Curses and SDL apps for Windows and MacOS

[Stan Shebs]

Elijah Meeks wrote:

>Hans,
>
>This is my first experience with the SDL interface. 
>It seems more smooth than the TCL/TK, is this because
>it only opens the default game or is it just better? 
>
Partly because it does less, partly because SDL is
tuned and honed for scrolling.

>It looks great.  Yes, I know it's barely there, but it
>looks more like a game interface than TCL/TK, which
>I've hated ever since I played Xconq on a Mac... 
>Would it be capable of allowing designers to customize
>the graphics of the interface (The borders,
>backgrounds, etc.) so that the different games will
>have different feels?
>
The plus of SDL is that interfaces built with it will look and feel
a lot more like the usual commercial games, but the minus is that
you don't get *anything* for free; all must be constructed in C
code. Parts of a complete SDL interface will be painful because
you have to have your own widgets, your own artwork, etc, and
you want to make that per-game-module, that's even more work.
There are some widget kits for SDL now I think, they'd come in
handy. So I think it's a direction worth pursuing, but be
prepared to do a lot more grungy GUI hacking.

I actually have a few unchecked-in changes that ought to be in
there so nobody reinvents.

Stan