We're building a web-based application that requires heavy image processing. We'd like this processing load to be on the client as much as possible and we'd like to support as much platforms (even mobiles) as much as possible.
Yeah, I know, wishful thinking
Here's the info:
Image processing is rasterization from some data. Think like creating a PNG image from a PDF file.
We don't have a lot of server power. So client-side processing is a bit of a must.
So, we're considering:
Flash - most widespread, but from what i read has lackluster development tools. (and no iPhone/iPad support for now).
Silverlight - allows us to use .NET CLR, so a big ++ (a lot of code is in .NET). But is not supported for most mobiles ( rumored android support in the future)
HTML5 + Javascript - probably the most "portable" option. The problem is having to rewrite all that image processing code in Javascript.
Any thoughts or architectures that might help?
Clarification: I don't need further ideas on what libraries are available for Silverlight and Javascript. My dilemma is
choosing Silverlight means no support for most mobiles
choosing Flash means we have to redevelop most of our code AND no iPhone/iPad support
HTML5 + Javascript we have to redevelop most of our code and not fully supported yet in all browsers
choosing two (Silverlight + Flash) will be too costly
Any out-of-the-box or bright ideas / alternatives I might be missing?
This is the sort of issue that software architects run up against all the time. As per usual, there is no ideal solution. You need to select which compromise is most acceptable to your business.
To summarise your problem, most of your image processing software is written in .NET. You'd like to run it client-side on mobile devices, but there is limited .NET penetration on mobiles. The alternatives with higher penetration (eg. Flash) would require you to re-write your code, which you can't afford to do. In addition, these alternatives are not supported on the iPhone/iPad.
What you ideally want is a way to run all your .NET code on most existing platforms, including iPhone/iPad. I can say with some confidence that no such solution currently exists - there is no "silver bullet" answer that you have overlooked.
So what will you need to compromise on? It seems to me that even if you redevelop in flash, you are still going to miss out on a major market (iPhone). And redeveloping software is extremely costly anyway.
Here is the best solution to your problem - you need to compromise on your "client side execution" constraint. If you execute server side, you get to keep your existing code, and also get to deploy to just about every mobile client, including the iPhone.
You said your server power is limited, but server processing power is cheap when compared to software development costs. Indeed, it is not all that expensive to outsource your server component and just pay for what you use. It's most likely that your application will only have low penetration to start off with. As the business grows, you will be able to afford to upgrade your server capacity.
I believe this is the best solution to your problem.
Host you image processing on Amazon E2C, Azure, or Google. IIRC E2C has many common image processing problems packaged and all ready to go.
Azure probably more familiar ground in term of sharing code as a web service
You just pay for CPU cycles and transfers/storage etc
I'm sure there will be Silverlight and JS people posting examples. Here are some image editors written in actionscript:
Phoenix
PhotoshopExpress
There is an ImageProcessing library to start with.
Plus PixelBender is available in Flash Player 10, it's fast, it runs in a separate thread
and people do some pretty mad things with it.
HTH
Some help for the Silverlight part:
There is an Silverlight image editor called Thumba.
And Nokola recently made one called EasyPainter and he will also provide the source code in the furure.
For the image conversion I would recommend the open source library ImageTools that also includes some basic effects.
Silverlight has a class for pixel manipulation of bitmaps called WriteableBitmap. The open source library WriteableBitmapEx is a collection of extension methods for Silverlight's WriteableBitmap. The WriteableBitmap API is very minimalistic and there's only the raw Pixels array for such operations. The WriteableBitmapEx library tries to compensate that with extensions methods that are easy to use like built in methods.
Pixel Shaders can also be used to make some fast and advanced effects. Although they are limited by Shader Model 2 shaders can be used for fast bluring, tinting and such things.
