2)) are made of images or text. Do you know, or can you tell by looking at the screenshots, or by comparing with the templates you have used yourself? The screenshots they show are too small to tell the difference, and whoever is running the site isn't responding to questions asked via their contact form.
Also, the templates you bought from them - are they fixed width or fluid? Thanks a lot in advance!-tranglos (April 22, 2009, 06:50 PM)
