Difference between revisions of "TODO"

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TODO (view source)

Revision as of 16:42, 13 May 2020

10,091 bytes removed ,  16:42, 13 May 2020
Removed items which I know were done
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=== General ===
=== General ===
* Add port specific user documentation (dreamcast/palm especially). That would include things like:
** How to use ScummVM on system XYZ
* Update/enhance man page
* Write a high level overview of how ScummVM and its engines work?
* Write a high level overview of how ScummVM and its engines work?
=== README / Manual ===
* A proper manual might be nice.
* Maybe move all/most of the compression related stuff from our README completely to the tools README, and only leave a pointer to that in the main README. This would be beneficial because this way, it's only documented in one place; it's *completly* documented (currently, the main README doesn't mention compress_scumm_bun, for example); and people who want to use the compression tools need to download the tools package anyway.
* It would be greate to have a "Developer's Guide to ScummVM" which explains the ScummVM framework, and also the engines, i.e.
** stuff in common/, like the config manager etc.
** the backend API, and how to create new backends
** the sound system
** how to create a new engine
** a chapter for each engine, with as many/little details as the resp. engine teams deem appropriate...
** ...


== Web sites ==
== Web sites ==
=== General ===
* Move all sites to the new host
* Update outdated software
* Use HTTPS everywhere
* Make a consistent and reusable visual look across all sub-sites
=== Primary website ===
* Add big (green?) shiny buttons in the middle of the page for (1) Donations and (2) Downloads ?
* Show "Release Date" on download page
* Change all screenshot filenames to match our rules as described [[Screenshots|here]]. E.g. rename <code>data/screenshots/agos/simon/scummvm_2_4_0.jpg</code> to <code>data/screenshots/agos/simon/simon-0.jpg</code> etc.; also some stuff should maybe be moved to other directories.
* Introduce build tools to handle website updates
* Update the template engine


=== [[Buildbot]] ===
=== [[Buildbot]] ===
* Track the size of the resulting binaries.
* Add Fribidi
** This would greatly help in tracking down when and why the size of the ScummVM binary increased.
** Doing this should not be hard. Setup a database which stores for each commit the size of the (stripped) binary of each port.
** Then, add a way to query that database via a webfront. At first, simply dumping all the numbers would be good enough. On the long run, it would be nice to show some cool graphical diagrams.
** For bonus points, allow the user of that webpage to dynamically change it using javascript: i.e. selecting which ports to show, which range of revisions; mousing over a data point shows a little box with details on the commit; clicking on a revision number jumps to the corresponding page in our SVN repository viewer; etc. ;).
* Install the new required dependencies (libpng and libtheora for [[Sword25]]) into the cross compiler environments of all ports that have a chance of supporting [[Sword25]].
* Install the new required dependencies (libpng, libfreetype, boost and wx-widgets) into the cross compiler environments of all desktop ports to support building of tools.
* Fix the console page


=== [[Doxygen]] ===
=== [[Doxygen]] ===
* Update the visual theme to better match the site
* Make it run again, upgrade
 
=== [[Forums]] ===
* Upgrade to phpBB 3
* Update the theme to phpBB3
 
=== [[Planet]] ===
* Improve the visual theme to better match that of the forum and website
 
=== [[Wiki]] ===
* Update the theme to match the updated website
* Update to the latest Wiki version
* Add a ScummVM style guide
* Add content to [[Special:Wantedpages|Wanted Pages]]
* Add some content to [[Help:Editing]], which is shown when editing a page


