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>> On May 6, 2015, at 7:50 PM, James Cameron <quozl at us.netrek.org> wrote:
>> 
>> On Wed, May 06, 2015 at 05:19:33PM -0300, Lawrence Brass wrote:
>> I agree, the matrix has us all. 
>> I browsed the COW-XP client sources last night and liked what I
>> saw. It seems that the game logic is isolated from the video stuff,
>> the "W_" module implements the glue code between the classic Windows
>> API, GDI graphics, inputs and the game. Keyboard and mouse events
>> are enqueued in a (single?) event queue. Very clear and classic C,
>> even with Allman bracketing style! (tip of the hat).
> 
> Yes, in those days we did peer code reviews.  The "W_" module was
> added to the client on Unix before it was ported to Windows in 1996.
> 
>> If the "W_" module graphics functionality is reimplemented in say,
>> openGL(ES), and the proper native framework code is used to capture
>> the events and feed them into the game event queue, is very probable
>> that the "game code" could be ported almost untouched to OSX/iOS,
>> Plain C is actually a subset of objC and fits nicely.  On Android I
>> am not that sure (of the cost). The same strategy could be applied
>> using the NDK to hold the C game loop and logic, and feed the input
>> event queue from the native framework, but it may be harder. Porting
>> from the Java clients is a competitive alternative for Android.
>> The nice thing about this *hypothetical* scheme is that the game,
>> network, and video(using openGL) code would be common and game and
>> network stay almost untouched.
>> Sounds crazy?
> 
> Yes.  Especially because the input devices are entirely different.

There should be a mapping, before queuing control events, that would convert swipes and taps into meaningful synthetic keystrokes and mouse movements and clicks that the current game code would understand. This mapping  is were the "feel" of the game would be defined.

> The "W_" API presumes too much about the input devices and the
> underlying graphics libraries.

Yes, this would be the hard part. The API should be divided into 2 modules, one for Graphics in open GL, common to all platforms and the other for the  input event handling, particular to each platform.

I will focus on the "W_" module. I guess that  I should look at both unix and win implementations to get more insight.

Regards.

> On May 6, 2015, at 11:32 PM, Lawrence Brass <lbrass at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello again, I have just subscribed to the dev-list.
> Should I copy content from from netrek-forever google group?
> Regards,
> Lawrence (LarryX).
> 
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