[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Zaurus port

[Jason Short <jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rob Fisher wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I've joined this mailing list because I have started porting Freeciv to the 
> Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 PDA.  This PDA is a rather nice Linux box that fits in 
> your pocket.  I don't actually own the PDA yet but I have ordered one, and I 
> have the development environment on my PC so I've started work.
> 2) Is the structure of the client likely to change in a big way very soon?  I 
> am currently working with version 1.12.0
It has not changed in a big way since 1.12.0, but there have been 
changes.  More code has been moved out of the GUI areas, and into the 
common client areas.  A few of the GUI stub functions have been removed. 
 As others have suggested, you should work off of the beta if you can't 
use CVS.
> 3) Are there any non-isometric tile sets?  The map drawing code in the 
> existing clients seems to cater for isometric and non-isometric.  A top down 
> view with small tiles may be more suitable for playing on a small PDA screen.
One day in the distant future, I would hope the GUI code will be 
entirely "dumb" and all of the isometric-view/flat-view stuff can be 
handled by the client common code.  Until that day (and it is 
approaching only *very* slowly), you will have to special-case 
isometric-view in a lot of places if you want to support it. 
Fortunately, you don't have to support isometric view - take a look at 
the XAW GUI, which does not have isometric support.
Note that the isometric view is also a top-down, overhead view just like 
the standard view.  Some of the tiles do have a side-view appearance, 
but that has nothing to do with the system itself.  But for a small 
tileset, it will probably be a lot easier to use a standard tileset than 
an isometric one.  I'd recommend you get the standard view working 
first, then consider adding isometric support later.
jason