Re: LinuxGames website contents

[Magnus Norddahl <mbn@dark.x.dtu.dk>]

Quoting Christian Reiniger (warewolf@mayn.de):

> >     - Platform dependent sdk's (dx, svgalib, ggi, x11, etc.)
> 
> This part isn't very urgent. But I'll ask the GGI ppl for a short overview
> anyways. Who can contribute on the other sdks?

It is an essential part of the site. It generally shows what libs you have
at your hands as a developer. Imagine how cool it would be, if you could get
complete lists of sound libs available under Linux. Or how about a list of
the different GUI libs (Qt, GtK, wxWindow, Motif, MFC, etc) available.
When needing information of this type, it is very difficult to use normal
search engines. I imagine the linuxgames site the place to find game
related sdk's.

> >     - Higherlevel platform independent sdk's (clanlib, pplay)
> 
> This page should also contain an explanation about the planned toolkit
> modularity and interoperability. I can write that.

The list of platform sdk's was mainly meant as the list of tools available.
More specific information about them can either be read at their websites, or
in other sections of the Meta site. A short description of each sdk could be
nice, but the problem is that most libs would match the following
description:

"xxx is a game sdk written to provide accelerated platform independent access
display, sound, input and network."

It is hard to explain the difference between the projects in 2-5 lines.
Instead I was thinking about dividing them into different types of sdks:

1) Platform dependent sdks. The other libs are usually build upon these.
2) Lowlevel platform independent libs.
3) Higherlevel platform independent libs.

The difference between 2 and 3 is basically the fact, that libs like SDL
provide a very basic lowlevel interface to system. Providing a "as close to
the system as possible" approach. They usually assume the developer himself
prefer to build his own library upon it. Often this kind library is used to
port games already written.

Higherlevel libs provide a nicer API with lots of usefull extras such as
easy surface loading and datafiles. However, some of them doesn't give the
same degree of lowlevel interface as the first type of libs.

> >  - List of games using one or more of the game sdk's offered here.
> 
> Hmm, we'll have to decide to what extend we'll do that - every Linux game
> uses one of SVGALib, X11 and GGI. But that's anyway a not so pressing part.
> Perhaps we can also cooperate with the Linux Game Tome on that.

When DirectX originally appeared, it contained (and still does) some demo
games demonstrating its abilities. I think we need such mini-games here too.
They are needed to show the game developers that you actually _can_ write
cool fast games with these libs.

I'm not thinking about larger games such as Descent, Doom or Quake. Most
game developers enjoy small demo games doing something simple and funny.
Games like Pacman, Bomberman/Dynablaster or Worms/Scorched earth.

--
Magnus Norddahl
ClanLib developer
http://clanlib.org