DISCLAIMER: I consider myself as an advocate of the Flash platform. I admire Silverlights huge potential as a technology to deploy almost any .NET content through the browser, but it has low penetration, is horribly marketed and -although perceived as such by many (mostly people who don't know either Flash or Silverlight)- is no competitor of Flash, as much as Flash is no competitor of Sliverlight. The idealist in me loves the idea of doing everything in HTML+JS using a standard, instead of relying on 3rd party proprietary software. But the truth is, JS is slow and the API is limited, and implementations of JS, HTML and CSS are terribly inconsistent accross browsers.
If you really wanna stick to .NET and are so interested in targeting the iPhone and its siblings, then you might wanna check out MonoTouch.
Still, even though this may surprise you, I am going to tell you to use Flash. :)
Why? The image processing bit is the smallest part of your application. Whatever it is you are writing, I am very sure of that. I don't know about Silverlight, but in Flash the filters used by "Thumba" and "EasyPainter" can be created within a day, most of them simply using ConvolutionFilter, ColorMatrixFilter, DisplacementMapFilter and BitmapData::paletteMap or even simply by applying one of the other filters Flash offers out of the box. Any additional things can be created using PixelBender, which was pointed out by George. The kernel language is a subset of C, so porting classic filters shouldn't be too time consuming. Also alchemy (an LLVM backend targeting Flash Player 10) would be an option worth investigating, although it's not very stable yet.
The biggest part of your app will be a lot of GUI design, GUI implementation, Business Logics etc. Flash is really great when it comes to simple, yet reasonably fast image manipulation and with the Flex framework and MXML you have a powerful tool to productively create the GUI of your app, that can interoperate very well with a multitude of server solutions for virtually any platform.
Also, Flash has a great and active community, offering tons of tutorials, code snippets, libraries and frameworks, and a big ecosystem, with cross-compilation tools to deliver flash content to other platforms (including the upcoming Flash CS5, or the mentioned Elips). I don't understand, where you got the impression, that the Flash platform lacks developement tools. The difference to the .NET suite is that they are provided by a multitude of vendors. The upcoming Flash Player 10.1 was already pointed out by George, but never the less, I wanted to stress, that this makes many of the cross-plattform considerations obsolete.
Last but not least, I'd like to point out Haxe. It allows compiling to SWF, but also to C++, using the very same API provided by NME, to target the iPhone. Also there's work in progress on an android backend. If you're aren't playing to launch within the next 4-5 months, then this is definitely an option.
Your issue is a perfect target for the Haxe programming language. Haxe is written for the web and can compile to JavaScript, Flash and Objective-C (possibly Java/.NET soon).
So you do not choose which platform you are going to invest in but in which language. Haxe is easily adoptable for an AcitonScript programmer.
It makes no sense to run your imageprocessing algorithms in a JavaScript sandbox when Flash is available because it will be much faster. It makes also no sense to run heavy image processing algorithms on a mobile device like the iPhone with JavaScript. I would only support JavaScript as the worst fallback solution.
If you do not like to use Haxe I would go with Flash. You can deploy your Flash application for the iPhone aswell if that is your problem. This is also very great because you get native ARM code. There are actually great tools for professional Flash development available. FDT and IntelliJ IDEA are two of them. The best Haxe IDE is probably FlashDevelop at the moment of writing.
So I would definitly not use JavaScript as the only solution. Haxe is perfect for what you try to achieve. If you do not trust or do not want to invest in Haxe you can use Flash because of the iPhone/iPad export.
Depending on your usecase I would also encourage you to look at cloud hosting like Amazon EC2 and Google AppEngine for instance. Hosting costs are cheap and scaling will be easy for your task. The experience will be much better when it comes to complex operations that can take even a lot of time on a desktop system.
In addition to other answers, another option may be a hybrid solution. For example, use Flash/Silverlight for the majority of your target audience and use server-side processing for those that don't support it (or you could create a native app for iP[hone|ad])
You may have to do something like this anyway as the mobiles you are targetting may have insufficient processing power depending how complex your image processing gets.
Of course you still have the option of upgrading your server which, although you've currently discounted, is probably far cheaper than spending development time creating/deploying/testing a client-side solution.
