Developer discussion for the game `Battle for Wesnoth' ()

shreedhar aka nataraj | 10 Nov 2006 15:36

Shift to Qt from SDL

hello everybody!

This mail intends to avoid the idea born in the #wesnoth freenode.irc.net channel from getting lost.
The idea is to shift the Graphics Engine of Battle for Wesnoth from using the SDL graphics library to the Qt graphics library as this will provide for a more responsive GUI than the present one.

thank you,
--
R. Re-hashed (Shreedhar)

_______________________________________________
Wesnoth-dev mailing list
Wesnoth-dev <at> gna.org
https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev

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Hogne Håskjold | 10 Nov 2006 16:41

Re: Shift to Qt from SDL

shreedhar aka nataraj wrote:
> hello everybody!
> 
> This mail intends to avoid the idea born in the #wesnoth 
> freenode.irc.net <http://freenode.irc.net> channel from getting lost.
> The idea is to shift the Graphics Engine of Battle for Wesnoth from 
> using the SDL graphics library to the Qt graphics library as this will 
> provide for a more responsive GUI than the present one.
> 

My vote: no. Games using either GTK or QT doesn't look like games, they 
look like spreadsheets... (fx freeciv). We would need a lot of custom 
widgets and skinning to get the look and functionality we want and both 
are usually a pain in the ass.

--

-- 
mvh                 (o_
Hogne Håskjold      //\
                     V_/_

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David Philippi | 10 Nov 2006 16:48

Re: Shift to Qt from SDL

Am Freitag 10 November 2006 16:41 schrieb Hogne Håskjold:
> shreedhar aka nataraj wrote:
> My vote: no. Games using either GTK or QT doesn't look like games, they
> look like spreadsheets... (fx freeciv).

I agree, games don't want to use a standard toolkit.

Bye David

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John McNabb | 10 Nov 2006 16:51

Re: Shift to Qt from SDL

My initial response is that this would be a lot of work for very
little gain.  I am open to the possibility that I am wrong, but it is
certainly not something that we as developers are going to approve of
in advance.  There are several issues that such a major modification
would have to address including, but not limited to, performance,
cross platform compatability, and aesthetics.  These concerns are not
things that are really possible to address without actually making
most of the modifications.  We certainly are not going to tell someone
not to do it if that is what floats their boat, but given the amount
of effort involved, I would be wary of trying to make such large
changes for what would probably be very little if any gain.

Since I was not part of the IRC chat where this was discussed, it is
possible that the perceived benefits were discussed on IRC and the
conclusion was that they would be great.  If so, could someone please
either give the date/time of the conversation, or summarize here?

Thanks,
John

On 11/10/06, Hogne Håskjold <haskjold <at> pvv.org> wrote:
> shreedhar aka nataraj wrote:
> > hello everybody!
> >
> > This mail intends to avoid the idea born in the #wesnoth
> > freenode.irc.net <http://freenode.irc.net> channel from getting lost.
> > The idea is to shift the Graphics Engine of Battle for Wesnoth from
> > using the SDL graphics library to the Qt graphics library as this will
> > provide for a more responsive GUI than the present one.
> >
>
> My vote: no. Games using either GTK or QT doesn't look like games, they
> look like spreadsheets... (fx freeciv). We would need a lot of custom
> widgets and skinning to get the look and functionality we want and both
> are usually a pain in the ass.
>
> --
> mvh                 (o_
> Hogne Håskjold      //\
>                      V_/_
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wesnoth-dev mailing list
> Wesnoth-dev <at> gna.org
> https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev
>

--

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
        "In theory, theory and practice are the same,
                 but in practice they're different."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
John W. C. McNabb
-------------------------------------------------------------------

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Mark de Wever | 10 Nov 2006 18:15

Re: Shift to Qt from SDL

On Fri, Nov 10, 2006 at 08:06:03PM +0530, shreedhar aka nataraj wrote:
> hello everybody!
> 
> This mail intends to avoid the idea born in the #wesnoth
> freenode.irc.netchannel from getting lost.
> The idea is to shift the Graphics Engine of Battle for Wesnoth from using
> the SDL graphics library to the Qt graphics library as this will provide for
> a more responsive GUI than the present one.
> 
> thank you,
> -- 
> R. Re-hashed (Shreedhar)

I don't know about QT, but is it really faster?
I know SDL has some openGL support, wouldn't it be easier to use that.
(DISCLAIMER I only know it has support for openGL, never did anything
with it.)

Greets,

Mark de Wever

PS John yesterday started at 16:11 today at 14:43

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Lakin Wecker | 10 Nov 2006 18:45

Re: Shift to Qt from SDL

I agree with those parent posters who said that switching to Qt would be a huge task. And I'd have to see some solid test cases between Qt and SDL rendering speeds. As a user of both I have my doubts that it is a significant increase.

