Some reasons I am weighing for picking .NET framework version 1.1 vs 2.0:
- Primary reason for using 1.1: The framework version required affects not only the version of the framework the game developer must have installed, but also the version that must be available on every system where the game is played. I want the games to be functional on as many systems as possible without having to download a new framework. I'm guessing there are more people out there with 1.1 than 2.0 right now.
- Reason to use 2.0: Possible performance improvements
- Reason to use 2.0: I'm unclear on whether it's possible or likely that someone could have the .NET framework 2.0 installed and be unable to run programs that rely on version 1.1. If this is possible, I should not stick with version 1.1 for too long, thinking that it is the most likely to be compatible with the widest range of systems.
- Reason to use 2.0: Possibly some bug fixes: I know of at least one graphics bug that I had to work around to prevent the graphics editor from turning your image to a gray mush when drawing with translicent brushes. But the work-around seems to work.
- Reason to use 2.0: More features and cleaner design. I'm not fully familiar with all the features available in .NET 2.0, but a few examples I can think of are strongly typed collections (using generics), better framework support for compiling (can compile SGDK2 on a non-development system using the SLN file instead of having to maintain a BAT file) and possibly some improvements resulting from the new version of DirectX (though I'm not sure how tightly that's tied to .NET 2.0)
Of course if I were to switch to .NET 2.0 right now, I probably wouldn't be able to take advantage of a lot of it because the code was already written with 1.1. I probably wouldn't go back and change all the collections to be strongly typed. But future code could take advantage of it, and I could still retro-fit some of the code if I think it would make a difference.
So one related question I have is who uses what? Do a lot of you have 2.0? Does anybody have 2.0 and not have 1.1? Do any of you have no .NET framework at all?
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