Re: [Alephmodular-devel] Developer Rant #1 :)

[Br'fin <br...@ma...>]

Yes, I'm skipping all the point by points. I'm willing to discuss them, 
but trying to argue them right here right now seemed liked leaning 
towards too much potential for a flamewar. Woody is right in terms of 
me needing other developers. so while I may have to be a project 
manager and draw some lines, I can't afford to run all the potential 
developers away. :)

I must say that I am honestly baffled by the reaction to my treatment 
of SDL as another platform. I'm not advocating rewriting the core of 
Marathon using cocoa after all. I think I'm advocating a platform 
neutral core. Will this be recreating the wheel in some ways? Perhaps. 
But not to a degree I find unacceptable.

>> This doesn't mean that I'm ignoring all bugs, just the ones relating 
>> to the GUI in its current state. Crashing bugs or other glitches 
>> within the game core are definitely a priority. I find it interesting 
>> that in recent days I've patched several bugs in AM that either are 
>> still noticeable in AO if you know where to look or have been 
>> addressed only relatively recently. Make of my focus what you will.
>
> I don't suppose you've considered sharing your findings with the A1 
> project so that it can also benefit...?  Or are you only talking about 
> that close-monsters-disappearing thing?
>
I think the set I have in mind includes the close-monsters-disappearing 
thing. Then a couple software rendering interaction issues: The 
low-res+millions of colors resulting in every other column being drawn. 
And having your attempt to save a game assert if you're using software 
rendering+low-res+small view window.

Almost non-issues considering AlephOne seems to be in the process of 
phasing the software renderer out.

Maybe I'm just feeling jaded too. In AM this morning I fixed the old 
preferences problem.
	../../marathon2/wad.cpp:1326: Assertion failed:
	 entry.length==calculate_raw_wad_length(header, buffer)

The final problem wasn't that big, and the error is actually in the 
assertion's use of calculate_raw_wad_length if entry.length is 
legitimately 0. But AO had that bug for ages and no one looked into it. 
I presume the problem is gone now since AO's preferences are now 
XML-based.

> Or anything anyone can think of, because the idea is that AM will be 
> an easier and more rewarding environment to work in than A1.  Right?  
> I don't think there have been any suggestions contrary to these goals.
>
> Anyway the bottom line is, I think you have good intentions and are 
> doing good work, even if I disagree with a few of the paths you seem 
> to be wanting to take.  (I think I agree with you on many others.)  
> It's your project, and in truth I'll probably be going into Aleph* 
> hibernation again in another week or so, so my opinions don't really 
> matter a whole lot.  As I see it, my job is to make sure you consider 
> as many relevant options as possible; the decisions are yours.
>
> I still wonder whether AM is necessary, or whether restructuring A1 
> would be as effective at achieving the AM goals while maintaining all 
> the nice features of A1.  I don't know that answer, and it's moot 
> anyway since we have someone working on AM and nobody doing the 
> corresponding work for A1.  :)
>
> Woody

I thank you for the feedback too, really I do.

Unknown on the AM versus restructuring A1 issue. At least part of where 
I felt AO had failed was in its CVS management. Plus I could no longer 
be sure whether a behavior was AO amended or original. At which point, 
it just seemed easier to start fresh with Bungie's code. This would 
guarantee that for AM I had a complete history from Bungie's code to 
present.

There were other issues too, relating to cruft. Since shifting to MacOS 
X 10.2.x and PB 2.0.x, I've been unable to figure out how to run AO 
within the debugger. Talk about annoying.

My overall assumption is that if AM can be steered right, then it 
should be possible to adapt things like AO's OpenGL code. And it 
wouldn't be the first time I had shoe-horned things together :)

-Jeremu