You can use Silverlight for all Silverlight enabled clients and for non Silverlight clients, do the image processing server side. Since the Silverlight code is C#, you can double compile it to make (mostly)the same code work as Silverlight and non-Silverlight (i.e. server). This gets you the best of both worlds.
You don't say what language "all that code" you'd have to rewrite is in. Might a semiautomated translation to Javascript be practical?
Perhaps you could start out server-side, as CraigS suggests, and then move functions into the client over time instead of rewriting all at once.
Have you checked the editor of Pixlr.com ?
Take a look at their API as well..
The best solution is to use silverlight (so you already have the code ready). If the client can't run it (mobile phones, etc) then process it server-side.
It's the best compromise.
Depends on the type of image processing and the end user experience you are targeting.
As you are looking to target mobile phones your image processing will need to take into consideration the type of handset the user or the receipient has (if messaging via SMS/MMS), as different handsets have different resolution screens and handle different image formats for main images and thumbnails.
I'd suggest that you consider a hybrid cloud architecture as was mentioned in the Microsoft PDC keynotes this year. This would enable you to have your own server(s) to support your application, but if you require additional capacity due you scale out into the cloud using AppFabric.
Additionally, to maximise the market availability of your product pulling the image processing to a common reusable infrastructure allows you to target different platforms, exploiting the positives in each.
I have worked on a solution that hosted its image processing and delivery infrastructure server side and then built different UI offerings allowing sales via desktops, MNOs and AppStores. It can work and from a business perspective can offer economies of scale benefits.
Why not mention Java Applet ?
Good sides are:
almost all browser support ?
need install JRE ?
all OS support
Java provide Java Advanced Image kits, but if c++ dll can be called, that is best (JNI can call c++ dll )
In Python, one of the most popular libraries for image processing is pillow. Through the pyodide project (python running inside browser via emscripten), it's possible to use libraries like pillow and numpy for image (or matrix) processing, and convert the output to a base64 string (via Python standard library). This can then be passed to your <img> html element, either native JS document or with a library like React.
The way I see it, there's no one solution that meets all of your needs. Your best option, imo, is to go with Flash and hope that Adobe sets an agreement with Apple to get Flash on the iPhone/iPad. The major downside, of course, is you'll have to rewrite much of your code.
If the mobile sector isn't absolutely critical, then choose the Silverlight option for reasons you mentioned already. You could also use Silverlight in an out-of-browser mode to work as a desktop application.
Related
Since I'm familiar with AS3, I'm planning to build a desktop app using Air, and I'd like to not run into limitations, I never developed a full blown app for desktop using Air, only small apps and others for mobile.
The idea of this app is to be similar to an IDE, with some visual management, think of the design view of Flex, something like that. But not that big, a smaller/reduced version of that.
I'm asking this because I don't remember seeing any app like that built in Air, and I wonder if there is a good reason, or not.
If for example someone says: "use Java, its better", please tell me why, and more importantly, what things I can do in Java for desktop that Air just wont allow me to.
IMHO AIR is extremely powerful and if you combine Stage3D + Native Extensions you can do almost everything with a good performance. I have been working in several projects for desktop, iOS and Android and using Starling + Feathers + Robotlegs + creating my own native extensions (plus there is a lot of free/open source/commercial) was possible to achieve all my (and clients) goals.
Also, there is a huge (ActionScript/AIR) community sharing knowledge and helping each other, several open source frameworks (for games, 2D, 3D, animations, GUI).
I have tried Objective-C, Swift and Java and of course, there is a lot of positive points, native performance, powerful IDE's, GUI integration, native components, etc.
It's a mix, if you need to have your app running in multi platform, I believe Adobe AIR is a good option, if not and you have the necessary knowledge to work using Objective-C/Java, use native.
Of course, it's all relative, I'm just trying to share some tips.
Is there any way which can be adopted, to create cross platform responsive mobile apps using Flash Builder ?
