Re: [Help-liquidwar6] Liquid War 6 eye candy

[Christian Mauduit]

Hi,

On Sat, September 26, 2009 10:30 am, Timothy Anderson wrote:
> My question is: What type of programming language are you using to
> make LW6, and what program(s?) are you using to write code with? I see
The core engine is pure C.

Then, there's a (somewhat complex) binding to Guile which allows "simple"
scripts to manipulate pretty much anything in the game. In fact, except
some rare cases where performance is a key stone, all interaction between
modules is done through Guile scripts. In practice, as far as graphics
rendenring is concerned, you can forget about this script thing, from an
OpenGL hacker point of view, the game is pure C.

> you're using OSX, but would you have anything to recommend on a Linux
> platform? I have no experience with any languages other than HTML and
> a little BASIC, but I'd like to be able to get involved with what
> you're doing on that side of things just enough to get a handle on how
> you're implementing these ideas.
Just to be clear, using OSX is just accidental for me, it happens that I
have such a system by now but well, my preferred platform is and will
remain GNU/Linux, I continue to developp on this platform. In fact, I
develop the game on OSX or GNU/Linux, just depends on the compter I'm
hacking on. If I'm upstairs, I code on OSX. If I'm downstairs, I code on
GNU/Linux. It's transparent.

The one thing you need to be able to hack the game on the graphics front
is to know how to program in C. I use no peculiar environment, I just edit
text files with emacs, and run "make" in a terminal, I have no IDE like
Eclipse whatsoever.

> I'm very interested in seeing how this might look. I still think it
> would really help if the squares/triangles were much smaller, but I
> suppose that's what you meant by saying it will be optimized by a
> power of about 2. But I'm sure even that will help. It just doesn't
> have the same feel as 5 did, being more of a "blob" than free-flowing
> "liquid".
I'm not quite sure to understand. What do you prefer? Blob? Flowing liquid?

> I have strong feelings against this. It seems to be going against the
> whole idea and concept of the game. I think there has to be another
> way around this, other than characterizing the... liquid, or
> armies--whatever you'd call it. Unless we can find a way to make it
> look more like liquid i.e. like droplets of oil or the effect you get
> when you drop food-coloring into a clear glass of water. If that were
> possible it would be a terrific effect in my opinion.
I think I understand your point of view, there's a somewhat "pure" style
that really fits LW and which is not likely to cope well with ideas like
detailing fighters with a bazillion arms & feet. But I remember I stuck
for quite a long time on the idea that cursors should go slowish and go
arround walls just "because it had always been like this" and finally I
changed my mind. As you point it, there might be some alternate options,
wht I was trying to say is "we should not stick to the current one fighter
== one pixel concept". Instead, just think on how to represent the game
current state.

> If there's anything else you need as far as ideas on the graphical end
> just let me know and I'll try to come up with some more concepts.
We're currently brainstorming. Any idea welcome.

Have a nice day,

Christian.

-- 
Christian Mauduit <address@hidden> - http://www.ufoot.org/ ___ __/\__
Liquid War 6 - http://www.gnu.org/software/liquidwar6/     / _")\~ \~/
"Les amis de la vérité sont ceux qui la cherchent et non _/ /   /_ o_\
ceux qui se vantent de l'avoir trouvée" - Condorcet     (__/      \/