Re: Revamping SDL_Manual
On 2012-01-10, at 2:03 AM, Alexander Becker cap...@gmx.de wrote: Hi Kartik, I recently started working with the SDL Manual, but I don't have a game in mind. Regardless of that, I find it very useful to see the things you can do with SDL demonstrated with games. What I'm missing so far, and what is part of every game, too, is UI stuff. How do buttons work with SDL, how do you change the state of a button element (normal, active, hover, diabled, etc.) and how do you encapsulate such UI elements properly. Perhaps getting Agar working again in perl will help? Http://libagar.org/ Basically, I'm still experimenting to find a way to create a good button class for a menu. I know there is a package out there that provides methods for drawing menus, but especially when writing your own games / apps, I guess one might want to implement its own kind of menu with nifty nice effects, layout and so on. Hmm we would love it if you can provide feedback/issues on the SDLx::Widgets github site. So this is my idea: add a chapter on UI elements (not only buttons, but (high-score-tables, text fields etc.). Unfortunately, all I can add to this project so far (I'm still a SDL n00b) are possibly dumb questions. For example, I don't know how to adjust a text on a surface for a button. By adjusting, I mean something like aligning to the left or the right or automatically splitting the text up an breaking into a new line when a given with would be exceeded (I'm generating buttons with unknown text length, which is quite problematic). Seems like a good idea. Thanks. hth, Alex Kartik Original-Nachricht Datum: Mon, 9 Jan 2012 16:34:25 -0500 Von: Kartik Thakore thakore.kar...@gmail.com An: sdl-devel@perl.org, chromatic chroma...@wgz.org Betreff: Revamping SDL_Manual Hello guys, So as I have gotten busy over the last couple months with my startup and masters the SDL Manual has fell behind, and I would like to ask if anyone is interested in taking on writing new chapters or reorganizing SDL Manual. We can discuss any new chapters to add and work with reorganize it. An idea I have is to change the name to Perl Game Development and incorporate more then just SDL chapters into the manual. Any suggestions are welcome! Regards, Kartik -- NEU: FreePhone - 0ct/min Handyspartarif mit Geld-zurück-Garantie! Jetzt informieren: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/freephone
AW: Revamping SDL_Manual
Hi Kartik, I had a look at Agar and I didn't find it that useful. One would stick with just another UI framework, that runs on SDL and has another design philosophy (GUI around the app, not vice versa). In the end, you still face the question, how you would do it yourself. Have a look at current games. Starcraft has its own kind of menu with a rotating planet and a hover event, warcraft series has some sort of animated moving menu (with hover, too) and battlefield 1942 even has a video as background (which I find quite fascinating, is this possible with SDL, too?). They don't use the same set of UI items. But they all use the same kind of logic. There are UI items and events attached to them. How they are forged, drawn, if they are 3d models or surfaces doesn't matter. That's where the interesting part begins. How do you create such an interactive item? And how to use it? And would there be other ways of doing it? Maybe a gentle reader would explore such a way. The single thing I really would appreciate out of the Agar package would be the table, as I imagine this a whole lot of work. I would like to use a drop-in for that :) Please note: I hope my word choice doesn't sound that negative, it isn't intended that way. English is simply not my native language. Best regards, Alex -Ursprüngliche Nachricht- Von: Kartik Thakore [mailto:thakore.kar...@gmail.com] Gesendet: Dienstag, 10. Januar 2012 15:13 An: Alexander Becker Cc: chroma...@wgz.org; sdl-devel@perl.org Betreff: Re: Revamping SDL_Manual On 2012-01-10, at 2:03 AM, Alexander Becker cap...@gmx.de wrote: Hi Kartik, I recently started working with the SDL Manual, but I don't have a game in mind. Regardless of that, I find it very useful to see the things you can do with SDL demonstrated with games. What I'm missing so far, and what is part of every game, too, is UI stuff. How do buttons work with SDL, how do you change the state of a button element (normal, active, hover, diabled, etc.) and how do you encapsulate such UI elements properly. Perhaps getting Agar working again in perl will help? Http://libagar.org/ Basically, I'm still experimenting to find a way to create a good button class for a menu. I know there is a package out there that provides methods for drawing menus, but especially when writing your own games / apps, I guess one might want to implement its own kind of menu with nifty