How to Install Dylan?

#1
Oh man, is this thing still alive??

As for installation, you're looking at two entirely different things here. One is a source install and one a binary install. As far as I can see, their binary install for OSX is *OLD* (2006ish), so you can pretty much forget about that. Current binary releases are only available for Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows, so you would need to compile from source (actually, thanks to GNU autostuff that's not too complicated but it only gets more complicated from there on).

If you're new to all this, I'd recommend getting something more approachable. This is more for the hacker-type-of-guy.

Makes me wonder, what got you interested in Dylan in the first place?

Dylan had some nice ideas but its childbearing was total chaos (Apple kicked it, Harlequin basically went bankrupt, Gwydion was just a bunch of hackers, and so on) and when it sort of arrived, it was more or less a stillborn.

#2 Well I was thinking of learning Open Dylan to program an application for my game. I heard networking on the Torque Game Engine is extremely hard. It's hard to get just 256 players on one server. My game needs a few more (1500 to 2000). I'm currently still in the prototype stage. I made a few spears/polearms (textured also) in Blender, and exporting them into Torque just to test. I was thinking about though, making a single player version using the Torque Game Engine. Maybe add some updates for a little bit (or as long as it takes until I finish my Open Dylan application). This will be the bait. Once I'm finished with Open Dylan, I will change engines completely and release the massive multiplayer version of my game. This way, when it comes to make the multiplayer version, all my shapes, weapons, scenery, enviroment ideas, in-game GUIs, main menu GUIs, etc... can be almost directly converted. I will though however have some scripting to do. But I'm not too worried. I hope to pick up a FEW team members along the way in my single player version.

c++ has SO many errors, so I'm not entirely sure I would like to learn that, as I will probably spend more time fixing it, then programming on it. Open Dylan seems pretty good. I'm also looking into c#. Java? Ehh, pretty laggy.

#3 Hey Shane, I totally and completely understand that you are enthusiastic about this and have BIG dreams. I'm very much reminded of what my plans looked like when learning programming.

However, let's stay realistic here.

You want to program a networked game engine from scratch that supports 1500+ players in a language that you don't understand the installation instructions for? Not to mention, have you researched into whether OD is actually suitable for what you are doing? There's a reason much of the realtime stuff is written in C++.

Small example: I don't know which garbage collection implementation/algorithm the OD guys are using but I bet it's not even a soft realtime implementation. You're lucky if you can just disable it while the game is running but in a server environment this won't get you far, so you'll be jumping through hoops just to not get the collector to put your game to a grinding halt every now and then.

There's lots and lots of other things that could be said but I invite you to just do a search for MMOG on this site.

It's really cool of you that you want to get into this and spend time to learn and create things on your own. It's very important, though, to stay realistic with your goals. Start small and with each goal you have reached, celebrate and then set the bar higher.

Sorry if this all sounded rude or harsh to you. That's not my intention.

Don't make the same mistakes I made. It took me ages to realize that even Carmack put a guy on a pogo stick before writing Doom (and Keen probably wasn't even his first game).

//EDIT: grammar and stuff

#4 c++ compilers can be very expensive. I don't got much money (I'm only 14). And, I can't really find any for Mac. Also, isn't c++ like a REALLY old language? Plus, one of the reasons why some games have hundreds of employees is fixing the c++ errors. I don't have a hundred employees to perfect a c++ application. It's just me. I'm still trying to release a prototype on the Torque Game Engine. I still don't know where to even start on learning to create multiplayer games for Torque. I know basic TorqueScript like vehicles, mount points, GUIs (in and out of game), etc... But once I look at the words "Torque multiplayer", I get totally confused on how to even start a Torque multiplayer game. Do you have to set it up for multiplayer before you start scripting and editing your game? Or can I finish the single player of my game and then implement the networked version?

#5 Xcode is a free compiler for C++ from apple. It's probably one of the easiest compilers I have ever used.

As for the multiplayer part of torque, it's already there. Your gui scripts are loaded in client/scripts, and your game play scripts are loaded from server/scripts. It's really that simple. Torque actually does most all the work for you.

#6 Like Mike said, XCode is the programming environment on Mac OS X. It's all you need to do the actual code + compile Torque.

If you decide to do any Windows porting, the Visual <whatever> Express family of products are all free. The days of pawning your next of kin to afford one are gone :)

"Thinking in C++" is a great introduction to the language, because the author doesn't assume prior knowledge of C. There are two volumes, and a free electronic edition of each:
http://mindview.net/Books/TICPP/ThinkingInCPP2e.html

Have a look at the Torque-related books GarageGames sell for some more help with both scripting and setting up multiplayer games.