From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: John Darrington Newsgroups: gmane.lisp.guile.user Subject: Re: SLAYER announcement and help request for preparing a GNU package Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 07:15:54 +0200 Message-ID: <20130505051554.GA2558@intra> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="YZ5djTAD1cGYuMQK" X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1367730974 3491 80.91.229.3 (5 May 2013 05:16:14 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 5 May 2013 05:16:14 +0000 (UTC) Cc: "guile-user@gnu.org" To: Panicz Maciej Godek Original-X-From: guile-user-bounces+guile-user=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun May 05 07:16:14 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: guile-user@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1UYrIy-0006HO-EZ for guile-user@m.gmane.org; Sun, 05 May 2013 07:16:12 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:43708 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UYrIx-0007la-Ul for guile-user@m.gmane.org; Sun, 05 May 2013 01:16:11 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:44155) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UYrIo-0007lT-FU for guile-user@gnu.org; Sun, 05 May 2013 01:16:04 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UYrIm-0002OT-QS for guile-user@gnu.org; Sun, 05 May 2013 01:16:02 -0400 Original-Received: from de.cellform.com ([88.217.224.109]:50635 helo=jocasta.intra) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UYrIm-0002O4-81 for guile-user@gnu.org; Sun, 05 May 2013 01:16:00 -0400 Original-Received: from muse.intra (muse.intra [192.168.0.6]) by jocasta.intra (8.14.3/8.14.3/Debian-9.4) with ESMTP id r455Fs4c012293 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NOT); Sun, 5 May 2013 07:15:55 +0200 Original-Received: from john by muse.intra with local (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1UYrIg-0000gh-H9; Sun, 05 May 2013 07:15:54 +0200 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6.x X-Received-From: 88.217.224.109 X-BeenThere: guile-user@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: General Guile related discussions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guile-user-bounces+guile-user=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: guile-user-bounces+guile-user=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.lisp.guile.user:10312 Archived-At: --YZ5djTAD1cGYuMQK Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable It sounds like an interesting project. The subject line of your post says it is a "GNU Package", but I don't see s= layer in the official list. Perhaps you mean it is one that you want to submit to GNU in the hope that they will adopt it as a package? Or did you mean somet= hing else? Obviously how to it should be laid out will depend on that a lot. Like you say, lack of documentation is will be a big factor in getting user= s. How will people know how to use it, and perhaps more importantly WHY the sh= ould use it? Autotools can indeed be tricky - and a time consuming part of maintaining a package - but they do make it a hell of a lot easier for the general public to build, especially on wierd systems. Lack of features is a concern - but if you have a dedicated user base, even= a small one, you will get requests for them. However, if you don't have decent doc= umentation, and a reliable and portable build system, then you won't have any users .... J' On Sat, May 04, 2013 at 11:54:44PM +0200, Panicz Maciej Godek wrote: Hi everyone, I've developed a piece of software that I named SLAYER, by combining t= he letter 's' with the word "layer", or replacing the 'p' letter with 's'= in the word 'player'. =20 Either way, slayer can be thought of as a simpler alternative for wrap= per libraries such as guile-sdl and guile-opengl, or as a programming environment that is in a way competetive to Adobe Flash (with standalo= ne player). But obviously, it is something completely different. =20 I made this program as a base for research in GUI design, but it also contains a stub of a 3d game engine that I'm planning to implement -- = which explains native support for OpenGL. I recently thought that it also co= uld be a great platform for teaching kids to program games, because -- once compiled and linked -- it could be distributed as a standalone package, that requires no additional tools. =20 The program is available through mercurial on bitbucket: =20 hg clone https://bitbucket.org/panicz/slayer =20 The repository contains README file, which lists packages that are nee= ded to build. Except a little mess, there are two demos that show the possibilities of the system. The first one with the command: =20 $ ./slayer -e3d =20 The -e3d option is needed to enable the "3d" extension, which is requi= red by the demo. It allows to move around in a 3d space using mouse and WS= AD keys. There's also a draggable icon and a simple text-console, which accepts s-expressions (evaluated using f1 key). It is activated with a click, but for some reason the cursor isn't always displayed. The sour= ce file is slayer.scm. =20 The second demo is the classical arcade PONG game (for two players). I= t's written in the raw guile+slayer, so it's pretty lengthy (~160 lines), = but it should be easily understandable. PONG can be run using $ ./slayer -i pong.scm =20 Both demos use sound, which can be disabled by passing the --nosound o= ption in the command line. PONG can also receive the -e3d option, which would force it to use opengl for display. =20 Other command line options are undocumented, but they can be easily fo= und in slayer.c. I admit that the lack of any documentation can now be the= most seriously discouraging factor, but I promise to respond to every quest= ion eagerly. =20 The second most seriously discouraging factor would be the build proce= ss, which could require manual editing of the Makefile, among others. It w= ould be lovely to use the GNU autotools, but they seem so complicated, and I thought that since you might have more experience with those, you could help me to prepare a decent release, and perhaps to reorganize the structure of the source code. =20 Perhaps the third most seriously discouraging factor (except some rand= om crashes that still happen) would be the lack of certain features: I'm trying to apply the 'lazy implementation' strategy and add SDL/OpenGL features only as I need them, and also my priority is to keep interfac= es simple, even at the cost of programmer's freedom (so for instance, the= re's no option for choosing color index mode in OpenGL, or some other SDL v= ideo mode than the default). =20 Despite those factors, I'd be happy to hear some feedback from you. =20 Best regards, M. --=20 PGP Public key ID: 1024D/2DE827B3=20 fingerprint =3D 8797 A26D 0854 2EAB 0285 A290 8A67 719C 2DE8 27B3 See http://keys.gnupg.net or any PGP keyserver for public key. --YZ5djTAD1cGYuMQK Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: Digital signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAlGF6wkACgkQimdxnC3oJ7Pd5ACeOqfjo33M2YA+e7sEbvpR9g82 7mMAmgNMwztNlpQHBg5OMwzjDgvaMmqE =L1uC -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --YZ5djTAD1cGYuMQK--