TODO

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 <http://www.mattdm.org/icebreaker/development.html> 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 
  <http://www.redreactor.com/> 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.....