Games people play

[Pragma]

Georg Wrede wrote:
> [snip wonderful post]
> 
> In my humble opinion, the reason why QT is an absolute winner in the 
> industry is simply because the signals/slot paradigm is central to that 
> library. That in itself creates a sensation of robustness, quality, and 
> a kind of completeness. The ease of utilizing it has most probably made 
> the overall quality of the rest of the library much higher, by letting 
> their programmers concentrate on the issues at hand instead of fighting 
> with the trivialities of message passing.
> 
> We have to remember that interactive "real time" games development is 
> the one area where signals (or messages) are an essential part of every 
> major application. Both in the user interface and in the games engine 
> logic itself.

I'm not a S&S guy myself, and I'm just beginning to grasp the concepts 
thanks to the posts here in the group.  I'm able to draw some parallels 
to web programming, and similar event models there, but I'm also finding 
that it's very much it's own animal.

One thing did occur to me the other night: would a full-fledged S&S in D 
implementation require AOP support?  I'm thinking of the "raise this 
signal when you're done executing" portion of S&S.

I think there's a way to add AOP into D *now*, if you don't mind using 
trampolines and other hackery to get the job done.  Provided that your 
app is reasonably thread safe, such a library might prove quite useful 
for all kinds of things - S&S and otherwise.

Thoughts?

> We only have to become the _preferred_ language in _one_ area! After 
> that it'll automatically follow that we gain other areas and a huge 
> general interest. ("If C is good enough for Unix itself, it has to be a 
> good language. -- If D is good enouhg for some of the best games shops, 
> it has to be a good language.")

Agreed.  While I had a false start myself moving toward webapps for D, I 
think we're much closer than we were.  But add to that the current 
turbulence and quiet revolution we've seen in web design techniques, and 
things seem farther away than ever.  FWIW I think that it may tip 
eventually, after I or someone gets a solution put together, but that's 
probably a long way off.

So forging ahead on this front (gaming) might prove to be a closer 
tipping-point for D.  If for no other reason, it'll be becuase it's just 
easier to distribute .exe files rather than convince web admins to 
install new stuff.  Client-side software FTW. ;)

-- 
- EricAnderton at yahoo