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Open up the floor (Perl SDL game design)



Intro:  

	Myself and a small team of friends are working to build a very personal version of the standard AofE,C&C,StarCraft style
game.  The idea is that a really customizable gaming experience will set us apart in a crowded arena.  Going with a proven overall
idea means not re-inventing the wheel.

Preface:

	After banging our heads on build problems and using other peoples libraries for running the simulation in C++ my small
project team went out for beers this weekend and suggested a few radical ideas.  

The problem:

Since the whole concept of the project is a very customizable SimCity/Age-of-Empires style game, the idea of a C++ object
representing each unit has come under attack.  The new idea is to move the current design to a Perl source base and dump the current
code.  A perl OO inheritance tree would be used to build the game, and importantly setup the unit inheritance (the wheel gives you a
cart, a cart gives you a caravan, a caravan gives you a truck...etc).  POD would be used as "in game" documentation.  So if you
click on a caravan, we would simply print the POD for that package.  There are a lot of interesting ideas that start to come up....

My Problem:

This would mean using Perl-SDL (since PerlTk seems like a bad idea) and either MSG or some form of RPC for network communication.
Also a Red/Black balance tree for storing the game events would problobly be needed (or something like it), however this area is
still a mystery to everyone evolved.  Comments in this area would be......helpful.

The ever popular topic of cheating has come up and been talked to death.  The ease of OO Perl is considered a assist.  The plan
would be to focus on completing a Perl-SDL main window and basic game logic then attract the community to build the objects and
units.

All of these changes are a complete change in direction.  I have never used Perl-SDL and I don't know how well it works.  I have
pondered issues of Perl6's distant (but pending) arrival.  More importantly I wonder if it will work at all, or work better then
planned.

Given that our team meeting was on Sat, these ideas are new.  I would like to hear any and all comments from the list.  I am hoping
the sanity or brilliance of this idea can be decided in public forum.

Thanks as always,
~Aaron

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