[fpc-pascal]Best PASCAL for games

[Marco van de Voort]

> Does anyone have an opinion on which version of Pascal, which Pascal
> compiler is "The" very best one for game creation . . . any type of games,
> from puzzles to first-person-shooters, loaded with graphics (2D and 3D)?

Well FPC has several games packaged as demoes. Tetris, Samegame etc. Also
the Delphi SDL headers work with FPC.

Moreover, you can see here

http://www.freepascal.org/wiki/wiki.phtml?title=Road_to_2.0&PHPSESSID=d88453e40de263c32e894e646d6eca4f
 
that being able to correctly compiling Quake2 (delphi version) is a target
for FPC 2.0

> I’m asking about freeware versions at this point.  But I'd also like a
> separate opinion on commercial compilers.

Free: FPC definitely. Commercial: keep your source compilable with Delphi
_and_ FPC.

Delphi is still better performing, but there is not much chance that Delphi
will see any improvement in this field.

> And I’m sure that everyone must have an opinion!  What about Turbo Pascal,
> or Lazarus Pascal . . . all in all, what do YOU think is best suited for
> programming of all types of games?

Turbo Pascal is ancient, and can't access modern OSes. There is no standard
way to access anything above 640x480x16. Forget about (ever!) accessing
hardware acceleration etc etc. 

Lazarus is FPC with a Visual classes hierarchy. It's the same thing.