New Year Wishlist (2018) ?

> I found the mix of OSWindow+SDL+Athens very complex (tens of classes with
> hundreds of methods) and to produce code hard to understand (I look at your
> spider code).
>
> I will prefer fewer functionnality I can understand.
>
> For example, how can you copy a sprite on a SDL surface? Can you do it
> without Athens surface?
>
>
> Le 28/12/2017 à 18:51, Clément Bera a écrit :
>>
>> Whichever if Cairo stays around or not does not really matter, normally
>> one uses Cairo through Athens or Sparta, abstraction layers on top of 2D
>> graphic engines. I've worked with other 2D engines and the API are always
>> almost the same, so I have no doubt that if Cairo support is dropped we can
>> re-bind Athens/Sparta with another 2D engine (such as engines used by web
>> browsers).
>
>
> --
> Dr. Geo
> http://drgeo.eu
>
>
>

> Hilaire
>
> why do you need to have a sprite on a SDL surface and why plain Athens
> is not good enough. Athens is an API not an implementation.
> It is like sparta: an API and you do not care about the library below.
>
> OSWindow is a layer on top of SDL and it is better than SDL directly
> to my understanding.
> So you should get Athens and SDL for event.
>
> What kind of game are you targeting? Did you look at Bloc? Because to
> me this is the way to go except if you want just a canvas
> and reimplement your event loop. in that case SDL + Athens should work.
>
> Stef
>
> On Sat, Dec 30, 2017 at 9:33 PM, Hilaire<[hidden email]>  wrote:
>> I found the mix of OSWindow+SDL+Athens very complex (tens of classes with
>> hundreds of methods) and to produce code hard to understand (I look at your
>> spider code).
>>
>> I will prefer fewer functionnality I can understand.
>>
>> For example, how can you copy a sprite on a SDL surface? Can you do it
>> without Athens surface?
>>
>>
>> Le 28/12/2017 à 18:51, Clément Bera a écrit :
>>> Whichever if Cairo stays around or not does not really matter, normally
>>> one uses Cairo through Athens or Sparta, abstraction layers on top of 2D
>>> graphic engines. I've worked with other 2D engines and the API are always
>>> almost the same, so I have no doubt that if Cairo support is dropped we can
>>> re-bind Athens/Sparta with another 2D engine (such as engines used by web
>>> browsers).
>> --
>> Dr. Geo
>> http://drgeo.eu
>>
>>
>>

> Esteban Lorenzano <[hidden email]>
> wrote:
>> Hi everybody,
>>
>> This looks like a good moment of the year to ask all of you what would
>> you want to see in Pharo next year.
>
> I wish you all the time and good health to realize some of your Pharo
> dreams
>
> Stephan
>
>

> I am *exploring* if Pharo will be suitable to have a simple programming
> environment to let kids write simple 2D games, SDL was designed for that.
>
> Some of my students asked me about programming games, Smalltalk way of
> writing code will be neat, but the environment need to be accessible and not
> over engineered.
>
>
> Le 30/12/2017 à 22:32, Stephane Ducasse a écrit :
>>
>> What kind of game are you targeting? Did you look at Bloc? Because to
>> me this is the way to go except if you want just a canvas
>> and reimplement your event loop. in that case SDL + Athens should work.
>
>
> --
> Dr. Geo
> http://drgeo.eu
>
>
>

> Hi hilaire
>
> Some students at Prague are working on different 2D games with Bloc
> and this is working.
> Some did a sokoban, other a miner (check on pharo weekly).
>
> They use Bloc and I will ask them to make public their code.
> No need for SDL. SDL is ***low level***.
>
> Now modeling the board and proposing some abstractions that can be
> easily extended is difficult.
> and this is what lauraMaximilliano did in MetaBorg.
>
> It was on my todo to do a pass. I implemented a grid to help the
> design of board game.
> Now having direction/location can be good.
>
> What is interesting in the design of metaborg is that we do not test
> if an object can move to
> a place. We go to the place and the place pull the item.
> A wall will not pull for example while a empty slot will pull the item to move.
>
> I found it intriguing and I would like to know if this is working for
> more complex situation.
>
> Maximiliano implemented sokoban, tetris, snake, pacman with the same framwork.
> Now it is a bit abstract but an interesting experience.
>
>
> Stef
>
> On Sun, Dec 31, 2017 at 2:41 PM, Hilaire<[hidden email]>  wrote:
>> I am*exploring*  if Pharo will be suitable to have a simple programming
>> environment to let kids write simple 2D games, SDL was designed for that.
>>
>> Some of my students asked me about programming games, Smalltalk way of
>> writing code will be neat, but the environment need to be accessible and not
>> over engineered.
>>
>>
>> Le 30/12/2017 à 22:32, Stephane Ducasse a écrit :
>>> What kind of game are you targeting? Did you look at Bloc? Because to
>>> me this is the way to go except if you want just a canvas
>>> and reimplement your event loop. in that case SDL + Athens should work.
>> --
>> Dr. Geo
>> http://drgeo.eu
>>
>>
>>

