Re: [Alephmodular-devel] wxWindows for AM

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

On Saturday, August 16, 2003, at 01:52  PM, Michael Adams wrote:

> I realize you are probably very busy working on other
> things, but since AM seems targeted at making "clean"
> code, I wonder what you think of targeting it towards
> wxWindows.  It would eliminate the UI split that
> plagues AlephOne.  It may be a while down the road but
> just a thought.
>
> From a cross-platform zealot,
> Michael D. Adams
> mdm...@ya...

Heh. For better or worse it seems the path I have chosen is closer to 
'reinvent the wheel'. I believe I had a discussion with a similar 
subject early on in AM's life with Woody over focusing on SDL.

Of course SDL had the added penalty of me having seen some of how it 
was implemented in A1. (Eeek!) And with native SDL being widgetless. (I 
get the feeling some of the PC titles are easier to shift into SDL just 
because they were all using game-based widgetry to begin with.)

I do however agree with a cross-platform ideal. So I've been trying to 
set things up in AM where Carbon or wxWindows or SDL is just another 
supported platform, and the code of the engine is fairly agnostic.

I haven't worked on much cross-platform projects before, and I do not 
know how well some things can be integrated in transitory steps.

I admit GUI elements haven't been a priority so far. Trying to beat the 
Mac-isms out of the basic render_screen is rough :)

The flip side is I've been really really happy with how some elements 
have come out. Such as AM's basic file handling. Or even partial 
display abstraction, which allowed me to get full speed updates out of 
the software renderer under MaCOS X. (A1 at best cheats in this area if 
you use Software rendering)

-Jeremy Parsons