We are using our custom written Resigning Engine for this purpose right now, but we tend to replace it with any generic Resigning tool or to cater responsiveness for all kind of devices/platforms.
Being on the same cross platform development, i.e. Flex, Action Script and MXML, is there any solution for this?
Thanks
It's possible deploy Flex-apps on Mobile devices, see Mobile app development
at Adobe Devnet more details
You definitely can develop Android and iOS apps using Adobe Air, Flex, AS3, MXML and publish them on Apple App Store and Google Play Store. But it's limited to these platforms, and Adobe is very unlikely to add any new platform to this list.
Pros:
it's really cross-platform. Once your application works on one, it's really easy to get it working on the other; so the development cost compared to native applications is much lower;
you may have some OS specific features/design; using by example OS specific CSS directives;
You perfectly may create an app with a responsive design, all tools are provided, but like for HTML/CSS, it requires a lot of work;
you may access all phone features (sensors, camera, etc...) using Adobe Native Extensions
Cons:
the size of the generated application: as it includes the AIR runtime, even a very simple app will weight around 12 Mb (9 for the runtime + 2.5 for Flex);
the performances are correct but not as good as those of native apps; one of the reasons is that Flex does not allow to use GPU for rendering (but Flex is not a framework for creating games);
it would be costly to get an app looking like a native one, as you would have to mimic all of native components. There was a project to do this (Eskimo), but it looks dead, and the components were not polished enough to be used in production when they stopped the development;
Adobe Native Extensions offer is rather limited, and they are quite tricky to write; (these drawbacks are not strong ones: you can write extensions, assuming you know to write native code; and most of the common features are available as ANE);
like with any other cross-platform technology, there are a few issues that you can't fix by yourself; you just can wait for Adobe to fix them when it's a problem in the compiler or the AIR runtime; hopefully they follow a 3 months release cycle since they launched AIR on mobile;
it runs on Android 2.3+ devices only; and only devices that are matching the minimal requirements defined for the AIR runtime; that is to say, most of the smartphones and tablets, except cheap ones like ZTE products. When a device is not considered as powerful enough by adobe, the AIR based apps are not displayed in the stores.
Some recommendations:
The best way to organize your code is to create a project for each OS, with specifics assets (icons by example) and a specific manifest file (app.xml), and put all of your application code in a library used by these two projects. It will allow you to test your code (Flex mobile project can't be unit tested), and will avoid you permanent modifications of the manifest.
Worflow: it's usually faster to develop for Android, and then adapt you app for iOS, because it's faster to deploy and test on Android device (although you may use the Adobe Simulator most of the time).
Use the latest release of Apache Flex; it handles the high resolution devices. Forget Adobe's release (4.7 and lower)
Test quickly and often on mobile, especially for the responsive aspects.
Use FXG instead of bitmap graphics each time it's possible (i.e. if they arent animated); it's lighter and very easy to scale.
Mad Components
Alternatively, you may consider using Mad Components instead of Flex.
Flex was not designed for mobile at first; MC was. So it's faster (looks like native), and much lighter (although you still need the embedded AIR runtime which weights 9 Mb).
I am interesting in game development. However, I am not sure what platform to choose. There are a few different platforms I have been considering so far:
Microsoft XNA
Games only work in Windows and Xbox?
JavaScript and WebGL
Bad performance. This is mainly due to JavaScript -- the language is essentially synchronous and even timers do not run asynchronously. The only good way to use JavaScript would be to utilize Web Workers, which complicate the development quite a lot.
Flash
A dying technology that I personally dislike and unsupport.
C++ and OpenGL
Cross-platform compliant all the way, but very hard to develop games.
Am I missing anything worth considering? What I am looking for is a simple yet enough powerful to make 2d and basic 3d games and being able to run it on as many platforms as possible.
Also, is it possible to run XNA games on Linux/Mac? What about mobile?
You should probably look at a framework that allows the use of Java/C++ but takes away some of the pain.
For C++ take a look at Ogre.
For Java take a look at jMonkeyEngine.