> Hi Stef,
>
> A complete port of the SDL capabilities
> (http://wiki.libsdl.org/Introduction) will be super nice (audio) and
> improved stability.
>
> For your students, the perspective on the game is likely 2 months, may be 6
> months; you know I have longer perspective - DrGeo was slowly developed and
> crafted for 20 years; therefore stability on the code is very important for
> me as I will have to work over long period. That's the reason I don't fell
> at ease relying on many code layers. For your students, as the horizon is
> counted in months it is a null consideration, not for me. Not to mention
> there are uncertainty over this layers. Moreover these layers will make hard
> to my student to understand what's going on, if they want to dig in.
>
> I am not sure how far will get me this reflexion, but for my students, I can
> imagine different models of 2D games: board games, horizontal/vertical
> scrolling games, isometric games. Each one can be optimized differently.
> Banks of sprites and audio will be already there to get started the
> students. The models will encapsulate SDL, as PyGame is doing, but still
> easilly accessible.
>
> I imagine such an environment to rely only on two layers: SDL and spec, the
> later if some dedicated user interface is needed for the game designer; but
> a lot should happen in the class browser.
>
> I found this Python PyGame code bellow rather easy to understand. Will it be
> possible to produce an equally understandable Smalltalk code with the layers
> your are proposing?
>
> importsys,pygamepygame.init()size=width,height=320,240speed=[2,2]black=0,0,0screen=pygame.display.set_mode(size)ball=pygame.image.load("ball.bmp")ballrect=ball.get_rect()while1:foreventinpygame.event.get():ifevent.type==pygame.QUIT:sys.exit()ballrect=ballrect.move(speed)ifballrect.left<0orballrect.right>width:speed[0]=-speed[0]ifballrect.top<0orballrect.bottom>height:speed[1]=-speed[1]screen.fill(black)screen.blit(ball,ballrect)pygame.display.flip()
>
>
> Hilaire
>
> Your time stamp bellow is a strike! ;)
>    vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv
>
> Le 01/01/2018 à 00:00, Stephane Ducasse a écrit :
>>
>> Hi hilaire
>>
>> Some students at Prague are working on different 2D games with Bloc
>> and this is working.
>> Some did a sokoban, other a miner (check on pharo weekly).
>>
>> They use Bloc and I will ask them to make public their code.
>> No need for SDL. SDL is ***low level***.
>>
>> Now modeling the board and proposing some abstractions that can be
>> easily extended is difficult.
>> and this is what lauraMaximilliano did in MetaBorg.
>>
>> It was on my todo to do a pass. I implemented a grid to help the
>> design of board game.
>> Now having direction/location can be good.
>>
>> What is interesting in the design of metaborg is that we do not test
>> if an object can move to
>> a place. We go to the place and the place pull the item.
>> A wall will not pull for example while a empty slot will pull the item to
>> move.
>>
>> I found it intriguing and I would like to know if this is working for
>> more complex situation.
>>
>> Maximiliano implemented sokoban, tetris, snake, pacman with the same
>> framwork.
>> Now it is a bit abstract but an interesting experience.
>>
>>
>> Stef
>>
>> On Sun, Dec 31, 2017 at 2:41 PM, Hilaire<[hidden email]>  wrote:
>>>
>>> I am*exploring*  if Pharo will be suitable to have a simple programming
>>> environment to let kids write simple 2D games, SDL was designed for that.
>>>
>>> Some of my students asked me about programming games, Smalltalk way of
>>> writing code will be neat, but the environment need to be accessible and
>>> not
>>> over engineered.
>>>
>>>
>>> Le 30/12/2017 à 22:32, Stephane Ducasse a écrit :
>>>>
>>>> What kind of game are you targeting? Did you look at Bloc? Because to
>>>> me this is the way to go except if you want just a canvas
>>>> and reimplement your event loop. in that case SDL + Athens should work.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Dr. Geo
>>> http://drgeo.eu
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
> --
> Dr. Geo
> http://drgeo.eu
>
>
>

> Hi everybody,
>
> This looks like a good moment of the year to ask all of you what would you want to see in Pharo next year.
> Features, improvements, radical changes, etc…. whatever you want.
>
> Of course, this list will not be a roadmap and it does not means we will implement all of it (as always, time drives our possibilities), but is a good moment for us a a community to check where we are and where we wan to go next :)
>
> So, let’s those wishes come!
>
> cheers,
> Esteban