Next things that should be done ------------------------------- 1. Update to SDL2. 2. Integer-scaled 2x and 3x window sizes for modern screen resolutions. 3. Find someone to update for Mac. 4. Modernize the Windows install script. Also, there's a performance optimization I made which either created or uncovered the "collapsing iceberg" bug (see below). I bet with computers being several times faster than a Pentium 75, I can just back out the optimization. If I can remember the details (this was in CVS and I lost all that, which is probably mostly fine because my commit messages did not follow whatchamightcall "best practices"). Below this, find the _previous_ todo list, circa 2003. Some of these are still good ideas. Other parts, like the BeOS port, can probably be dropped. Also, please no one rewrite this in C++. (Um, and don't tempt me with Rust suggestions.) --- Some of this is work in progress, and some it is just stuff I'd like to see. Check out for details. * many (65 at last count) sections of the code are marked with "FIX", in places where I know I did something messy, foolish, or inefficient. * there are likely other bits of messiness, foolishness, and inefficiency which I haven't realized are there * this is part of the above, but bears mentioning separately: some of the code is the product of late-night hacking and, while it works fine, desperately needs cleaning up For 2.0: - make MacOS X port - have a dozen themes or more (currently at nine) For 2.2: (but sooner if we're lucky): - find and use user's home dir on WinNT/2k/XP - do something sensible if selected theme is invalid - make it so when both lines get broken exactly at once, the second sound is played with a very slight delay so that the user gets audio feedback that two lives were lost - make spaces-in-username work -- convert to/from some special character in high score file - make ctrl-q quit (or perhaps just q, with a confirm dialog) - check for high scores on 'quit' when in the midst of a game - option to turn off scrolling level-end text ("transitions = normal/fast") - more code cleanup in the event loops -- such big hairy functions.... - "help" command line options redirected to files on win32 -- what to do about that? - clean up intro -- remove stupid 'w' thing (either add ability to tell a line to kill itself after a certain length, or add code to the intro to know when to kill which lines.) - make the program not crash if data files can't be found. (Of course, on Win32, we're SOL without the SDL DLLs anyway.) - make help key (F1) work in intro - look for themes in an os-specific directory -- ~/.icebreaker on Linux (which means migrating the current ~/.icebreaker to either ~/.icebreakerrc or ~/.icebreaker/icebreakerrc) -- in addition to the standard directory. on BeOS, this might mean looking in the same dir in which the executable resides... need to check about that. - make man page version of themes help? - unbreak BeOS port (looking to be a pain, and let's face it, this is an increasingly marginal platform. even the person who did the initial port doesn't actually seem to run the OS very often....) - ability to use bitmaps for backgrounds - ability to use png instead of bmp -- use SDL_image. For 3.0: - add music courtesy of my brother Joel at Red Reactor Sound Studio and intelligent (context-sensitive) music system - that annoying "entire iceshelf collapses" bug is *still* there. happens very very very very rarely, though, so I can't figure out what exactly the problem is. probably something wrong with squarefill() or some other part of checkempty() in grid.c. I tried changing a few things, but it's hard to prove that the problem is solved when you can't recreate it.... - there is a little bug where in certain situations you can start an opposing line directly in the path of an oncoming line, causing lines which are essentially on top of each other. Not a terribly fatal flaw, but still. - faster better smarter collision detection (not a change to be taken lightly since that's basically rewriting the core of the engine). this will solve the two bugs above once and for all, and should be a significant speed increase if done right. My goal is to make this play on acceptably on my Toshiba Libretto CT50 (pentium 75). - make option parsing a bit more flexible -- gnu getopt style - animated sprites - replace randomized "demo" with a real demo that at least follows the rules -- and ideally plays a decent game. random semi-AI play would be great; a recording mechanism of some sort is second-best - make playing area able to be a bitmap instead of just a colored grid (maybe lines also) Possibly: - convert to C++ -- reduce global variables - have bonus Things which get you points (or change game mechanics) for trapping with a single penguin. (in a small enough space?) - user-definable keys - internationalization - translations and fonts - move themes to a subdir a) in the source tree b) in the datadir? Probably never: - make GNOME/KDE versions? - Mac OS 9 port? - the animation is really jerky with some refresh rates. what to do about this? last time I wrote a game was under DOS, and you could easily sync to the vertical refresh.....