If you're going to be targeting mobile devices incl. iPhone/iPads too look at something like Unity/Unity Pro which supports JavaScript, C# and a dialect of Python and can publish out to multiple platforms.
You'll get better answers in https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/
If you don't mind spending some money, you might want to look at Torque.
For anything advanced you'll need to use C++, but for simple games, the TorqueScript is fine. They currently support Windows, Mac and iPhone/iPad, athough the Mac and iPhone/iPad support is usually less than the Windows support. But still pretty good for most things.
You can also publish the PC games to the web browser with their ActiveX and NP browser plugins.
They also support some consoles. For XBox they have a version of the engine that is built on top of XNA, and you can also get a version that is built on top of the native XBox SDK. I believe they've also gotten it going on PS3 as well. For the XBox and PS3 native stuff, you're going to be looking at some real money though.
WebGL and Javascript and canvas are getting a lot faster now, thanks to typed arrays and native animation support and hardware rendering, see for example:
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/08/more-efficient-javascript-animations-with-mozrequestanimationframe/
(download the nightly version of firefox minefield to try it out)
There are various webgl game frameworks available already (see the 'learning webgl' site for info).
It's not going to work on mobile/tablet platforms though probably for a good while.
You often see that a new game will be released on Xbox 360, PS3 and Windows PC.
How do gaming companies do this? Is it a common source code compiled using different compilers? Are different source codes actually required?
There's an example of this phenomenon described in this news article.
Generally speaking, the vast majority of multiplatform "triple-A" titles are implemented on top of an engine such as Unreal, Source, or other smaller engines. Each of these engines is custom-implemented and optimized for each platforms and may use a lower-level API such as DirectX/OpenGL which in turn uses the console. Each of these engines also has plug-ins for platform specific stuff (e.g., motion controls) that interact with the official drivers or APIs of the hardware.
Many of these engines support their own scripting languages or hooks for many things, so it is write once.
For example, take a look at the unreal engine:
http://www.unrealtechnology.com/technology.php
Most of the biggest engines, like Unreal are so flexible and robust that they allow developers to write all kinds of games. For instance, the Unreal engine was used not only for shooters, but also for shooter-RPGs like Mass Effect.
Remember that most of the manpower in making games is devoted to graphics, set designers, audio design, level design, etc., and there are custom editors for all of that. Many of the set pieces are usually programmed via scripting languages. Only a small portion of folks in gaming companies actually write code in low-level languages like C.
The engine takes care of this by providing a platform independence layer.
Things that varies between platforms for instance graphics library. threading, clock and filesystem etc; are implemented for each platform in the game engine.
I can make a call to the engine to render a 3D model consisting of triangles.
The engine in turn render this model by calling down into the platform independence layer which uses an implementation for the currently used platform.
There are two ways game companies do this:
1) Writing/using a multiplatform engine
2) Porting a game
A multiplatform engine will feature abstractions for platform-specific actions (making a Windows API call, rendering in DirectX vs OpenGL, etc etc) so that all of the work can be done once, then built for both machines. Usually it's a matter of writing simple wrapper methods for things like Direct3D calls and what not. Most newer game engines are being built from the ground up with multiplatform support. Others are adding multiplatform support.
If a game engine isn't multiplatform, it has to be converted to run on the target platform. This is usually a two-part operation. First, all of the API calls and interfaces with the hardware need to be redone for the target platform. The second part involves debugging and optimizing the game for performance. Typically a direct port will not perform very well, as the code will feature platform specific optimizations that do not apply to the new target platform.
For various reasons, ported games can suffer from performance issues, usually in spite of watered down visuals. Take a look at The Orange Box on PS3 or CoD: Modern Warfare for the Wii to see two examples of ports gone wrong. For the OB, Valve outsourced the task of porting the game(s) to EA. In the second instance, Activision decided that it made more sense to port a game on an engine designed for more powerful hardware over to a weaker platform instead of building the game on top of a new engine designed to get the most out of the Wii.
