[palito-dev] Some questions about Palito

[Tom Barnes-Lawrence]

Hi, I emailed the contact address a few days ago about this bug,
but as this list doesn't seem to have much traffic, I decided to
subscribe to it instead.
Don't know if the points I raised can be answered while Barrett is on
holiday (if not, I don't mind waiting).
On Sun, Jun 22, 2003 at 07:09:08PM -0200, address@hidden wrote:
> > It's very cool! But when I tried compiling the X11 version, it crashed in
> > the intro screen. I had a bit of a look with gdb but don't really
> > understand how your "flush" parser works (though it seems pretty neat!)
> > so I couldn't work out what was going on.
> >  The SDL version worked fine, however.
> > 
> >  I'd be happy to give more info on the crash in the X11 version, but I
> > wasn't sure if you knew about it already. Let me know.
>
> ... there were several changes on the flush layer recently, and the 
> x11 and win32 versions may still be outdated...
> 
> we are thinking about support only the sdl version for some time,
> until the flush get more stable..
> 
> barrett, which is the main developer, is tripping on Amazon right now ..
> maybe he can give you a hint when he came back.. next week, or so.
> 
> meanwhile, fell free to explore the code, send patches or suggestions :)

 Well, I tried mucking about a bit more with the code, to try to see what
difference the choice between x11 and sdl would make to this bug. Couldn't
find anything. Tried putting -DHEIGHTMAP in the x11 makefile, and it didn't
work (IIRC the heightmap stuff expected SDL). Tried removing -DHEIGHTMAP
from the sdl makefile, and IIRC it didn't make a difference.
The X11 version didn't seem to crash if I made it skip the intro.

 But presumably this bug will happen to anybody who tries the x11 version
right now, so you guys who know your own code will be able to find it
without problems when (if?) you start working on the x11 version again.
So I'll stop worrying about it!

 There's also a little bug where the program is compiled to expect libflush
to be at ../flush, as though it will be run from the src directory, but it
has the "data" path set as though it'll be run from the main directory. So
I have to make a symlink to "data" to make it happy!
But I expect you all know that one too.

 Here are some questions I have:

-Palito clearly isn't meant to be an exact clone of Total Annihilation, as
it looks so different. And it looks like the units are meant to be different
to TAs, too. But is the actual engine of Palito meant to be exactly the
same as TA, or just similar? I would quite like it if I could make it
exactly like TA by using the stats of TA's units.

-Flush is a pretty cool system, it reminds me of a LOGO-like program I
wrote a while back (but much better!). I'd like to understand it much
better (the documentation for it is pretty short...). But as this display
shows units from directly above (unlike TA), won't this make it hard to
clearly show units like radar? I'm sure many such things could be very
hard to recognise from such a view.

-What things are stopping the client-server code from being finished?

-As you want to implement maps with pictures and heightmaps, do you plan
on using the method that TA used (maybe it was only for the Core Prime maps,
I don't remember) of having lots of preset tiles that each have a picture
and heightmap, that then get put together into one big map? It sounds like
a good way to help lots of maps to be made.

-If a construction unit or factory can build lots of other things, can
palito deal with that- eg, by scrolling the list, or showing different
pages of them?

-Are there any things you need done, or would find useful (such as more
units or something)?


OK, I think that's all for now. Sorry to have gone on a lot.

Tomble