[crack-attack-devel] Re: Crack Attack!

[Andrew Sayman]

Daniel Aarno wrote:
> Andrew Sayman wrote:
>> I wanted to make contact so that we can work together to make
>> crack-attack
>> better for everybody!
>>
>> Firstly, I noticed that you made your build compatible with 1.1.10.
>> Unfortunately, the old Windows version reported itself as 1.1.8. 
> 
> 
> This has bothered me too.

What I'd ideally wanted was to have the server understand which clients it
supported and send back the appropriate number. This, however, didn't fit well
with backwards compatibility. All of the versions of crack-attack that we've
released just report themselves as 1.1.8 on the network end.

> 
> The changes
> 
>> that I made set up a separate authentication from the release number. Now
>> there's the release number (which we're at 1.1.13) and the protocol
>> number which
>> was set to 1.1.8 since all versions of crack attack after 1.1.8 use
>> the same
>> network protocol. I'd suggest using this scheme so we can all play
>> nicely with
>> each other.
> 
> I have made some substansial changes to crack-attack for mac os x, among
> which are:
> 
> i) Game starts by showing a splash screen and checking for a new version
> followed by a dialog that lets the user select game type.
> ii) Sound
> iii) The game does not quit but, can be restarted

Changes we've made:
* autoconf/automake build system
* We've written a GTK+2.6 front-end to crack-attak which supports most of the
original options. (nowait still on hold)
* Resolutions - You may choose between many different resolutions now.
* Extremely Reduced Graphics Mode for computers that just can't take crack
attack in all its glory
* Sound patches from Miquev have been integrated into CVS, so we haven't
released anything based on it yet, but they're there. This uses SDL.
* Computer AI to play against. Right now it's rather simplistic, but they're
challenging and fun.

> Some of these changes are mac specific but they are protected by ifdefs
> and I think the code would still compile under linux. Perhaps a merge
> would be of interest to avoid re-porting for new versions?

I'm extremely interested in this. Because we're hosted on Savannah, our primary
target will always be GNU/Linux, but, we support Windows and are willing to
support other platforms. At some point this week I'll take a look at your CVS
and see what changes you've made and how they might integrate.

I don't own a mac, but the CS labs here have Macs so I may be able to do some
testing. The truth is that I wouldn't even know where to begin. If you have any
suggestions on where to start, or are willing to grab our source and try it out
let me know.

The primary thing I wonder about is whether the libraries that we use are
available on your platform or not? Using GTK has allowed us to write almost
identical code for the GUI portion between Windows and Linux. I know that SDL
exists for Mac, but I've never used it. What about autoconf?