Re: The Author list for LGP

[Johnny Taporg <taporg@yahoo.com>]

No chapter yet, but I've brainstormed a bunch of
game related ideas.  Here's a list of subjects, as
well as my comments.

Re: Input
  Usually, by choosing a graphics lib, your choice of
  input lib is made for you.  This is fine, though,
  because it's not like there are a lot of ways to
  do input handling.

Re: Licensing
  I've seen lots of commercial developers ask about
  the LGPL.  The misconception: if you make a game
  that uses an LGPLed lib, you have to release the
  source (or, you can't charge money for the game).
  The truth is, as long as the game is dynamically
  linked, only the source for the LGPL lib (+mods)
  needs to be released.  The game itself can stay
  as commercial and proprietary as it wants to.

Re: C vs C++
  By the time someone's ready to write games, you
  can pretty much assume that they're familiar with
  a programming language, and it's probably one of
  these two.  If you're coding a lib, and some users
  are C coders, stick with C.  Otherwise, C++ has
  been around long enough that you can go with 
  whichever one you feel the most comfortable with.
  Some C++ (namespaces, exceptions, templates, STL,
  RTTI) has been standardized recently, so you need
  a recent compiler (egcs) to support it.

Re: Assembly
  Use NASM.  But if you code assembly at all, only
  do it for the innermost, most repetetive loops.
  Otherwise, it's probably not worth it.  It's been
  years since I've used any assembly myself.

Re: Sound
  I'm curious as to what's out there.  If someone
  did a full overview of the options, the way I did
  for graphics, that'd be cool.

Re: Tools
  Same deal for media editing tools.  Image editors,
  paint programs, renderers, modellers, map/level
  editors, video editors, audio editors, etc.  I'd
  be interested in hearing from people experienced
  in using some of these.  I know and love the gimp,
  povray is ok (would be better if there was a 
  companion modeller program).  MiXViews is useable
  for editing sound, but there's a lot of room for
  improvement.  I've heard of moonlight creator and
  blender, but I'd like to hear more.  Anything else?

Re: Who's Who
  What notable figures are active in the linux game
  development community?  What do they do, and where
  can you find them?  Carmack?  Dave Taylor?  Maybe
  Jorrit (I've seen lot's of people say that they're
  going to write a cool, free 3d engine - CrystalSpace
  is the only one thusfar that I've seen succeed).

Re: Net
  BSD sockets.  Anything else we need to know?  Dan,
  maybe you can comment here - all of the network
  programming I've done has been unix-based client-
  server stuff, never games.
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