nice effects, layout and so on. Hmm we would love it if you can provide feedback/issues on the SDLx::Widgets github site. So this is my idea: add a chapter on UI elements (not only buttons, but (high-score-tables, text fields etc.). Unfortunately, all I can add to this project so far (I'm still a SDL n00b) are possibly dumb questions. For example, I don't know how to adjust a text on a surface for a button. By adjusting, I mean something like aligning to the left or the right or automatically splitting the text up an breaking into a new line when a given with would be exceeded (I'm generating buttons with unknown text length, which is quite problematic). Seems like a good idea. Thanks. hth, Alex Kartik Original-Nachricht Datum: Mon, 9 Jan 2012 16:34:25 -0500 Von: Kartik Thakore thakore.kar...@gmail.com An: sdl-devel@perl.org, chromatic chroma...@wgz.org Betreff: Revamping SDL_Manual Hello guys, So as I have gotten busy over the last couple months with my startup and masters the SDL Manual has fell behind, and I would like to ask if anyone is interested in taking on writing new chapters or reorganizing SDL Manual. We can discuss any new chapters to add and work with reorganize it. An idea I have is to change the name to Perl Game Development and incorporate more then just SDL chapters into the manual. Any suggestions are welcome! Regards, Kartik -- NEU: FreePhone - 0ct/min Handyspartarif mit Geld-zurück-Garantie! Jetzt informieren: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/freephone - eMail ist virenfrei. Von AVG überprüft - www.avg.de Version: 10.0.1416 / Virendatenbank: 2109/4132 - Ausgabedatum: 09.01.2012
Re: Revamping SDL_Manual
On Monday, January 09, 2012 at 01:34 PM, Kartik Thakore wrote: An idea I have is to change the name to Perl Game Development and incorporate more then just SDL chapters into the manual. Any suggestions are welcome! The audience for Perl Game Development is slightly different from the audience for an SDL manual--this may be the distinction Kartik and I were trying to figure out when we discussed the documentation offlist. One drawback of the current manual for Perl Game Development is that it focuses strongly on the mechanics of how SDL works at the expense of the natural abstractions and idioms a good Perl programmer would use to manage the code. Put another way, once you've written a good sprite class, you'll reuse it instead of writing it over and over. Rather than explaining SDL in terms of gradual complexity and additional features, explain game programming in terms of its fundamental units: sprites, events, the game loop, sounds, levels, data handling, timeslicing, 3D, whatever. -- c
Re: Revamping SDL_Manual
Hi Kartik, I recently started working with the SDL Manual, but I don't have a game in mind. Regardless of that, I find it very useful to see the things you can do with SDL demonstrated with games. What I'm missing so far, and what is part of every game, too, is UI stuff. How do buttons work with SDL, how do you change the state of a button element (normal, active, hover, diabled, etc.) and how do you encapsulate such UI elements properly. Basically, I'm still experimenting to find a way to create a good button class for a menu. I know there is a package out there that provides methods for drawing menus, but especially when writing your own games / apps, I guess one might want to implement its own kind of menu with nifty nice effects, layout and so on. So this is my idea: add a chapter on UI elements (not only buttons, but (high-score-tables, text fields etc.). Unfortunately, all I can add to this project so far (I'm still a SDL n00b) are possibly dumb questions. For example, I don't know how to adjust a text on a surface for a button. By adjusting, I mean something like aligning to the left or the right or automatically splitting the text up an breaking into a new line when a given with would be exceeded (I'm generating buttons with unknown text length, which is quite problematic). hth, Alex Original-Nachricht Datum: Mon, 9 Jan 2012 16:34:25 -0500 Von: Kartik Thakore thakore.kar...@gmail.com An: sdl-devel@perl.org, chromatic chroma...@wgz.org Betreff: Revamping SDL_Manual Hello guys, So as I have gotten busy over the last couple months with my startup and masters the SDL Manual has fell behind, and I would like to ask if anyone is interested in taking on writing new chapters or reorganizing SDL Manual. We can discuss any new chapters to add and work with reorganize it. An idea I have is to change the name to Perl Game Development and incorporate more then just SDL chapters into the manual. Any suggestions are welcome! Regards, Kartik -- NEU: FreePhone - 0ct/min Handyspartarif mit Geld-zurück-Garantie! Jetzt informieren: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/freephone
