Re: The SDL client

[Mathias Broxvall <matbr at ida dot liu dot se>]

> PNG is in the plan - see item I253 in doc/PROJECTS - but I was expecting
> to call it directly.  Xconq's image machinery works with all interfaces
> that do bitmap graphics, and it would be a little difficult to use the
> SDL image library to get surfaces, then convert to Mac pixmaps, etc.
> Another thing that came up this weekend is that Xconq's image families
> provide a handy link between game designs and interface elements, so
> for instance if we make cursor images into image families, and add some
> new globals, game rules can specify cursors.  SDL_image would be a
> sensible choice for interface elements that are common to all games
> though.

Yes, it would definitly be nice to be able to specify images to use in the
game modules. Idealy I'd see no other kinds of images, give the game
modules total flexibilty of what images are used in the game interface.
The only case where we have images which cannot be overriden by game
modules must be before a game module has been loaded (splash screen + new
game dialog). 

This would give (total?) flexibility of the appearance of the gui
elements, now for the placement of gui elements. I'd probably be stupid to
settle for a hardcoded placement of elements, perhaps this should rather
be specified in the game modules? There are many meta languages for
describing gui's which we could be inspired by. (eg. XML specifications
for gtk+ gui's, qt gui's etc..) Would this be flexible enough?

The average user probably would think of such a scheme as a hardcoded gui
for every different scenario but as mentioned before, most good games have
a hardcoded gui. Implementing draggable/iconizable (sp?) gui elements etc
would probably be *quite* a lot of work. 

> That would be a good experiment.  Chances are that the details will
> have to change as other pieces get built, so it's best to think of as
> a prototype, not try to polish too much yet. 

Yes, only as a prototype. We probably will throw away and rewrite large
parts of the SDL client code before finished anyway...

/ Mathias