Re: [AD] future.html on the website

[Evert Glebbeek <eglebbk@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> It's just a lot of work.

Well, sure. Never assumed it'd not involve work!

> Currently, we have a compatibility layer
> where all A4 calls render to a special memory buffer, and then that
> buffer updates to the screen - that defeats the purpose though as it
> is inherently slower than just using A4 directly.

True, but it doesn't have to be perfect. In my mind, the first  
purpose of the compatibility layer is to compile existing code. It  
doesn't need to take full advantage of the new capabilities in the  
first release.
There even need not be any guarentee that a function call that  
succeeds in Allegro 4 needs to succeed in vanilla 5.0 (split_screen 
(), scroll_screen() or whatever they're called being prime examples  
of somewhat obsolete functions that could just fail and that probably  
no one will miss anyway).

> maybe config APIs and not spend time on compatibility. After that, we
> basically have A5 (Trent already wrote two A5 games, so things do look
> good) - and I wouldn't want to delay the official A5 release by a year
> or so just to get the compatibility layer in.

Well, no, it shouldn't take a year, no. But I do think it would be  
good to have the compatibility layer in the release labelled as  
'5.0'. Even after 'A5' is basically done we'd have to go through a  
sequence of WIP/beta/RC.

Evert