Many places will have separate teams responsible for different versions. That is why you always see some small differences. However, if a portable language is chosen, these teams may be able to trade code around.
If the company as produced a game engine, developers can just develop on top of that, leaving the engine to handle the cross platform specifics.
I'm guessing that the art/media department is that same for all platforms.
Actually, there are some frameworks that are meant to be able to run on multiple platforms.
For example:
The XNA Framework can run on Windows, Xbox, and Windows Phone with almost the same code base. (About 90% the same C# code can run on all of the platforms.)
Unity 3D supports PC, MAC, browsers, the iPhone, Wii, and it will soon support Android, too.
There are other such frameworks as well.
Also, most of the popular game engines (eg. Unreal, etc) are ported across multiple platforms.
This is often accomplished with a virtual machine that handles non-time-critical game mechanics and an abstraction layer for time-critical but platform-specific operations.
The particular methods are highly proprietary, secret, and are the among the most valuable assets of the game maker.
I remember reading an interview (or perhaps it was a .plan file/blog) John Carmack gave a few years ago. He was discussing developing for multiple platforms. (If memory serves this was around the time they were releasing titles for mobile platforms) The advice he gave was to always target the platform with the lowest system specs you plan on supporting first. His reasoning was that it is far easier to scale up than down. If you focus on the latest high end graphics you're likely to wind up depending on features only available on the high end. Making it very difficult to scale back for mainstream and lower end systems. Anyway, I thought it was pretty good advice.
This is all a guess because I don't work for a company that makes console games, but speaking from experience as a software developer what I imagine happens a lot of times is that external libraries are used against source code that's written in a common language, such as C++ or something. A lot of the core game code (game loop, physics stuff, etc.) can be used because the syntax is the same with the library across platforms.
However, there is a large degree of code that has to be written (and tested) that is unique to the platform. For example, most (if not ALL) graphics card-related code would have to be different for the Xbox 360 vs the PS3.
This allows for a large degree of portability on core functions and then the UI stuff and graphics-related stuff is platform-specific (not always for the UI).
Also, large game companies have 100s of developers working on a project, so they have a lot more resources than some indie developers might.
It's never perfect though. You always have to port SOME code. Unless you're using Adobe AIR, but your game is for consoles (and who uses Adobe AIR to develop REAL games?)
Game companies use commercial middleware, like RenderWare which do not come cheap. Most game platforms also support a C++ environment for code to get compiled on. Additionaly, most consoles come with a Development version (Playstations do) and there are simulators to test most code on. This middleware is now owned by EA (which is like the giant player on the field). Creating 3D games aren't just framework. Most of the game comes from a design document, which documents the flow of the game and game play. The artwork is done in other software (Maya and Lightwave for example) and the 'models' which are the game characters.
Even though it might look horrific a lot of work, when it comes to coding, it isn't that big of a deal. Writing the core functionality takes a week or eight, the rest is more in design and planning. Just remember that 3D is only 10% of the overall game. These are my two cents as a former game developer.
Not necessarily video game related, but the best walk through I've seen for doing multi-platform software was in GOF (http://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns-Elements-Reusable-Object-Oriented/dp/0201633612). Read the case study on the windowing system.
I would say "largely they don't." All the money is in Windows or in consoles and a lot of the consoles want an exclusive license. I have seen a few ports but they're always a separate code base branched from a previous version.
Very often they use #define (for example in C++ code) so before the compilation for the specified platform the proper code is included or used. In bigger projects sometimes the parts of a game are totally different and written in different IDE's and compiled in different (platform specific) compilers.
Example from my experience:
When I was working on a game for Nintendo Wii, we were using Torque game engine. We were programming on PC's and compiling code for PC's. When some functionality was ready we used Metrowerks CodeWarrior (with special set of libraries etc.) to compile it for Nintendo Wii, send it to the devkit and then run from the Nintendo Wii console.
