Needfull things

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Please try to keep your lines under 80 chars please. Some of us are using
terminals to read mail still, and we like it that way. =)

I’d like to write some functions, utilities, tools or documentation
regarding SDL. If any of you have an idea of something which would be
very usefull or handy during development with SDL, you can send that
idea to me. I especcialy like to make small things, which save a lot of
work. I have already made cross-fading and a handy fontbuilder. It’s
just that I don’t want to create an entire game. (At least at this
moment.)

I can share my short list of planned things to write (nearly everything on
my list is on while I’m in classes - I just don’t have the time now…)

  • Cross-platform error/message box
    People have requested this, and I know how to do it for Windows at
    least. No clue for MacOS X or BeOS. Probably a simple dialog in Xlib
    would be suitable for X11, and I have no idea what to do with Linux
    framebuffers, SVGALib, or other strangeness. The code for any platform
    save X11 with XLib is probably trivial, but there are few who have the
    ability to write the equivalent function for more than one or two of the
    desired platforms. The idea was to do what I could and put it online
    and ask people to write the function for any platform they know how to
    code under and send submit it for inclusion.

  • A very simple cross-platform set of file handlers
    This gets people into trouble. PhysicsFS does most of it already, and
    has a few additional important features such as support for zip files,
    however a number of projects that are planned to be released as closed
    source commercial games will not use an additional LGPL library beyond
    SDL itself due to the support nightmare. I’d personally rather see
    those guys use something under a BSDish license than have to put up with
    the end-user nightmare of dealing with whatever they cook up in its
    place.

    I am going to need to write this sort of code sooner or later for my own
    nefarious purposes anyway, so if nobody else writes it before then I
    will do so. My planned target didn’t need zip or anything like that,
    but did need the equivalents of PHYSFS_enumerateFiles, etc, a method of
    creating files as securely as the OS allows, amd likely also .ini style
    config file handling.

  • Two-part server console
    This is the sort of project that I have about three different partial
    impelementations of and I don’t like any of them. =) Every 3D game
    since Quake has or has had at some time in its development cycle a
    pull-down console in the game for tweaking, fiddling, testing, modding,
    or whatever. Many of these games also have some form of dedicated
    server which usually uses a very simple stdin/stdout command interface.

    It’s easy to do a console in-game, especially if you have a fixed width
    font and you take shortcuts if the console is ever resized horizontally
    by eg. a change in resolution. A server-targetted console is much more
    annoying since not all OSes have text consoles built-in and even if they
    did you generally want something more like an IRC window than a terminal
    anyway. Of course, windows can be resized, might have the possibility
    of interfacing with the OS’s clipboard, could use variable-width fonts
    if you chose to allow font selection… It’s significantly more complex
    than an in-game console.

    Which is why very few games ever have anything like it on their servers.
    They should, IMO, so there’s an opportunity to write a generic one which
    can use a platform-specific back-end to do the dirty work of getting the
    stuff on screen. It’s easily the most complex thing on my would-be-nice
    list here, and I know that it will be under-appreciated by users once it
    is written. All the more reason I think to write a generic one once and
    never worry about the problem again. =)

    Actually, I could also see this getting used in-game if you’re using
    something based on SFont or similar to get non-fixed-width font support.
    SDL and OpenGL back-ends might be useful at some point.

You can take a look at my site here:

http://www.2dgame-tutorial.com/sdl/index.htm

When I get responses, I will write design-documents for the best ideas,
before I build them. So I’m pretty serious with this.

A simple page. Would look terrible in Netscape 4 I think. I’d wondered
why nobody using SFont hadn’t created such a tool as your font builder
before now. I’m also curious to see what you come up with, regardless of
whether or not you want any of my would-be-nice list. =)On Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 10:02:52AM -0400, patrick at 2dgame-tutorial.com wrote:


Joseph Carter Do not write in this space

Operating Systems Installed:

  • Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 4 CD Set ($20 from www.chguy.net; price includes
    taxes, shipping, and a $3 donation to FSF). 2 CDs are binaries, 2 CDs
    complete source code;

  • Windows 98 Second Edition Upgrade Version ($136 through Megadepot.com,
    price does not include taxes/shipping). Surprisingly, no source code
    is included.

