5 Jun 2003 (updated 5 Jun 2003 at 05:39 UTC)
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Introductory Note
A note of thanks to everyone who's certified me. Pretty cool that people would read this and think I know enough of what I'm talking about to act on it.
The Dell Support Saga
After several hours on the phone with Dell tech support today, they concluded simply that their hardware was incompatible with Windows 2000. Not that there aren't drivers, because there are, and I installed them. They simply don't work. At all. The only operating system my laptop will run is Windows XP. Period. Or probably a variant of Linux, but I'm not gonna go there (not enough hours in the day). Oh well. I'll strip XP back to its bare bones and maybe get used to it.
Must... Release... Alpha Version
I'm putting some pressure on myself to release an alpha version of Scoped. The primary reason right now, at least, is that I'm going to have to regenerate all the binary data files myself, as I didn't have any backups. It's not that I don't know how the binaries are laid out, it's just that I'll have to go through and unpack, run tools on, find, download, and otherwise process the dozens and dozens of files necessary for game function. Actually, I'm going to take the time now to implement proper error handling for each of the required files in the game - I'm going to start it up, and, file by file, add things, looking for crashes.
At any rate, I'd always set a goal for myself that I finish the object oriented conversion before releasing an alpha version. There's quite a few subsystems left to be converted over to OO:
- Command parsing and execution (moderate)
- Common utilities including filesystem stuff (easy)
- Console (easy-moderate)
- Cvar system (easy)
- Draw system (easy)
- Game system (really, really difficult)
- Host system (moderate)
- Key bindings (easy)
- Math (easy)
- Model loader (easy)
- Progs (moderate-difficult)
- Rendering framework (difficult)
- Statusbar (easy)
- System code (easy)
- Video framework (easy)
So, as you can see, the only ones that I'm truly worried about are the rendering framework, and the progs/game combo. The problem with both is the problem of ownership and class dependencies (the classic OO dilemma). I may wind up having to attach the progs and various pieces of the game with friend dependencies, and pass around sets of references (or construct with references to global objects). Not quite sure how to hack it yet, but I'll make it work. I _think_ the best plan of attack is to bundle everything labelled as "easy", which should make my dependencies fairly clear. From there, I can start encapsulating into higher level groups like the rendering and game frameworks (the big two). We'll see how it goes.
C. Pence, signing off.