Re: New directions with much less objectives (Was Re: Comments?)

[Christian Reiniger <warewolf@mayn.de>]

Peter Breitling wrote:

>What i am voting for, is a reduction in what PP should provide.
>Together, i would like to design a nice clean consistent and _complete_
>framework to adress the major topics (network, input, graphics, threads
>etc.). So it should be possible to write complete games using solely
>that framework and maybe some other 'compatible' and established libs
>like qt and OpenGL.

The current plan (at least in my brain) is to make PPlay a relatively loose
collection of code and tools. "Loose" meaning that e.g. Penguin2D doesn't
need PenguinNet to run, it has its own version numbers, its own release
schedule etc (But there will still be a "PenguinPlay-In-A-Can" package
containing everything that's stable enough.).
That independence has two main reasons:

(1) Other SDKs. Game developers should be able to pick the best parts of
all available SDKs, i.e. use what's best fit for their particular
situation. That means they could use SDL for graphics, PenguinNet for
you-know-what and ClanLib for pakfile access etc.

(2) PPlay Developers. That's the more serious one :(
You can see clearly that it's almost impossible to make all PPlay parts
progress at approximately the same speed. The (as I see it) only two ways
to break that scheme is to either have at least one very motivated person
with enough time for development in each team or to have some working code
that's able to attract such people. The second way somehow requires the
first one though...

>Lets say we would build a house somebody can live in, then the current
>situation of PP i can see is is like:
>
>We have a general description of the location of that house. We know
>about its color though maybe not the exact tone. Some people know how to
>build the heating, some are thinking about the kitchen and one has
>already a working washing room. From time to time somedy shouts things
>like: Hey there is an optimized tab that save water which we can include
>in our house.
>
>What i ask is: where is the architecture plan of the house, which
>describes how things are working together, where the entrance is and how
>to use that house?

It's in the heads of the "core people". There's no formal, written plan
except some extremely general notes. On the other hand - I'd somehow have a
hard time making a list of what has to be in such a doc. Can you make a
list of what you'd put there? I'll also sleep over it.

The "working together" - well, most parts are so independent that there's
nothing to write about that. Dependencies mainly exist in the really
highlevel parts (GUI, Gamespace, ...), i.e. stuff that's far off.

And the "how to use" has to be described by the parts themselves and
individually...


Cu
	Christian

PS: Some time ago I posted an incomplete overview of what parts of the
homepage are still up-to-date. No reply (completions etc) yet. What's up?

--

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