Re: [Adonthell-devel] Framework ideas

[cirrus]

Sounds interesting!
I'm gonna try my best to come tonight but I've been invited out for
dinner this evening and I don't know when I'll b back.
Hope I can see u all there!

        -James

Alexandre Courbot wrote:
> 
> Hello everybody,
> Maybe it's a bit prematurate to expose these fresh ideas here, but that
> way we could have a discussion about them this evening.
> 
> I think that 0.3 is a big improvement in terms of design compared to the
> earlier releases. Actually, it's the first that starts looking like
> organized. Still, there is still some progresses to be made in that
> respect. It appears that since we correctly design our code, serious
> bugs appears less often, things are more reusuable, etc...
> 
> What we should try to do is to improve our framework, actually redesign
> it completely, so 0.4 can be to 0.3 what 0.3 has been to 0.2.
> 
> We have several solutions from there. I think we can get inspiration
> from the NeL engine which is being developped at Nevrax
> (http://www.nevrax.org). As you know, it's GPL'd, they use Doxygen (doc
> available on their website) and it's quite well documented. Moreover
> they are making great progresses and it seems they will actually succeed
> (would be so great, to see a GPL'd game success!) You can have a quick
> look at how they organize their stuff. One interesting thing
> is that the different "modules" (rendering, network, AI, sound, ...)
> seems to be completely independant. They are also all assigned a
> namespace. I don't know whether the latest SWIG likes namespaces, but I
> like the idea. We could (physically) separate the different parts of the
> engine as follow (just an idea):
> -addraw, basic image/animation manipulation classes
> -adgui, the current window system
> -adaudio, the future audio system ;)
> -adnet, the future network layer
> -admap, the map engine
> -adai, the AI stuff we have (including dialogs?)
> 
> The thing to watch out are dependencies. For example, it is ok if admap
> requires addraw, adgui and adnet, but in this case neither addraw, adgui
> and adnet would require admap. Cross-dependencies are a pain, as we
> experienced with 0.3, and the signs of a bad design. And unfortunately I
> think we still have some.
> 
> Of course, you'll quickly see the limitations of the upper scheme:
> -what about (for example) the characters? Where are they defined? admap
> would use characters, but also other parts, so where to put them?
> -should we also use a subsystem for the inventory stuff, team managment,
> etc..?
> 
> Also, inside the modules there is a bit of work to allow them to be
> flexible enough: for example using admap to make a map run wouldn't mean
> having all the gfxs in memory: for a server, which doesn't display
> anything, this is totally useless. The current mapengine doesn't allow
> this at all, as graphical datas are always loaded along with the rest.
> 
> Well, you got the idea. I'd like we discuss about how to
> organize all our code, using namespaces, and why not libraries, or even
> subdirectories. As most of the code will be blown away soon, it's the
> good time to do so, I think. If we can get a nice discussion this
> evening I think we should quickly come with a complete document
> describing the framework, and we could finally start development again!
> :)
> 
> But please all consider releasing 0.3 first, so we can hire new
> developers. I know I'm boring, but this is really important!
> 
> See you this evening!
> Alex.
> 
> --
> http://www.gnurou.org
> 
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