.Net is many things, and unfortunately, imo the microsoft marketing machine really did a good job of clouding it up. It seems to be a, lets-throw-around-buzzwords and label ".Net" on all of our products and services, type of deal.
I'm trying to keep this short, and thus its really hard to sum up all the advantages of .Net. Google is your friend here... Anyways, .Net is microsofts version of whats called the common language runtime. It provides a unified type system and memory model, and is object oriented. One of the big ideas, is that it allows any number of languages to work together seamlessly. So you may write the rendering library in c#, but write the game logic in visualbasic, and the network component in c++.
Another thing is the crossplatform aspect. Binaries are stored as intermediate code and basically usuable from any computer that has an implementation of the runtime on it. So you can compile a program once, and have it run anywhere( in my situation, its a bit more complex, but the principle mostly works ).
A more obvious feature is the framework itself. There is all these classes in the framework that make our lives( us programmer types ) much much easier. All kinds of the stuff we always seem to find ourselves rewriting, or learning someone elses library to make use of. Just to throw out a few examples here, there's stuff to make gui based programs, download webpages, networking, threading, moving files and directories around, specialized collection classes, compression, serial port access, reading or writing xml... there is just a bunch of stuff in there. Too much to name.
They have really put a lot of thought into making the api's feel natural, and usable. Win32 is a pain in the ass, and its a huge rats nest....try comparing win32 programming to winforms. You just can't do it. They are worlds apart in terms of usability.
You combine all of the above with a language like c#, and its just a dream to work with. And this is coming from someone who was a hardcore blitz guy. I tried other languages and really kind of stuck with blitz thru the years. In fact, the original version of this lib was being created in blitz3d and blitzplus. I ran into a lot of walls with blitz, while I pretty much have free reign to code as I please now :)
Well, yes and no. .Net is microsofts version of the clr, but there are other versions like Mono and DotGNU(Portable .Net). I havent explored it too deeply yet, but mono is embeddable, or can be shipped with your game. Going off of a post on the indiegamer forums, it looks as though compressed, mono can come out to be about 3mb. So thats a route I may explore until longhorn, er-- vista becomes the standard os. For linux and mac osx, mono is a must.
Anyhow, I've really thought about this alot, and I still wonder how its going to be received initially. But either way, I'm moving ahead with it. I mean someone has to jump in the water at some point. I truly believe .net is the most productive development path. And before you know it, it will be common place. You can look back to directx, or 3d acceleration, and see that there were transition periods into them. .Net will be the same way.
One things for sure, .Net is the future of windows development, whether you like it or not.
I don't think .Net will install on windows 95. It does work on 98 though. At least 1.1 does. I don't know whether 2.0 works on 98 yet.
But, at some point you have to draw the line. I don't want to limit potential customers of my games, but I mean hey. If its 2006 and you're still running win95... what can I do? *shrugs*
I'm trying to keep this short, and thus its really hard to sum up all the advantages of .Net. Google is your friend here... Anyways, .Net is microsofts version of whats called the common language runtime. It provides a unified type system and memory model, and is object oriented. One of the big ideas, is that it allows any number of languages to work together seamlessly. So you may write the rendering library in c#, but write the game logic in visualbasic, and the network component in c++.
Another thing is the crossplatform aspect. Binaries are stored as intermediate code and basically usuable from any computer that has an implementation of the runtime on it. So you can compile a program once, and have it run anywhere( in my situation, its a bit more complex, but the principle mostly works ).
A more obvious feature is the framework itself. There is all these classes in the framework that make our lives( us programmer types ) much much easier. All kinds of the stuff we always seem to find ourselves rewriting, or learning someone elses library to make use of. Just to throw out a few examples here, there's stuff to make gui based programs, download webpages, networking, threading, moving files and directories around, specialized collection classes, compression, serial port access, reading or writing xml... there is just a bunch of stuff in there. Too much to name.
They have really put a lot of thought into making the api's feel natural, and usable. Win32 is a pain in the ass, and its a huge rats nest....try comparing win32 programming to winforms. You just can't do it. They are worlds apart in terms of usability.
You combine all of the above with a language like c#, and its just a dream to work with. And this is coming from someone who was a hardcore blitz guy. I tried other languages and really kind of stuck with blitz thru the years. In fact, the original version of this lib was being created in blitz3d and blitzplus. I ran into a lot of walls with blitz, while I pretty much have free reign to code as I please now :)
Won't that mean games produced with your lib will also require .NET?
Well, yes and no. .Net is microsofts version of the clr, but there are other versions like Mono and DotGNU(Portable .Net). I havent explored it too deeply yet, but mono is embeddable, or can be shipped with your game. Going off of a post on the indiegamer forums, it looks as though compressed, mono can come out to be about 3mb. So thats a route I may explore until longhorn, er-- vista becomes the standard os. For linux and mac osx, mono is a must.
Anyhow, I've really thought about this alot, and I still wonder how its going to be received initially. But either way, I'm moving ahead with it. I mean someone has to jump in the water at some point. I truly believe .net is the most productive development path. And before you know it, it will be common place. You can look back to directx, or 3d acceleration, and see that there were transition periods into them. .Net will be the same way.
One things for sure, .Net is the future of windows development, whether you like it or not.
PLus, I think older OSs like 95/98 can't run .net.
I don't think .Net will install on windows 95. It does work on 98 though. At least 1.1 does. I don't know whether 2.0 works on 98 yet.
But, at some point you have to draw the line. I don't want to limit potential customers of my games, but I mean hey. If its 2006 and you're still running win95... what can I do? *shrugs*