This question is directed to anyone out there that is just starting in hobby game development. The first thing that comes to ones mind is:
Which language/framework should I use?
List of solutions:
Adobe Flash -> done
Allegro
Apocalyx
Blender Game Engine
Blitz3D
Devkit Pro
Game Maker
Gosu
IndieLib
jMonkey Engine -> done
Microsoft Silverlight
Microsoft XNA -> done
Multimedia Fusion / Games Factory
OGRE -> done
pygame -> done
pyglet -> done
RubygGame
SDL -> done
SFML
Torque 3D
Unity 3D
Custom -> done
Answer template:
Framework Name (Linked)
Pros:
Pro1
Pro2
...
Cons:
Con1
Con2
...
Microsoft XNA Game Studio
Pros:
Uses .NET languages; managed memory, ease of the Visual Studio environment, etc.
Good mix of high-level and low-level
Supports both 2D and 3D very well
Is proven; look at the Xbox Live Arcade, all of those games are made with XNA
Games can be easily run on a networked Xbox
Cons:
Uses .NET languages; can't use Java, C++, etc.
Not too many resources (i.e. books) out yet, though it is easy to learn and use so that may not be an issue
Windows-only. Mono (on Linux) doesn't support XNA at all.
XNA 3.0 was released less than a year after 2.0, and now we're at 3.1; frequent changes like these can hinder documentation, i.e. books get outdated quickly and many things break when upgrading a 2.0 game to a 3.0 game.
As of 2014, discontinued.
If you have the time, do it all yourself. It's worth the experience and you'll learn a lot, instead of how to work with framework X . ;^)
Pros
Full Control
Strong Learning Experience
Consistent code between game engine and program
Tends to be well-suited towards the application it is applied towards.
Supports any language/environment
Cons
High difficulty
No online documentation
Generally, less generic. Harder to apply to other games.
Harder for other people to use.
Probably buggier than more popular frameworks.
Not well-tested.
Harder to get help.
jMonkeyEngine
Pros
Uses Java; managed memory, highly supported in many mature IDE's (Eclipse, NetBeans, etc.), highly portable
Good mix and high-level and low-level
Modern 3D scenegraph
Built atop LWJGL, a very mature and well-working game library
Very lightweight; doesn't add very much overhead
Built in 3D model loading in a variety of formats.
Built in modern node-based 3D scenegraph.
Easy to use.
Open source; constantly evolving and improving.
Includes culling, collision checking, etc.
Has the option to save and read its own ultra-compact, ultra-fast binary model format.
Full list.
Cons
Uses Java, so compiles JIT and can therefore be a bit slower than C++ and other options.
Hasn't been used in many commercial apps (and therefore not as "proven").
Has no attached editor of any kind, everything must be done in pure code.
Difficult to do 2D games (for that you could try Slick).
pygame
Pros:
Easy to get started and create something visible.
Cross-platform.
Lots of open source games available to inspect the source.
Python language's pros (flexibility, dynamic typing, strings/arrays/tuples, etc.).
Cons:
Performance-wise does not scale to very large games (which hobby game development rarely is).
Mostly suited for 2D, although 3D is possible.
Difficult to distribute as closed source.
Also SDL could be inserted as pros and/or cons.
OGRE (Object-Oriented Graphics Engine)
Pros:
Tons of 3D features
Cross-platform, uses DirectX or OpenGL
Plugin architecture for even more features
Does not try to be an everything-engine, only a graphics engine (doesn't even try to handle input, as many graphics libraries tend to do)
Cons:
Uses the Singleton pattern
Very hard to do 2D or primitive rendering (individual polygons, lines, etc)
Tons of code makes the learning curve quite steep
pyglet
Pros:
Low difficulty
Cross-platform
OpenGL accelerated graphics by default
Further OpenGL graphical enhancements easy to add
Python language
Cons:
Less well-known than pygame
Game 'loop' is a bit unconventional
OpenGL knowledge required for advanced graphics and to maximise performance
SDL
Pros
SDL officially supports Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, iOS, and Android
It is used by video playback software, emulators, and popular games including Valve's award winning catalog and many Humble Bundle games.