== Common code, infrastructure ==
== Common code, infrastructure ==
=== General ===
* Revise the way "quit" is handled. Maybe add a global variable "g_quit" which we set when the application should be quit (e.g. when an EVENT_QUIT is received). This is useful if multiple levels of event loops have to be ended
* Make some generic "EventLoop" API/class which all backends and the GUI use. Initially this would just call the backend poll_event() etc. methods. But eventually the EventLoop object(s) could be made by the backend. This may allow for more efficient CPU usage etc. The current event handling model essentially is polling: the engines run some kind of main loop, which, besides many other things, also polls and dispatches events. The idea is to turn this around: the event loop frequently gives the engine time to do these "other things".
* Maybe add ways to modify the game configs via the command line. E.g. allow
    ./scummvm --add new_target --path=/foo monkey2
    ./scummvm --remove new_target
* The following things should be put into namespaces:
** MIDI related classes either to Audio, or a new "MIDI" namespace
** backend specific stuff into ??? (maybe new namespace "Backends" ?)  not sure about this one.
* Get rid of getenv in as many places as possible. Ideally, we'd only use it to query HOME on Unix systems.
=== Events ===
==== Event struct ====
The following is a (revision of) a former comment in <code>common/events.h</code>:
Rework/document this structure. It should be made 100% clear which field
is valid for which event type. Implementation wise, we might want to use
the classic union-of-structs trick. It goes roughly like this:
<syntaxhighlight lang="cpp">
struct BasicEvent {
    EventType type;
};
struct MouseMovedEvent : BasicEvent {
    Common::Point pos;
};
struct MouseButtonEvent : MouseMovedEvent {
    int button;
};
struct KeyEvent : BasicEvent {
    ...
};
...
union Event {
    EventType type;
    MouseMovedEvent mouse;
    MouseButtonEvent button;
    KeyEvent key;
    ...
};
</syntaxhighlight>
However, this approach is contrary to classic OO paradigms. Indeed, its
major drawback is that all event types now must be POD data types, so
e.g. they can't contain a Common::Point as member. Bad.
An alternative approach would be a more OO like switch to multiple Event
subclasses. This would, however, then require us to pass events around
as pointers to object instances, and also would require introducing type
casting in code using events. The passing around of pointers could be
mitigated by using
<syntaxhighlight lang="cpp">
typedef Common::SharedPtr<BasicEvent> Event
</syntaxhighlight>
or something like that. Yet this would mean increased overhead in all
our code, yet the gain is unclear. In conclusion, we probably are best
off by staying with the existing monolithic struct Event, we should just
enhance its documentation.
=== Build System ===
* Add test(s) for backend usability in the configure script.
* Add an install target to the Makefile - Copy binary, install manpage, add menu items, install README. See also patch #891909 (Gnome/KDE .desktop file)
* Investigate whether switching to [http://www.cmake.org CMake] or [http://www.scons.org SCons] or some other cross platform configuration environment would work for us. Potential advantage: Less effort to maintain and extend the build system, automatic generation of various kinds of project files (Makefiles, and project files for MSVC, XCode, Eclipse, KDevelop ...). Potential drawback: Problems with the customized build systems of our various ports. However, the latter might actually be improved by using CMake or SCons -- hard to say without tests.


=== Audio ===
=== Audio ===


==== Mixer ====
==== Mixer ====
* Get the high quality resample code to work
* Consider changing the mixer volume to use range 0-255, for sake of consistency (but at a slight loss of efficiency). Note that this requires changes in at least rate.cpp and mixer.cpp.
* Some of our engines support the speech_mute / sfx_mute / music_mute options, but most don't. Almost all support the corresponding FOO_volume config keys. All engines use Mixer::setVolumeForSoundType to push those through to the mixer. I am wondering: Maybe it would make sense to remove Mixer::setVolumeForSoundType, and instead leave it up to the mixer to query the ConfigManager for the corresponding FOO_volume/_mute values? That way we'd ensure 100% identical behavior in all engines and actually simplify the code a bit... ? Not sure if this would work smoothly, it needs to be investigated.
* the "isReady" code is irritating. Most engines ignore it anyway. It's primary purpose is to allow ScummVM to run even if not digitial audio out is available. A better solution would likely be to enforce that all backends always return a valid mixer. In the worst case, if a backend cannot produce audio output, it should still instantiate an Audio::MixerImpl, with some arbitrary sample rate (I recommend 22050 Hz), and a fake playback thread, which acts like an audio output callback but simply discards the generated audio data. (Note: It doesn't suffice to just throw away input data in Mixer::playInputStream, as this breaks with QueuingAudioStream).
* the "isReady" code is irritating. Most engines ignore it anyway. It's primary purpose is to allow ScummVM to run even if not digitial audio out is available. A better solution would likely be to enforce that all backends always return a valid mixer. In the worst case, if a backend cannot produce audio output, it should still instantiate an Audio::MixerImpl, with some arbitrary sample rate (I recommend 22050 Hz), and a fake playback thread, which acts like an audio output callback but simply discards the generated audio data. (Note: It doesn't suffice to just throw away input data in Mixer::playInputStream, as this breaks with QueuingAudioStream).
* document the semantics of sound handles and sound ids
* Are there backends which could benefit from a 'custom' mixer? If so, what would be required to implement such a thing? Needs talking to porters


==== CD ====
==== CD ====
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** ... produce a warning if an older ScummVM version tries to load a config file written by a newer version with potentially incompatible changes (such as the switch from language code "hb" to "he" for Hebrew)
** ... produce a warning if an older ScummVM version tries to load a config file written by a newer version with potentially incompatible changes (such as the switch from language code "hb" to "he" for Hebrew)
** ... detect when we an old config file is loaded which needs to be updated (e.g. by changing language "hb" to "he"; by adding "guioptions" to targets; by fixing trailing slashes in "path"; maybe even updating old style; and maybe in the future by adding "engineid" fields to all targets)
** ... detect when we an old config file is loaded which needs to be updated (e.g. by changing language "hb" to "he"; by adding "guioptions" to targets; by fixing trailing slashes in "path"; maybe even updating old style; and maybe in the future by adding "engineid" fields to all targets)
=== Files ===
* Don't rely on the existence of SEEK_CUR, SEEK_END, SEEK_SET -- rather, define our own enum for this and convert all client code to use it.
* Try to replace all usages of paths by FilesystemNode.


