Re: [Freeciv-Dev] Changes request

[Jules Bean <jmlb2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Artur Biesiadowski wrote:
> 
> Hi, I'm thinking seriously about creating java client for freeciv. I
> will not do serious coding within month, but after that I would like to
> spend some time on this. I have some questions/requests that would help
> creating port tremedously and at the same time could make freeciv
> maintance easier.
> 
> I could do some of this things, but I do not know freeciv internals well
> and I have limited possibility of testing. I suppose that for somebody
> with deep knowledge of freeciv they will be a lot easier to implement.

Disclaimer: I'm not in any way affiliated with freeciv - I have browsed
the code, that's all.  Nonetheless, I'll give my responses.

> 
> 1) Externalize all data that is possible. One sure thing are citynames
> for races, maybe there are others. Just move them to text files similar
> to other things in data dir.
> BTW There is a very strange thing in units.rules with special abilities.
> Types of special abilities first are given in hardcoded order and later
> given to units. I think that it is better to hardcode strings for
> special abilities in program and add name/enum lookup table.

This is certainly a good idea, straightforwardly from a software
engineering point of view.

> 3) Image data. Xpm is not very good format (as it is noted in some doc)
> and other format should be used. Plain RGBA (either 5-5-5-1 or 8-8-8-8)
> seems reasonable to me.

PNG seems good to me.  It's an open, free format which offers lossless
compression.  Free code exists to read it in C, and I imagine Java.


> do not hurt. I wonder if rotation of tile graphics can be done - this
> way instead of 16 versions of given terrain, we would have to do only
> 1+1+2+1+1=6 types in resource file. It would reduce size consiredably.

Rotation of tiles is trivial from a coding point of view. However, most
tiles have directional shadows, which make them appear 'slightly 3D',
which would look very strange rotated...


Jules

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