Re: [glob2-devel] We must do a game, not an engine

[Bradley Arsenault]

What I'm trying to do is not to make the perfect Engine. And if
people, especially Cyrille, don't understand that, than really there
is no point.

The current engine is mal documented, and barely maintainable. To make
the perfect game, from a programmer who is uneducated in all of glob'2
code, requires grand amounts of reading code, tracking execution and
the likes. Especially considering all of the hack fixes i see scurried
throughout the code, the once simple and innovative engine design is
now just a gloomy mess, in my harsh opinion. I programming on this,
and I became fed up.

I am rewriting the engine for this very reason. To make it *easier* to
make glob2 what we want it to be. To do winning conditions in the
current system would be require some mangle of Engine, Session,
GameGUI, and Net classes.

After my changes? Just add it to GameHeader, change the file version
number, and implement it in the winning condition function in Game.
Old Way? Probably 5 days to a week, presuming you know Glob2's code to
the point I do (more than average, less than complete understanding).
New way? Done in a day, maybe two, even for someone who has no
experience coding glob2.

What may take me a month to create, can save weeks and weeks for
programmers in the future (including myself). I am not waisting my
time here. I am dedicating it wisely.

I'll use building a house as a good analogy. When I walk inside my
house, I don't see the foundation. I don't see the concrete. I don't
even the wood framing in the walls. All I have is finished product.
But I certainly hope my house has a foundation. I hope there is wood
in the walls. If I want to hang something heavy on my wall, I
certainly hope there is a stud I can drill into.

Glob2 needs a solid foundation before we can build the game. Game
features are still in my head. The whole Engine rewrite, for me, was
born out of frustration in trying to do game features. Elvish Pillager
probably had a time working through the code when he did customizable
prestige, and said he had trouble placing the data.

What took him days could have been done in an hour, if there was as
simple as to place the variable in GameHeader, have the GUI modify
this variable when selecting customizable prestige, and change the
winning condition function in GameGUI.


--
Really. I'm not lieing. Bradley Arsenault.