Re: Hello [long]

[Marcello Missiroli <marcello.missiroli@tiscalinet.it>]

Il 22:30, mercoledì 23 Maggio 2001, scrivesti:


Hi Dan. 
I read with pleasuer your mail, though it seems a nice example of Zen writing 
- you say everything and it opposite. 
>
>   But there's no real eye candy.  It's just a remake of an 8bit, turn
> based game that was cool better than a decade ago.  You need something
> that screams in buzzwords.  :-)

Yes, but compared to tetris on the console (which what they've been doing 
this year) it IS an eye candy

>
> > * It will force them to interact with non-teaching personnel (that's you,
> > of course) and use English as a working language
>
> Is that really doing them a service?  We haven't been very talkative for a
> while.

Well, you are. ;-)


>
> > * It will force them to use "standards took", such as gcc, GTK+, CVS and
> > more
>
> By who's standards do you define standard?

Standards in this context means nonproprietary and open. More specifically, 
it means Qt, GTK+, gcc, make, doxxygen etc.

>
> > * It will have a "real" impact
>
> I would have on me.  All I had in high school was Logo.  (And commadore
> basic at home.)

Well I had Atari Basic. But back then, arcade videogames were Pong and not 
much more. :-)

> > Contra reasons
> > * I (and my colleague) are definitely no hackers, though we have some
> > experience in Linux Programming (ncurses, GTK+, QT at surface level)
>
> Then it will be a learning experience for all.
>
> > * These are 17yr old kids: some of them are really good at coding, but
> > it's real hard to harness them: they tend to avoid things such as "coding
> > styles" and "good programming practices". In addition, at least 25% of
> > them are helpless as programmers
>
> This may teach them the value of coding styles.  Force them to read the
> sound code.  I can promise that it will bring some of them to tears.
>
>
> It's modular enough to work.  I don't know if the code bnase is as clean
> as you might like.  As far as if it will work, I guess it depends on the
> projects you intend to do.
>
> 	Add a spell.
> 	Add an elemental
> 	Replace creature <X>
> 	add a type of sound event
> 	add game save
>
> Maybe you could take the code and chop it up.  Give them a very minimal
> version and provide bit of modules for them to improve and integrate.  It
> all depends on what you want to do.  It might be lame to just have them
> hack on the current version.  Smaller definate goals might be easier to
> swallow.

I was thinking, at firs, to add localization (Italian in my case, but once 
the road is paved it will be easy to add more. Some guys will be interested 
in changing the graphics. 

Your idea of giving them a minimal version looks good, but, won't be a waste 
of time to create a stripped down version? Unless you have some very old 
version to start with (maybe version 0.1??) it will be difficult. 

All in all, you seem to tell me to go on with this... However, I still have 
some unanswered questions:

* Someone told me that you were thinking about (radically) switchin 
environment, from GTK to SDK. It would be better to know it beforehand, in 
order not to waste time on something that's gonna thrown away

* Are the people responsable for the various modules able to respond to 
silly/basic questions by either my kids or me?

Bye,
Marcello




-- 

Marcello Missiroli
(1) marcello.missiroli@tiscalinet.it [general]
(2) piffy@treemme.org [game-related stuff]
(3) m.missiroli@itisvinci.com [school-related]