<div class="blog">
<h1 id="NAME">
-More Games + Update
+Getting people to use SDL Perl: Docs, API, and Distribution
</h1>
<div class="CONTENT">
-<div style="text-align: right;"><i><br />idle digits,<br />play,<br />away,<br />idle digits.<br /></i></div><br />So while I am hacking away on v2.4 and <a href="http://github.com/kthakore/SDL_perl/tree/experimental">breaking</a> a lot of things. Here is a link to some more <a href="http://home.comcast.net/%7Eg.f.taylor/GarrysGames.html">games</a> for SDL Perl. These only work in windows now but I will look into bringing them to CPAN (with Garry's permission). <br /><br /><i>--yapgh</i><br /><br />These where reported by Garry Taylor. Here is the rest of the email:<br /><br /><blockquote><i>Hi all,</i><br /><i>I hadn't checked this newsgroup in a while and was happy to see </i><br /><i>that it still alive and well. I saw that some people had been sharing </i><br /><i>some SDL Perl games online, and I had a few to share as well. At </i><br /><i>"http://home.comcast.net/~g.f.taylor/GarrysGames.html" you can find four </i><br /><i>games I have written as well as a simple flip book program to let a </i><br /><i>child play at making animation on the computer. The games are "Toad" (a </i><br /><i>Frogger wanna be), "RabbitHat" (like Centipede), "BunnyHunt" (sort of </i><br /><i>like Pac-Man) and "Bonk The Buggies". All (with the exception of Toad </i><br /><i>which in its very first incarnation was a game I wrote in TRS-80 Basic </i><br /><i>back in 1981) were written originally to run on my Windows 3.11 PC for </i><br /><i>my little girl so that she could play games which were not quite so </i><br /><i>violent as games were starting to become at the time.</i><br /><i><br /></i><br /><i>A few years ago I got the idea of trying to get them to run again </i><br /><i>by rewriting them in Perl. The downloads are Windows XP/Vista installs </i><br /><i>which include a bare bones Perl environment for running the games (the </i><br /><i>installs put the code into its own separate place, and shouldn't </i><br /><i>interfere with your existing Perl setups). I did this so that I could </i><br /><i>share the games with friends and family who either don't have SDL </i><br /><i>installed, don't have Perl installed, or don't do any programming and </i><br /><i>just needed something that will run. The code as it currently stands </i><br /><i>was not written for general publication, so there are probably places </i><br /><i>where the Perl code itself is not always the best looking it could be, </i><br /><i>but the games themselves work pretty well. Also, it is worth noting </i><br /><i>that I wound up being lazy and made a few additions to the Perl SDL code </i><br /><i>that I was using to add an additional function or two for printing text </i><br /><i>onto the screen that was centered or right aligned.</i><br /><i><br /></i><br /><i>While I have not made any Unix installs for the code, I have </i><br /><i>actually run the games on a few Linux machines that I have access to, </i><br /><i>where I also had installed SDL. I have not updated my SDL installs in </i><br /><i>several years now, so there may be complications that arise if running </i><br /><i>it with a new version of SDL.</i><br /><i><br /></i><br /><i>I hope you enjoy the games (or at least aren't too mean about it </i><br /><i>if you don't).</i><br /><i>Garry Taylor</i></blockquote><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3102167581424744259-500220938152318100?l=yapgh.blogspot.com'/></div></div></div>
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+<h4><i>The road so far</i></h4><br />
+Things have been busy but fruitful. Our two core modules are getting to be a bit more stable. <a href="http://matrix.cpantesters.org/?dist=Alien-SDL+1.403">Alien::SDL 1.405</a> is behaving well. This foundational stability will start to show results in <a href="http://matrix.cpantesters.org/?dist=SDL+2.405">SDL</a> too I believe. Most excitingly the main developer of frozen-bubble is reviewing our <a href="http://search.cpan.org/~kthakore/Games-FrozenBubble-2.202/lib/Games/FrozenBubble.pm">Games::FrozenBubble</a> port to CPAN. All good and well, but to keep this project going we need to improve.<br />
+<br />
+<h4><i>Getting people to use SDL Perl</i></h4><br />
+After a long chat with a new SDL user on #sdl today, I realize we still have some way to go. Currently it seems we are lacking in a few areas. We can definitely use some feedback and help in these areas. <br />
+<br />
+<ul><li>Tutorials/Documentation<br />
+</li>
+
+<ul><li>We have more docs now on http://sdl.perl.org but they suck</li>
+<li>What type of tutorials do you think will be good for beginners?</li>
+
+<ul><li>A project start to finish?</li>
+<li>Individual tutorials for various topics?</li>
+<li>What needs to go in SDL::CookBook?</li>
+</ul></ul>
+<li>API sweetness</li>
+
+<ul><li>SDL Perl depends on distinct C libraries</li>
+
+<ul><li>This makes naming conventions, data formats different the SDL:: namespaces</li>
+<li>How do people design this stuff?</li>
+
+<ul><li>We are hackers and we just go do stuff but I think this needs some prior thought</li>
+<li>Any takers?</li>
+</ul></ul></ul>
+<li>Distribution</li>
+
+<ul><li>If SDL scripts can be packaged up simply for game developers to distribute their games it will be a big plus</li>
+
+<ul><li>One way is a Wx::Perl::Packer clone</li>
+<li>Another is a CPAN/Steam clone that game devs can upload games too and people can point and click download games? </li>
+</ul></ul></ul><div>If anyone wants to help in these areas please talk to us on sdl-devel@perl.org. </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/3102167581424744259-7164362190686365958?l=yapgh.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
+<p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/9LDtns437JWMVWJoUGIR6gCE1W0/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/9LDtns437JWMVWJoUGIR6gCE1W0/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/>
+<a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/9LDtns437JWMVWJoUGIR6gCE1W0/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~a/9LDtns437JWMVWJoUGIR6gCE1W0/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/YetAnotherPerlGameHackeryapgh/~4/EXlozhjfhdo" height="1" width="1"/></div></div>
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