Re: [Adonthell-devel] weather fx

[ksterker]

Joel Vennin wrote:

> I think we should use a more abstract library (for graphics and network)
> which is already done in order to save time. Because as you can see it, we
> have not lot's of time. Alexandre seems to be die under paper and under its
> thesis (it's like me).

Mh. I was thinking about that too, but a little afraid to raise the topic. 
There are a few things to consider, though:

[1] do we want to keep the backend code? I personally am in favour of that, 
because it ensures a long lifetime of the engine. Who knows what gfx library 
will be in use in 10 years time? With the current approach, we just have to 
replace a thin layer to make use of it. And that without locking out people who 
want to stay with SDL 1.x.

That means, whatever library we'd chose, we'd need to put it on top of our 
backend architecture. So whatever lib we pick, it should be as 
backend-independent as possible to begin with.


[2] Technical concerns aside, we need to specify what we want to be able to do. 
No use in picking a library that needs to be rewritten to a large extend, 
because that would probably be as costly as writing our own.

So yeah, we have to compile a list of what we want, in order to make a good 
choice.


[3] Regarding 'yet another dependency': I imagine that if we have to make some 
changes to any code we chose, we can as well fork it and copy into our source 
tree. So there wouldn't be any more dependencies to be concerned about. But, as 
you said, Joel, we had to do it nicely, with approval of the owner. (As it 
would be GPL'd, there shouldn't be any problem with this anyway)


To conclude: I wouldn't see much problem with picking an existing GUI lib right 
now (although even that means a little bit of porting work).

Picking a map engine seems a little harder, but if we could find a suitable 
one, I'd be happy to try it out. We do need some advancement.


Any comments, suggestions?

Kai

Le Mercredi 22 Septembre 2004 08:24, address@hidden a écrit :
> Driving through some nice landscape last weekend with cool weather fx gave
> me the following idea: Each map should have a 'weather schedule' attached.
> I.e. a Python script that controls special fx like clouds, fog, rain, snow,
> sunrise, sunset, etc ...
>
> These scripts need to be per-map for the following reasons:
> - each map is different, so global weather fx won't work. There would be no
> snow in the desert, only sand storms. Fog would be in forests or near
> water. - Tuning the weather to fit to each map will vastly improve the
> atmosphere of the game. - for performance reasons, the python scripts
> execution could be simply disabled, thus stopping costly graphic
> calculations (the scripts itself would be event based, so little overhead
> here)
>
> One particular idea for an effect I had was to have water reflect the stars
> at night. Should be possible with an additional, transparent layer on top
> of water tiles.

Really good idea, it will be more realistic. 
 I've some suggestion about the adonthell core. In fact, we have (or kay 
has :p) a good background for adonthell. All is scriptable, it's possible to 
create scenario, (we have all ready some good scenario, story, etc) . But on 
the foreground, what we have ? We have some primitive functions that allows 
to change between graphics library, to draw some pixels on the screen with 
nice color. My suggestion or my think is : 
 I think we should use a more abstract library (for graphics and network) 
which is already done in order to save time. Because as you can see it, we 
have not lot's of time. Alexandre seems to be die under paper and under its 
thesis (it's like me).
 I would continue to contribute to adonthell, but if we can save good time 
using more higher library it will more acceptable for myself. We can find a 
higher library and why not hack a little this library with is owner in order 
to support python script.
 
I'm waiting yours responses. I don't want a response that tell me: "Oh no, i 
don't want another libraries depends".
 
Jol


> Well, so much for that idea.
>
> Kai
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Adonthell-devel mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/adonthell-devel

-- 
Practically perfect people never permit sentiment to muddle their thinking.
                -- Mary Poppins

_______________________________________________
Adonthell-devel mailing list
address@hidden
http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/adonthell-devel