Re: [Alephmodular-devel] Display Abstraction Landed?

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

On Tuesday, October 7, 2003, at 09:13  AM, Timothy Collett wrote:

>> Mmm, I better go check saved games to see if I can find anything. In 
>> the meantime... do you know which version/date created the saved 
>> game? And could you email (directly to me at br...@ma...)  the 
>> saved > game?
>
> It was saved with this version; however, I'm no longer entirely sure 
> that I've got the pertinent changes.  Running cvs update -AdP should 
> bring my copy of the code fully up-to-date, yes?  Only when I ran it, 
> it didn't seem to do much, and Project Builder seemed to think there 
> weren't any changes when I built the thing.
>
> I'll email you the save in a separate email.

I still don't know what's up with the public CVS servers, certainly I 
can't manage to check anything out that way currently :/

My own up-to-date version of AM seemed to have no problems loading your 
save game though.

>> Some of the places in AM that I think are prime targets involve:
>>
>> 	* Resources
>> 	* Input Handling
>> 	* Main Event Loop (May be related to Input Handling)
>> 	* Game Related GUI (File dialogs, ok to quit?, preferences)
>> 	* Preferences
>>
>> I admit Preferences is less about platform specifics and more for 
>> overhauling how the game uses preferences internally and how the game 
>> handles preferences. I've been trying to think of a system that 
>> allows for future preferences growth, while allowing conversion of 
>> older preference formats. And which allows growth without necessarily 
>> requiring a great deal of work between changes either.
>>
>
> My vote would be stuff (somewhat) related to input handling first, 
> then network, then resources.  To be a little more specific: I think 
> that, while it made good sense back in the day, relying *entirely* on 
> the inputs for films & net games isn't the best idea in the world (if 
> you disagree, please convince me! :-) ).  For the second, I tried 
> clicking "Gather" and it just didn't do anything: I presume networking 
> is currently inoperable, and thus you have disabled even trying it.  
> It would be great to see networking working in AM, especially since 
> it's now working so well in A1.  For the third, well, it would be nice 
> to have all the resource stuff out of the way.  It's obsolete even on 
> the Mac side, after all! ;-)

Yes, Networking is currently disabled. It was easier to stub it out 
then to grok everything and rewrite it in OpenTransport. The most 
likely thing to occur here is that we graft in A1's networking ;)

With respect to replays, I don't know if there is a better way to do 
things. There are improvements we can make ... like eliminating the 
need for the Vidmaster's dance. But beyond that, it's hard storing all 
of the world state umpty times a whatever. On the other hand, even in 
modern games, I don't recall seeing that many replays in FPS ( and 
usually they work in a similar fashion when they do... reset simulation 
to x point in time, let run :) )

Networking could probably receive a lot more help in this department 
and mostly I'm just clueless and don't quite understand it currently. :)

We have to deal with resources as long as the file system does and we 
can run old M2 maps. This should cover a nice long while. It would be 
nice to mix things up to have a scenario bundle. However, even then 
this might be resource routines now working with an expanded format 
(that is hidden from the rest of the code.)

-Jeremy Parsons