28 Mar 2002

Thu, 28 Mar 2002 18:54:18 GMT

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

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