Before I go any further, there are some things I need to know:
- * Is Lord B or anyone else currently working on a menu for selecting mods and setting switches? If so, how's it going? If someone else is making good progress, there's no point in my starting a similar project.
* Would other MOO2 enthusiasts find it useful to have a front-end which allows them to select from a form which mods and switches to use?
* Which platforms do MOO2 players actually use? (see below).
- * DOSBox runs my projected front-end, which launches the appropriate app (straight MOO2 v1.4 or one of the mods) with the appropriate switches.
* Continuing an existing game is handled by an option which launches the required executable (straight v1.4 or a mod) without switches (or atleast without the switches which control game set-up). I suspect continuing a game still needs to go through the form in order to select the mod.
* The front-end saves the selected mod and switches and makes them the defaults next time it is used to start a new game or continue an existing one.
* I expect the front-end will have 2 configuration files - one for saved defaults (the user never touches this) and one for menu options, which can be updated / downloaded if new mods / switches are developed.
The vehicles I'm currently considering are Pascal (Free Pascal) and Java. Pascal's easier but: I'm not sure that suitable GUIs are available and free for all platforms; a Pascal program would have to be re-compiled and re-linked for non-Windows platforms, and I only have Windows (XP) - this would also make supporting it for non-Win platforms more difficult. Java would be cross-platform and free but: is a pain in the a** because you have to learn the relevant parts of its class hierarchy before starting development; requires the user to have / download a suitable JVM and possibly e.g. Swing; Java runs fast enough these days but is still a memory hog (* see note). Can anyone help me to decide, or suggest other free cross-platform development environments which might do the job more easily?
* Since D-fend is no longer being developed I currently use DBGL as a DOSBox front-end, and DBGL is written in Java. But I've just got a new PC with 2GB RAM. I don't know whether Java's memory requirements would be a problem for players with 1GB RAM or less (my last PC had 512MB).