There are a few forum topics discussing OpenGL for wesnoth [3]. It's an admirable goal, but it would add a dependency. Wesnoth runs on: GNU/Linux, Windows, MacOSX, BeOS, Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, AmigaOS4, OS/2 & eComStation [1]. I know that the most of these have decent support for OpenGL but do they all? And even if they all do, will software emulated OpenGL be faster or slower than straight SDL? OpenGL will probably only provide speed increases for hardware accelerated rendering. And even then it's probably better to just have a look at available documents on making fast 2D renderers [2].

Also, is wesnoth rendering really _that_ slow?

Lakin

[1] http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/Description
[2] http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20061101/feng_01.shtml (There are more but this was the one I remembered off of the top of my head).
[3] http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5594&highlight=opengl

On 11/10/06, Mark de Wever <koraq <at> xs4all.nl > wrote:

On Fri, Nov 10, 2006 at 08:06:03PM +0530, shreedhar aka nataraj wrote:
> hello everybody!
>
> This mail intends to avoid the idea born in the #wesnoth
> freenode.irc.netchannel from getting lost.
> The idea is to shift the Graphics Engine of Battle for Wesnoth from using
> the SDL graphics library to the Qt graphics library as this will provide for
> a more responsive GUI than the present one.
>
> thank you,
> --
> R. Re-hashed (Shreedhar)

I don't know about QT, but is it really faster?
I know SDL has some openGL support, wouldn't it be easier to use that.
(DISCLAIMER I only know it has support for openGL, never did anything
with it.)

Greets,

Mark de Wever

PS John yesterday started at 16:11 today at 14:43

_______________________________________________
Wesnoth-dev mailing list
Wesnoth-dev <at> gna.org
https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev

_______________________________________________
Wesnoth-dev mailing list
Wesnoth-dev <at> gna.org
https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev

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Patrick Parker | 10 Nov 2006 19:46

Re: Shift to Qt from SDL

Personally, I like having our own simple widget code from Sirp, which I have 
been slowly working to improve. I suspect that the sluggish responsiveness 
to user input is caused by other things, and that integrating a more complex 
GUI environment such as Qt would only add to the problem.

--
Patrick

>>On Fri, Nov 10, 2006 at 08:06:03PM +0530, shreedhar aka nataraj wrote:
>> > hello everybody!
>> >
>> > This mail intends to avoid the idea born in the #wesnoth
>> > freenode.irc.netchannel from getting lost.
>> > The idea is to shift the Graphics Engine of Battle for Wesnoth from
>>using
>> > the SDL graphics library to the Qt graphics library as this will 
>>provide
>>for
>> > a more responsive GUI than the present one.
>> >
>> > thank you,
>> > --
>> > R. Re-hashed (Shreedhar)
>>

_________________________________________________________________
Use your PC to make calls at very low rates 
https://voiceoam.pcs.v2s.live.com/partnerredirect.aspx

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iclerencia | 10 Nov 2006 18:33

Re: Shift to Qt from SDL

> My vote: no.

> Games using either GTK or QT doesn't look like games, they
> look like spreadsheets... (fx freeciv).
I agree on this, but probably the thing would be to just use Qt in the
same way we use SDL just now, only as a canvas to draw in, but with a
saner and object oriented API. It's not probably worth the effort now,
though. In any case, I'm sure that it is easier to customize Qt widgets to
look Wesnoth'ish than to re-implement every widget we may need in SDL.

I started a game project some days ago with Ogre3D and SDL for networking,
but quickly migrated to QtNetwork :)

As always, if anyone is interested on pursuing it, he's free to make a
branch, do it, report the advantages/drawbacks ...

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David Philippi | 13 Nov 2006 11:29

Re: [Wesnoth-commits] r14227 - /trunk/data/factions/

Am Montag 13 November 2006 11:19 schrieb benoit.timbert <at> free.fr:
> URL: http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/wesnoth?rev=14227&view=rev
> Log:
> Made the textdomain explicit, so the righ translation would be used in user
> eras that use these files

> +#textdomain wesnoth

Seems like not everyone knows that this change is completely redundant. If no 
textdomain is specified, wesnoth is the default.

Bye David

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Benoit.TIMBERT | 13 Nov 2006 11:46

Re: Re: [Wesnoth-commits] r14227 - /trunk/data/factions/

On Mon, Nov 13, 2006 at 11:29:13AM +0100, David Philippi wrote:
> Am Montag 13 November 2006 11:19 schrieb benoit.timbert <at> free.fr:
> > URL: http://svn.gna.org/viewcvs/wesnoth?rev=14227&view=rev
> > Log:
> > Made the textdomain explicit, so the righ translation would be used in user
> > eras that use these files
> 
> > +#textdomain wesnoth
> 
> Seems like not everyone knows that this change is completely redundant. If no 
> textdomain is specified, wesnoth is the default.
>

Unfortunately, this is necessary.
I had bad surprises when testing the translations of some use era that use
these files (Extended ans Default + Kalifa Eras), they were NOT translated
correctly. It look it was looking for the translation in the wrong textdomain
(wesnoth-Extended_Era instead of wesnoth).

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