From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 8835 invoked by alias); 8 Nov 2003 13:06:53 -0000 Mailing-List: contact xconq7-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: xconq7-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 8828 invoked from network); 8 Nov 2003 13:06:52 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO smtp10.hy.skanova.net) (195.67.199.143) by sources.redhat.com with SMTP; 8 Nov 2003 13:06:52 -0000 Received: from [212.181.162.155] (h155n1fls24o1048.bredband.comhem.se [212.181.162.155]) by smtp10.hy.skanova.net (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id hA8D6n8X013280; Sat, 8 Nov 2003 14:06:50 +0100 (CET) X-Sender: u22611592@m1.226.comhem.se Message-Id: In-Reply-To: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2003 13:58:00 -0000 To: "Brandon J. Van Every" From: Hans Ronne Subject: Re: Windows native UIs Cc: xconq7@sources.redhat.com X-SW-Source: 2003/txt/msg00609.txt.bz2 >My opinion here: SDL is not a native Windows interface. It is simply a >non-TCL interface. SDL is C and that's crufty, but at least it has >bindings for various other languages. Including Python: http://pygame.seul.org/ >The question is whether UIs are important and elaborate parts of Xconq >development. Enough to be worth the trouble of trying to stay uniform >across platforms. My primary interest is writing new games and getting >rid of interfaces that slow down gameplay, whether due to the game >design, the UI design, or the performance. Ergo, I don't care about >maintaining existing UIs. I do care about being able to rapidly create >new ones, and/or minimizing the need for UI stuff in the first place. I >like games to be as close to a clean, cinematic rectangle as possible. A clean cinematic rectangle is precisly what the SDL interface is all about. If you haven't checked it out yet, I suggest you do. It's not finisned yet, but you can run it under AI control and get a good idea for how it works. Whether or not UIs are an important part of Xconq development or not depends on what you want to achieve in the end. Cross-platform support is important to the Xconq community. That's the whole point of keeping the kernel and interface code distinct. And with several platforms, things like TCL or SDL will save you a lot of work. You only have to write the interface once, not three times. That being said, a Windows-native interface that works with the current kernel would be a welcome addition. As would any improvements to the kernel that maintains support for the interfaces. But if you want to write something that runs only one specific game on only on one platform (which seems to be the gist of your agenda) I don't think you would be able to contribute much in the end to this project, which is a multi-game multi-platform one. Hans