Open source
SDL is written in C, works natively with C++, and there are bindings available for several other languages, including C# and Python.
Cons
No special IDE like Unity
A bit low-level
The pros of any framework (gaming, web, etc.) is that they remove the unnecessary boilerplate code you'd have to normally write.
The cons often come up later on, once you want to go beyond the capabilities of the framework it can become very difficult. With many of the more complex frameworks, extending their functionality to make it do something it wasn't designed to will results in you having to write a lot of your own boilerplate code.
just starting in hobby game development
You should program a few games before attempting your own framework, otherwise you don't know what to put in it and how to write it. You'll end up endlessly rewriting it to "get it right", when really there are lots of good (and bad) ways of doing it, depending on what it is used for.
"Frameworks" can also be a pain, as they offer a partial solution to a problem. E.g. you just extend a few classes and boom, you have a game. But if your game doesn't suit the framework design you just end up fighting with it and hacking it. The "toolbox" approach tends to be a better approach as it just supplied functionality without forcing you too much into how you should use it. E.g. the standard C libraries are are toolbox and don't force you to structure your code in a certain way.
To start off with you have to ask yourself:
what sort of games you'd like to write.
what you'd like to develop for?
Web browser?
Facebook?
PC?
PC and Mac? i.e. cross platform
Console?
iPhone and iPad?
which language you'd like to use (but this may be set by the platform you chose)
The learning curve for writing games can be quite steep as you might have to learn:
how to program in a new language
how a new API works
how to do the graphics and sound
how to debug it
perhaps how to hook it into other system
Don't be put off it this sounds like a lot of work! The key to writing good games is sticking it out and having the determination to carry on and finish. Have you seen the film, Indie?
My advice:
Start simple - There is a lot to learn, if you take on too much to start with you will be scared off and think it is to hard. So...
Easy language - You'll hear lots of people ranting on the internet about how great certain languages are. Well, they all have their pros and cons. Some are easier to learn that others. E.g. Python or Lua are quite easy to learn. They are scripting languages, which are a lot more forgiving and less complicated to games together with. They don't have things like pointers, memory allocation, etc to worry about.
Python tutorial.
Lua has a tutorial (which I wrote!)
Just make a game! - You'll hear other people talking about patterns and singletons and data driven design etc. None of that matters when you start out. You aren't trying to impress anyone with your code. People will judge you on the end result not the code! Trust me, some of the best games you've played on console etc have terrible code!
Use a small, well maintained library. I'll make it easy, there are other choices, but:
if you want to choose Python (a good choice!) use pygame. Use Eclipse (for Java Dev) with PyDev. Magic and free!
if you want to use Lua (a good choice!) use Love
Look for other game examples - Pygame has tons of examples and games using it. Check the license and if you are allowed, just rip the code. Patch, splice, but put a comment about where you got the code, it is polite, and may be necessary according to the license. Don't ignore the licensing.
Look at Ludum Dare. Tons of great examples and source code to see how it is done quickly.
Then once you have made a few games consider the more complicated libraries and languages. Then you can ask more specific questions about how to solve certain problems. Have fun!
Flash
Flash is a great tool for those who have limited programming or art experience, but want to start cranking out a game.
Pros:
Symbols make graphical creation and manipulation very easy
Symbols have built-in bounding boxes; bounding boxes have built-in collision detection
Ports easily to web
Built-in layers and display architecture make displaying content simple
Lots of support, documentation, libraries
Vector art is easy to create
Cons:
Relatively slow
No method or operator overloading
Requires a purchase, either Creative Cloud or buying Flash outright
Pixel art must be ported in, which can be aggravating
I highly recommend flash if you have access to it, its one of the programs I use most often.
Pro's for XNA in my opinion are that XNA apps can run on Xbox360 in addition to PC, and you can pick your favorite language from anything supported by the .NET Framework - which is quite many.