[Rails-devel] Game startup improvements

[Erik V. <eri...@hc...>]

I have committed a number of changes, mostly dealing with the game start.
The user-visible changes will be mentioned below. I'll devote a few other 
posts to some internal issues (partially) addressed.

(Someone requested a while ago to have separate mailing lists
for usability-related announcements and for technical discussions.
That might be a good idea. I will try apply such a separation in 
the current set of posts).

Usability changes include:

1. All info of interest during game startup is now contained in a new XML 
file called Games.xml, which replaces the previous games.properties.
Added items are: 
- a possibly lengthy narrative (description), which may include anything
of interest about the game, in particular limitations of the current
implementation.
This text is not yet displayed anywhere, but we could, for instance, add
an Info button to the startup screen that, if pressed, displays this info.
- the available game options (previously in Game.xml).
- the minimum and maximum number of players (previously implicit in
Game.xml).

This info is now available before any game has been selected, 
to create more flexilibity to build the startup UI.
See my next posts for some technical aspects of game startup.

2. Error detection during startup. Up to now, if the game XML or a saved
file 
had an error, the game just crashed (for saved files, this would occur
if the saved file version was old). Now such errors are catched and
result in a "false" method return. 

The current startup UI displays a message after any such event. 
If the error occurred during loading a saved file, you get another chance
to load a file or start a new game.
If the error occurred during game startup (bad XML), the startup program
quits.
Currently this is unavoidable, as the game has already been partially
started
if such an error occurs, and the game startup code is not yet re-entrant.
Hopefully this will change in the future (see one of my next posts).

The startup UI has not been changed yet, but many more ways to implement it
now exist.

Erik Vos