The present and future of Pr1SnesLevEd

A modern Prince of Persia 1 for SNES level editor for Windows.
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David
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The present and future of Pr1SnesLevEd

Post by David »

The present and future of Pr1SnesLevEd

Hello everyone,

It's been almost two years since the last release of Pr1SnesLevEd in 2016 January.
Since that, I haven't really done anything to it.
I made the code more readable here and there, but that's it.

People posted some suggestions since then, for example here: viewtopic.php?p=19430#p19430 and here: viewtopic.php?f=121&t=4107

Somehow I just haven't felt like implementing them.
Maybe it's just I don't want to make a full ZIP release every time I change something, especially if it's a tiny change.
Another thing is that I hardly even *use* the editor, so I don't have any interest in improving it.
Maybe I test a few things now and then, but I haven't made any complete levels, let alone mods with it.


I have moved my other big project, SDLPoP to GitHub. (And also PR, although I had less part in it than in SDLPoP.)
I'd like to do the same with this editor.

But to fully take advantage of GitHub, I also want to make it possible for everyone to compile the editor for themselves.
For that, I will have to abandon C++Builder and move to something free and cross-platform.
(FYI, I don't even have C++Builder installed at the moment.)

Lazarus (http://lazarus-ide.org/) seems promising for this purpose.
It's free: The IDE is licensed under the GPL, and the libraries (GUI, etc.) are licensed under the LGPL.
Another important thing is that its libraries are interface-compatible with Delphi, and therefore with C++Builder.
So it shouldn't be too hard to rewrite the editor for the new libraries.
I have to convert C to Pascal, though. With that, I'm not sure if the compatibility is still such a big advantage.

Or I could use some other GUI library, but then I would have to rewrite the editor from scratch.

Any thoughts?
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Norbert
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Re: The present and future of Pr1SnesLevEd

Post by Norbert »

Above all, I'd say work on something that you feel motivated to work on.
Related: the editor is mostly feature-complete, so would other GitHub users feel motivated to work on it even if you'd move away from C++Builder?
Also, is it worth the trouble, given that only ~2.5 SNES mods are being created each year, probably all on Windows?

If you decide the invest the time and energy, then my advice would be to stick with C(++) and use Qt Creator. Related post here.
Qt Creator and Qt are widely used (VirtualBox, OBS, Skype, VLC, etc.), have good documentation and a helpful community.
You wouldn't have to rewrite the editor from scratch, you'd have to split the UI/visual code from the logic/core code.
(Most of the heavy code is related to loading/saving imagery and such, right?)
Maybe you could start with the latter and look for a volunteer in the Qt community?
David
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Re: The present and future of Pr1SnesLevEd

Post by David »

Norbert wrote: October 23rd, 2017, 8:59 pm Above all, I'd say work on something that you feel motivated to work on.
Related: the editor is mostly feature-complete, so would other GitHub users feel motivated to work on it even if you'd move away from C++Builder?
Also, is it worth the trouble, given that only ~2.5 SNES mods are being created each year, probably all on Windows?
Okay then, I shelve this for now.
Norbert wrote: October 23rd, 2017, 8:59 pm If you decide the invest the time and energy, then my advice would be to stick with C(++) and use Qt Creator.
By the way, I used Qt for some university projects, so I already have some experience.
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