@cgutjahr

Quote:

Quote: Pardon my ignorance but what is the difference between Hollywood and Hollywood Designer? Are they independent applications? Or can they be combined together somehow? If so, what are the benefits? Hollywood = beginner friendly programming language based on lua. no access to host OS functions, but powerful functions for graphics (including layers, sprites, collision detection...), sound, input/output handling etc. Hollywood Designer: A PowerPoint/Scala clone. the presentations created with Hollywood Designer need to be compiled with Hollywood.

Does it mean that the Hollywood Designer is useless without Hollywood?

_________________
Modern Retro Experience

> Is Hollywood really useable for a beginner like me?

Yes! Hollywood is really extremly easy to learn and comes with
lots of demos and one of the best guides that come with
amiga products.

> Does it mean that the Hollywood Designer is useless without Hollywood?

Yes. Hollywood is listed as a requirement for Designer.

Ok, lets give it a try then!
Spare time, there you go!!!

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µA1c OS4.1 (with a dead powersupply (powersupplied))
A500

When you create an executable for the platforms is there anything that distinguishes it visually as a Hollywood application(e.g. a popup)?
Do users see anything that indicates that Hollywood was used to create the game or application?
Are there any additional files that need to be distributed with the executable or installed prior to the application for *any* of the supported platforms?
Is an installer required for *any* platforms?

Does the scripting language follow the constructs of any particular popular language like for instance, basic, pascal or javascript? (Edit: It was mentioned it was Lua. Is it an open source implementation? Where can I get docs?)

What is the object oriented support like in Hollywood? Does it at least support classes, if not the other OOP features?
When the executable is compiled for any platform is the script readable in the binary? Can it be reverse engineered (like Java byte code for instance)?
Sorry to stress this, but is the resulting executable created through true compilation or is something still being interpreted within the executable?

Do you know of any current commercial software created with Hollywood?
This would assist in ascertaining its applicability for certain tasks.
How does language and grahical performance compare to a C/C++ implementation with SDL?

Ok. Going back to my happy place now.

_________________
Leo Nigro, CTO Commodore USA, LLC
Opinions expressed are my own and not those of C= USA.
Commodore/AMIGA "Beautiful, High-Performance, Home Computers for Creativity and Entertainment."

Is there an IDE for it?

Does Hollywood Designer generate scripts that can be pasted into your own scripts?

Ok. Going back to my happy place now.

Last edited by BigBentheAussie on 28-Jan-2008 at 03:44 PM.

_________________
Leo Nigro, CTO Commodore USA, LLC
Opinions expressed are my own and not those of C= USA.
Commodore/AMIGA "Beautiful, High-Performance, Home Computers for Creativity and Entertainment."

BigBentheAussie : The IDE exists and is called Hollywood Designer.

For those who could consider that as another advantage, my tool MeltingPoint is able to convert a PowerPoint file into a Hollywood project. So you can modify it, add true effects (not like crappy PowerPoint effects), ... It will ne out soon with PointRider 0.50.
For 68k users, it would be easy to use MeltingPoint and Hollywood as a PowerPoint viewer

@BigBentheAussie

Ah, can't remeber the title of the movie with this sentence?

"Too many questions!"

If you have a Peg or A1, go and get it. All the answares are included and you supported great development beside.

Quote:

When you create an executable for the platforms is there anything that distinguishes it visually as a Hollywood application(e.g. a popup)? Do users see anything that indicates that Hollywood was used to create the game or application?

No, there are no popups or hints that it was done with Hollywood. It looks like a normal application written in C.

Quote:

Are there any additional files that need to be distributed with the executable or installed prior to the application for *any* of the supported platforms? Is an installer required for *any* platforms?

NO! Definitely not! It's drag and drop. Just drop in the exe and go. You know, oldschool Amiga style. We don't need no... installation. :)

Quote:

Does the scripting language follow the constructs of any particular popular language like for instance, basic, pascal or javascript? (Edit: It was mentioned it was Lua. Is it an open source implementation? Where can I get docs?)

