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maninblacksweater asked: 1) Will be able to create applications for Android, iOS, HTML5? 2) What do you think about Love2D, Dreemchest and Agen?

Answer:

1) Android and iOS support is coming soon after the release. There will most likely never be HTML5 support, though a browser plugin and NaCl support will almost certainly happen.

2) Love2D is great and was an inspiration to many of Polycode’s features. Never heard of Dreemchest or Agen.

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Anonymous asked: Is polycode free?

Answer:

Yes, Polycode is free and open source.

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Anonymous asked: Is possible to use Polycode only as a level editor ? Does it stores the levels as standard XML and CSV files? What features can we expect for the editor? Is auto-tiling implemented/planned ? Don't get me wrong, the entire Polycode project looks really awesome, but at least for now i'm targeting web, so C++ and Lua is not an option to me. -Miguel-

Answer:

You can use it as a level editor, though most of file formats are optimized towards being read by Polycode specifically. The levels are stored in a binary object format, which is kind of like an optimized binary version of XML that I came up with to save space and decrease loading time. It’s quite easily read from any other language, but like I said, a lot of the way files and data is referenced is very specific to Polycode.

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makeplaybelieve asked: What made you adopt Lua? Do you think you lose much by not having C++ as main language?

Answer:

C++ IS technically the main language. Most of my own Polycode projects are in C++. The Lua bindings/IDE is kind of like a separate project from the main C++ library, though their development happens in tandem. And I chose Lua because it is the fastest, easiest to embed scripting language out there. Personally, I am more partial to Python, but Python is a real pain to embed and distribute, while Lua compiles in statically with a really small footprint and no dependencies and will run on just about anything.

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sunburnfudge asked: What all new things are coming to polycode with what seems to be a major overhaul? It's been a couple years since I last poked at it.

Answer:

The coming release is focusing on the Lua bindings and the standalone Polycode IDE, which will provide an all-in one development environment and ability to publish to multiple platforms. On the core library side, there have been numerous improvements and new features too numerous to mention, but a UI library, HDR rendering support and more streamlined material management are some of them.

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classyraptor asked: How powerful will Polycode be? By that, I mean, would you be able to make a game like cave story or perhaps some Snes like game on this, and have it contain a lot of custom features without a lot of coding experience? Or will this be for simpler games? Drag and drop interface like RPGMaker or what?

Answer:

While Polycode is definitely trying to be “easy to pick up and use” framework, it does require an ability to program. Hopefully it will provide enough material to be a framework through which you can learn how to do that, but it will not provide drag and drop features, especially game-specific ones, since, technically it is not even a game engine, but a more broad development framework.

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