Well, I have a playable game, more or less. Though totally lacking a front-end & UI. Anyone who expressed enthusiasm at the start of this thread is welcome to come and join conversation on the mailing list I set up: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/feedback-dev
I'm working on the linux build environment right now, I know that's a barrier to entry for many here. But I'd love to get other peoples input now, and maybe some help getting linux working properly; there's a few details that need to straightening out. I should probably correct any path issues and other conventions while at it. On 9 January 2014 09:54, Manu <turkey...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 9 January 2014 04:26, deadalnix <deadal...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Mandatory bikeshedding : the name is ungooglable. I do think that >> this is a problem. >> > > Make some suggestions? > I'm not really stressed, although this name is a brand that resonates with > the GH/RB enthusiast community since back in the GH1/2 days. > People know it, and I see no real reason to abandon it. > People don't google the name of something they don't know exists... and > anyone who does know it exists can easily write 'game' after the search > term. > > > Also, can you give a brief overview of the architecture you have >> in mind, and what are the things that can be worked on in the >> current state of affairs ? >> > > Well, in the interest of producing a project that's at least familiar to > the gamedev community at large, and therefore useful as a reference or an > inspiration for other gamedevs to consider using D in their projects, I > tend to think taking a typical (although D flavoured?) OO approach makes > sense. Non-D coders should feel more-or-less immediately comfortable. > But a critically important part of this process, at least for me, and the > main reason I put it to the community here for contribution, is because I'd > like to explore gamedev from a D-centric perspective. > I have decades of habitual baggage from C/C++, so I need other people to > keep me in check, and offer suggestions that I might have dismissed or > overlooked... or rather, demonstrate via their contributions to the project > ;) > > So it's a balance, I don't want to get too experimental with D paradigms, > it should remain practical, and it's important that it appears realistic to > non-D gamedevs as a point of reference. > > There are lots of parts that can be developed in isolation. For instance, > to do vocal or 'pro-guitar' modes, a DSP which can parse an audio stream > into a midi sequence with extremely low latency is required... this would > be a very interesting challenge for anyone interested in signal analysis (I > can wing it, but I'm not an expert by any measure). > > Other abstract elements like a UI system... I don't know of any UI libs > for D which support custom rendering backends. > This UI will be a little special, since it would require the concept of > having multiple points of 'focus' where many players can interact with the > UI simultaneously while choosing their play options and stuff. > > I also think being able to theme/script the UI is important, so expressing > layout with a user-friendly XML, and integrating something like Lua for > sequencing the flow of menu's would make the game user-theme-able. That's > proven to be very successful from my StepMania days. The modder community > really gets involved in theming things, and that's where the best > art/design comes from (there's rarely good artists or visual designers > hanging out on Github!). > If you want the game to look really good without any paid artists, then > powerful user-theming support is a must! :) > > And there's heaps more stuff too. > Profile management (Oauth? Google/FaceBook? Open Feint? Platform-centric > profile managers?), a web-service that offers a downloadable song database > which users can browse in-game, reverse engineering to parse data from the > existing games (I have some existing code to this end)... can all be > started in relative isolation for the time being. > > I started populating the issue tracker as I think of stuff, you're welcome > to add things too. > > I'd like to hear about the sorts of things people are interested in > working on. With that, it might be easier to create some sort of plan of > attack based in the skills/interests available. > I can fill in any gaps, but I only have so much spare time myself :) >