It is the engine of Lua but with a twist. It uses merely the Lua kernel but with a slightly different syntax and behaviour as well as with a lot of new features that Lua doesn't have. You can read the Lua docs at www.lua.org but remember that Hollywood actually offers more than documented at that site.

Quote:

What is the object oriented support like in Hollywood? Does it at least support classes, if not the other OOP features?

Sure, you can create classes with methods and everything. Even metamethods are possible. Really good stuff.

Quote:

When the executable is compiled for any platform is the script readable in the binary? Can it be reverse engineered (like Java byte code for instance)? Sorry to stress this, but is the resulting executable created through true compilation or is something still being interpreted within the executable?

The script is not readable in the binary. The script is compiled into cpu independent bytecode which can of course be decompiled. But there is no decompiler for Hollywood programs and it would be tough to write one because the internals change with every version and they are proprietary and not documented. Even if there would be a decompiler, you wouldn't get a nice source code script out of that. You would merely get a bunch of opcodes. All variable names will be gone and all loops will be transformed into the same cryptic structure. It would very much look like a disassembled native program because Hollywood's byte code is pretty much optimized. It would be very unreadable if one would manage to decompile it.

Quote:

Do you know of any current commercial software created with Hollywood? This would assist in ascertaining its applicability for certain tasks. How does language and grahical performance compare to a C/C++ implementation with SDL?

No, I don't know any commercial software. Unfortunately. Who'll be the first? :)

I didn't do any comparisons between C/C++ and SDL but it should really be fast enough for most tasks. Of course, you can't use it to write a 3D shooter or something, but the overall performance is very good because the script language is also very fast.

Quote:

Does Hollywood Designer generate scripts that can be pasted into your own scripts?

Yes.

I hope I've convinced you. If so, I'd be happy to take your order.

Best regards,

Andreas Falkenhahn, Airsoft Softwair

But softwarefailure your hollywood software is hard to use. I mean let us take a comparison between hollywood and visual studio 2005 for example. Visual Studio 2005 have awesome GUI editor to assist in your software development part, have great event handlers for all these buttons, etc when you develop your application and when you code for example it highlights the colors in keyword you get jiggly line if there is a syntax error and when you hover over it a tip balloon popup telling you the problem.

Other things like if you enter [objectname].[MenuPopUp] where you can select from and the list continues. Hollywood is like HTML Editor...you can use a notepad to develop your software and that is difficult thing to do, also you have to use SHELL to compile no pretty GUI to develop and so forth and so forth.

Last edited by Foody on 29-Jan-2008 at 01:05 PM.

@foody

Have you tried Hollywood Designer. Creating event handlers for buttons is easy in Designer. It's more than just a PowerPoint like interface as it supports scripting too. It would be quite easy to create a Myst style game with Designer. The only issue would be creating the graphics to go into the game.

I think that it's great that it can now compile into Windows and Mac executables. Hopefully Designer will be updated soon to match the new features. Taking a bit of time to improve the documentation of both Hollywood and Designer would be helpful too.

Hans

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Join the Kea Campus - upgrade your skills; support my work; enjoy the Amiga corner.
https://keasigmadelta.com/ - see more of my work

Am I the only one to think that Hollywood Abstraction Layer sounds very orwellian?

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@Foody

Quote:

I mean let us take a comparison between hollywood and visual studio 2005 for example.

Please tell me what is "visual studio 2005"? Is it runs on my Amiga! If so, then give me an url to order it...

@Foody

The thought of comparing any Amiga product to VS 2005 is pretty funny.

MS spends an enormous amount of cash on their development tools. I'm not quite sure how much, but it is surely in the hundreds-of-millions range, if not up to the billion mark by now.

Hollywood is developed by one person. And a very bright person at that.

Any suggestions/criticism must keep this in mind.

@gregthecanuck

Why keep it in mind?

The customer buys a product and not the way the product was made..
Of course this and any other product will be compared to similar products on
this or other platforms. Amiga software are most of the times lacking in
GUI or features due to having limited resources. But that isn't the customers
problem now is it? However, most Amiga users are aware of this and lower their
demands according.

Speaking generally now..

Last edited by Samwel on 01-Feb-2008 at 04:03 AM.

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/Harry

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