[Scummvm-devel] Augmented target name

[Johannes Schickel]

On Monday 07 April 2008 00:07:10 Max Horn wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> [...]
> Yes, that's it. :-)
> 
> My stance on this is:
> 
> * This is a SILLY debate :-). I am sorry for having started it, but I  
> think it's my responsibility now to handle it. Sorry.

Agreed.

> * I agree that the "monkey-vga-xmas-it" is not god given, and IMO it  
> has no strict advantage of the others -- it's just a pure matter of  
> taste.

Agreed.

> * In fact, I believe that *any* of the three is far superior to non- 
> augmented target names. Augmenting helps power users, and doesn't  
> hurt novices.

Agreed.

> * Making this changeable via an option is a total NO. This is not a  
> solution, it's chickening out

Fine with me too.

> One reason given *against* changing kyra to use the "augmented  
> targets" was that it would break savestates when re-adding games.  
> True. But changing the 11 other engines now (to disable it, or to use  
> a different style) would also break savestates. Compared to them,  
> Kyra has not been around for long. And not being consistent breaks  
> user experience. As such, my stance is that we should keep  
> augmenting, and should change Kyra to do it. And possible more  
> engines which don't do it right now and for which there are tons of  
> game variants.

As I said I don't have any problems with changing kyra to use arugmented
target names in general. But if we (yes we not (only) I) do it, I myself
do not really feel like thinking of an automated way to rename save files.
Also I will not tolerate any hacks to do that in the kyra engine itself, I believe
AdvancedDetector should do that itself with some hints for obsolet target names
though, right?

Also can I somehow make AdvancedDetector use "kyra1" as a gameid for all
games, while using for example kyra1-cd for CD version or something?
If that isn't working I would personally wait to change kyra to use arugmented
names, since I think it's rather silly to have kyra1-de or something for both
floppy and cd version if they got some differences.

Also about multilanguage games, HoF supports language selection via
ingame menu. How do I update the language without the need to fear
that the target id was kyra1-cd-de in the beginning and now stays the same
though I changed it to french?

I didn't look at the AdvancedDetector code since ages. If somebody cries
now that I should've looked at it, great, but I didn't want to change kyra
to use it right now, so I will just ignore such comments.

> Ideally using the same style everywhere (let's keep BS1&BS2 as they  
> are, though -- these target name have been in use for ages now,  
> nothing to be gained by changing them).

Whoops.. I believe if we use argumented target names with a certain
style we should use them everywhere, but that's just my two cents.

> Anyway, since we didn't ask democratically the last time, I will do  
> it now (well, we aren't a democracy anyway, but it won't hurt to ask  
> for opinions -- we aren't coloring a bikeshed here afte rall, are  
> we??? (*)):

Yes, with all what I said before in my mail.

// Johannes

PS: Is me the only one who wonders that kyra seems to be of much
interest when it comes to 'non standard' use of things, though other
engines did (and some are doing) it the same? I just remember that
FS discussion back in the days when I changed some Kyra code
after looking at another (older) engine. Also I remember about a 
discussion 'caused by our event recoder not supporting kyra, just
because kyra used the OSystem event API in a valid way, which
was not expected when writing that event recorder code.
('valid' as in conforming to the documentation).
I don't want to complain about that feedback, but I find it rather
strange right now... but maybe that's because of lack of sleep and
my mood caused by this.