[Arianne-general] Questions

[Adam W. <a1c...@ho...>]

Okay, I have a question then a couple of ideas.

First: Question.

1) What does UML stand for?  I have found the diagrams drawn up very 
informative but was just curious on what it meant.

Second: ideas.

1) Plugin design.  If we are going to add plugin support to Arianne, there 
will have to be some fundamentals that the client developers should follow 
from the beginning of coding.
   This means that we might want to consider using something else for 
network/socket support.  If SDL graphics will be supported as a plugin 
option, then we need to end our dependence on it for the core of the game.

The following is my vision of how Arianne should be designed based on a 
plugin environment.

Arianne-Corelib
|
|
RP/AI Lib------Server
|
|
Client---------Plugin: Video
      |________Plugin: Audio
      |________Plugin: Misc

IMHO there should be no reference to actual graphics code until the client 
as in the code snippit I sent the other day.

Arianne-Corelib (Which I consider the UML rewrite)

This lib should contain on basic underlying game functions including:
	Basic Objects: ID,x,y & z and member functions the deal only with those 
values.
	Message Management:
	Vectorizing Data: ???
	Data Compression:
	Thread Management:
	General Initialization functions: Reading/parsing .ini, setting paths.
	Callback Methods:

RP/AI Lib:

This lib should include only player/world handling code.  It inherits and or 
includes the use of Arianne-Core.  I chose not to use this inside of 
Arianne-Core because of Miguel's desire to see the code someday be used for 
other games.  By having the RP/AI seperate, another gamer could come along, 
use the Core to implement an operational standard and change the RP lib to 
implement their own RP system.

	Object Player: inherits basic object and adds to the class with player 
related functions.
	AI Handling:
	World/Map Handling:
	Chat: Could even be a plugin.
	etc:

Server:  The network should be handled within the scope of the client and 
server code.  That way is someone has a compatablility problem they can 
recode the server/client without harming the underlying operation and 
handling of the game.

Client:  The client will define the plugin interface and load/manage the 
plugins as well as provide an portable interface to the game server.  
Graphics libs would only need to be compiled into the plugins.  That way we 
don't init SDL when someone decides to write a GTK+ or DirectX Client for 
the game.

Those are my thoughts.  I know that you guys are far more adept at this than 
I am but this is how I invision gCraft and Arianne Operation.

Adam
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