=== GUI ===
=== GUI ===
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=== Launcher ===
=== Launcher ===
* Enhance the Mass detector to show a list with the results (and optionally, allow the user to edit/cull that list before adding it).
* Enhance the Mass detector to show a list with the results (and optionally, allow the user to edit/cull that list before adding it).
* Game edit dialog: Consider adding some warnings to the platform/language fields ("Don't mess with these unless you know what you are doing"), or move them to an "advanced" tab
* Make the gameid editable via an "advanced" tab entry?
* Make the gameid editable via an "advanced" tab entry?
* <s>There is no way to reset the save/extra/theme paths. Adding a tiny button labeled "c" for clearing them (like for the soundfont path button) is not the way to solve this, I think. One approach would be to extend the Browser dialog, to allow an (optional) extra button, with customizable label. When pressed, the browser dialog closes and returns a special code. Well, and we'd use labels like "Use default savepath" or "Reset extrapath", or just always "Use default value".</s>
* The global options dialog may show a button for configuring the savepath even on systems where it is fixed -> not good. This button should be hidden/removed for these systems
* The global options dialog may show a button for configuring the savepath even on systems where it is fixed -> not good. This button should be hidden/removed for these systems
* separate launcher code even more from rest of ScummVM, to make custom launchers easier?
* separate launcher code even more from rest of ScummVM, to make custom launchers easier?
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** Add/unify "confirm exit" dialog, globally (see [https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1731025&group_id=37116&atid=418823 FR #1731025])
** Add/unify "confirm exit" dialog, globally (see [https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1731025&group_id=37116&atid=418823 FR #1731025])
* Options Dialog: Implement engine flags to define which features in the Options dialog are supported by the current running game. Use these flags to hide/show the appropriate sliders and buttons in the Options Dialog
* Options Dialog: Implement engine flags to define which features in the Options dialog are supported by the current running game. Use these flags to hide/show the appropriate sliders and buttons in the Options Dialog
* Allow engines to extend the GMM more freely. E.g. for the SCUMM engine, we would want to add a "Help" button. Alternatively, just always have a help button and only show/hide resp. en-/disable it as needed.
* Improve the look of the GMM: This could include displaying the engine name and the game name on the top of the GMM.
* Improve the look of the GMM: This could include displaying the engine name and the ScummVM logo somewhere on the GMM.
* Config Dialog code: Resolve the FIXME in engines/dialogs.cpp which pertains to having to use the empty string as the domain name. This is a bigger task, but will enable many other changes (thus as finally changing ConfigManager to use ConfigFile). Essentially, the current game config dialog tries to abuse the system by editing the *active* settings via the config manager, in order to fully reduce the options dialog code from the launcher. But there is a big difference between editing the config settings of a specific target, and the active settings. So, one probably needs to rewrite the code for the config dialog shown from the GMM
* Config Dialog code: Resolve the FIXME in engines/dialogs.cpp which pertains to having to use the empty string as the domain name. This is a bigger task, but will enable many other changes (thus as finally changing ConfigManager to use ConfigFile). Essentially, the current game config dialog tries to abuse the system by editing the *active* settings via the config manager, in order to fully reduce the options dialog code from the launcher. But there is a big difference between editing the config settings of a specific target, and the active settings. So, one probably needs to rewrite the code for the config dialog shown from the GMM
* Make it possible to reach the  "key remapper" and "virtual keyboard" from the GMM, if available?
* Sugar on the cake: In addition to the ScummVM logo and version, how about showing the engine name and game title at the top of the GMM?


=== Error handling ===
=== Error handling ===
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* Add API to query backend for a list of available music engines. Useful for Options dialog. See [[Music drivers redesign]].
* Add API to query backend for a list of available music engines. Useful for Options dialog. See [[Music drivers redesign]].
* Right now gBitFormat is part of common/scaler.cpp; we might want to move it to common/system.cpp, or replace it with something better. No hasty changes here, please, make sure you understand how it is used right now before messing with it ;-)
* Right now gBitFormat is part of common/scaler.cpp; we might want to move it to common/system.cpp, or replace it with something better. No hasty changes here, please, make sure you understand how it is used right now before messing with it ;-)
=== SDL backend ===
* Right now, the WinCE and the Symbian backend subclasses the regular SDL backend. They both overload a lot of methods (mostly the graphics stuff). Since graphics.cpp uses the scalers (e.g. hq3x), these derived backends carry that baggage around, too, even though they don't need that code. Idea: split the SDL backend into two classes, one base class which only has the code which is used by all subclasses; and a "desktop" subclass, which implements the rest. Then WinCE/Symbian would only subclass the "base" SDL class.
=== Windows ===
* Add scripting code for creating a Windows installer to our code repository, so that a full Windows release can be built easily and directly. Could be based on [http://nsis.sourceforge.net NSIS] or [http://wix.sourceforge.net WiX].


== Tools ==
== Tools ==
Retrieved from "https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Special:MobileDiff/27673"

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