From: Julian Raschke <julianraschke@...>
Date: 2007-09-17T23:35:34+09:00
Subject: Re: Gosu 0.7.5

Thanks for the praise and feedback!

> I think adding 'optional' modules for different approaches to  
> collision would be good.
> Basically, consider this:  there are many 2D game 'types' which all  
> do a lot of the same basic things. Not only for collision, but for  
> other behaviors. Offering some prebuilt stuff to work from would  
> boost people's use of Gosu further.
> They could be included and customizable.
> Some types: Platformer, Space shooter, Vertical Scroller / Horizontal  
> scroller, Bird's eye view, Isometric view, Pong/breakout stuff, Card  
> Games, RPG, and more...

I think it is impossible to write good general libraries for potential
projects in advance. There is only one way: Writing one serious game,
maybe even two, see what they share and make it a library. This is how
Gosu was conceived, and I will at least not change my mind on
that.. :)

One of my goals is to collect implementations of all sorts of 2D game
genres, either in the examples or on the GosuUsers page. *When* this
has happened, and serious projects have grown out of some of these,
*then* one could start with the huge task of extracting high-level
libraries to facilitate building even more games.

For now my focus will be on implementing what all those genres share,
not what sets them apart. A system to structure games into different
screens/states/subapplications (title screen/option screen/main game/
highscore list...) is probably the first optional library that will be
added to Gosu. There is a way to do it that has evolved over the
years, in both small and medium-sized games by me and Florian Gross.
After that, I hope to add a small GUI library based on that. And that
is why a rock-solid way of entering text in Gosu applications is much
closer on the radar than higher-level game features :)

Julian