[Freeciv-Dev] Re: alpha patch to provide wonder creation eye-candy

[John Heidemann <johnh@xxxxxxx>]

>At 2000/12/10 23:10 , John Heidemann wrote:
>>>Attached is an alpha-quality patch to provide wonder creation
>>>eye-candy (the PR I submitted last weekend).  The patch is against the
>>>current CVS archive.  To use this you need to apply it and rebuild
>>>both the client and the server, and get some sample graphics from
>>><http://www.isi.edu/~johnh/PUBLIC/build.tar.gz> (extract them into the
>>>new directory misc/build).  Then, when you build a wonder that has a
>>>corresponding graphic a window will pop up with the special graphic.
>>>
>>>This patch is preliminary in a few ways:
>
>The patch I retrieved didn't actually compile, so I just sort of read it...
>
>>>1. Probably the graphic filenames should be defined in the
>>>buildings.ruleset, or at least the path where the graphics live should
>>>be specified in a .spec somewhere.  Advice about what/where?
>>>(Currently the filenames are just numbers
>>>and the directory is hardcoded to misc/build.)
>
>Yes.  These new graphics are much like the "intro" graphics, in that they
>are loaded and unloaded as needed.  The "intro" graphics are currently done
>as a kind of special case.  It would be nice if both "wonder" graphics and
>"intro" graphics would use the same (or a similar) mechanism.

They basically do.  Both are loaded with load_gfxfile and get their files
from tilespec_gfx_filename.  Both are freed on exit.

>Also, that mechanism should be implemented as much as possible in common
>code.  The current patch exposed a low-level routine, then did most of the
>work in client-specific code.  Instead, it should have extended the
>tilespec API, added most of the code in client-common, and then performed
>minimal work in each client.

What routine do you refer to?  tilespec_gfx_filename?  I figured this
was better than hard-coding the extension, but I'm happy to do that if
you prefer (or something else).

Most of the new code is generic; I'll move it to the generic code.

>The actual file names should be defined in a .spec file, and that .spec
>file referenced by some .tilespec file.  And, the tags used to link the
>buildings to the graphics should be specified in the .ruleset file.  See
>"~/data/trident.tilespec", "~/data/trident/units.spec" and
>"~/data/default/units.ruleset" for an example of the general structure.
>Also, see "~/README.graphics" for an explanation of the tilespec system.
>
>I don't off-hand know where best to put these graphics and spec files.
>Perhaps "~/data/build"?

Definitely... I didn't want to go to all this grungy effort though
until I had gotten some feedback.  (And, frankly, given that it took
nearly a month to get feedback, I wasn't too encouraged to go on and
finish the job.)  But I put in tilespec support today.

>>>3. I didn't look at any backends other than gtk.
>
>We'll need at least Xaw, but that should be straight-forward (if most of
>the code is common).

I'm willing to do the Xaw client, but as an add-on after the patch
goes in.  If there's not sufficient interest I don't want to waste my
time on a client I don't use.

>>>4. Other things?
>
>Using the wonder's ID as the file name seems too rigid -- rulesets could
>change this.  A descriptive file name plus a .spec file to do the mapping
>seems much better (see above).

Yes, agreed.  I added text "ids" to buildings.rulespec and build.spec
to avoid these.

>Probably shouldn't add B_FIRST_WONDER and B_LAST_WONDER -- all the B_
>constants are slated to be removed in the (hopefully) near future when
>"generalized improvements" is implemented.  Also, why limit graphics to
>wonders?  Let the .spec file decide what exists -- maybe someone would want
>to see a picture of every Phalanx unit built...
>
>... Well, probably not.  Which reminds me of control.  Just looking at the
>patch, I couldn't tell if the player could turn off this feature.  I think
>it should be optional.  And, perhaps, optional by kind of thing built
>(unit, improvement, wonder).

I agree, one should have other graphics for things like the first settlement
and the maybe important discoveries.  But I had to start somewhere.

There is no code to disable the feature currently, although I agree it
should be added.  Any suggestions about where?  Local options?

Later tonight I will post an updated "beta" version of the build
graphics patch that includes tilespec support.

   -John Heidemann