    -- Bill Stilwell, http://linuxtoday.com/stories/8794.html
    

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Joseph Carter wrote:

Please try to keep your lines under 80 chars please. Some of us are using
terminals to read mail still, and we like it that way. =)

What, you don’t have your terminal mapped across a wall of monitors?
What’s wrong with you? :slight_smile:

  • Cross-platform error/message box
    People have requested this, and I know how to do it for Windows at
    least. No clue for MacOS X or BeOS. Probably a simple dialog in Xlib
    would be suitable for X11, and I have no idea what to do with Linux
    framebuffers, SVGALib, or other strangeness. The code for any platform
    save X11 with XLib is probably trivial, but there are few who have the
    ability to write the equivalent function for more than one or two of the
    desired platforms. The idea was to do what I could and put it online
    and ask people to write the function for any platform they know how to
    code under and send submit it for inclusion.

You could probably get away with using Xt, since it’s a standard
component of X11. That should make the code much cleaner, and shouldn’t
raise any support issues.

-John–
John R. Hall, KG4RUO
http://www.overcode.net

Please try to keep your lines under 80 chars please. Some of us are using
terminals to read mail still, and we like it that way. =)

What, you don’t have your terminal mapped across a wall of monitors?
What’s wrong with you? :slight_smile:

No, but I wouldn’t mind a widescreen display. One of those lovely Apple
Cinema displays would be nice.

  • Cross-platform error/message box
    People have requested this, and I know how to do it for Windows at
    least. No clue for MacOS X or BeOS. Probably a simple dialog in Xlib
    would be suitable for X11, and I have no idea what to do with Linux
    framebuffers, SVGALib, or other strangeness. The code for any platform
    save X11 with XLib is probably trivial, but there are few who have the
    ability to write the equivalent function for more than one or two of the
    desired platforms. The idea was to do what I could and put it online
    and ask people to write the function for any platform they know how to
    code under and send submit it for inclusion.

You could probably get away with using Xt, since it’s a standard
component of X11. That should make the code much cleaner, and shouldn’t
raise any support issues.

Probably what I’d want to do. I guess what would be best is to figure out
how much space it would take to render the requested string in the fixed
font, then create a very plain dialog box with a simple OK button. I
guess it might be nice if “OK” could be localised, but I don’t think it’s
worth involving gettext or similar to do it. Obviously translating the
message is the caller’s responsibility, but I don’t think anyone will feel
lost in X11 if their error message dialog having only one button on it has
the caption “OK”, regardless of the language they speak.

I think this one should just be chalked up to a limitation of X. There
are no standard controls/dialogs in X11 without a desktop environment
which could be customised by the system/user settings. The problem at
hand is too simplistic to warrant trying to address the much larger issue
of X11’s deficiencies. =)On Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 09:18:56PM -0400, John R. Hall wrote:


Joseph Carter Intelligent backside at large

“I think that most debian developers are rather ‘strong willed’ people
with a great degree of understanding and a high level of passion for what
they perceive as important in development of the debian system.”
–Bill Leach

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No, but I wouldn’t mind a widescreen display. One of those lovely Apple
Cinema displays would be nice.

Having one on my desk, I’d have to say it’s the best 3,500 dollars you can
talk a company into spending on you. :slight_smile:

As for a cross-platform dialog box, this is actually on my TODO list,
right after I put out PhysicsFS 1.0 and rewrite SDL_mixer (er…and a
thousand other things, but it’s on there, I swear!). SDL_sound has turned
out rather well, and I was very impressed by the people who stepped up to
help, so I’m looking forward to engineering more Really-Handy-Value-Adding
libraries for SDL. :slight_smile:

–ryan.