For the past week I've been working on my first small cross-platform gamedev-ish console rendering library for d, and I call it clayers. It has been a fun learning process, as I've used many new programs and features.

The whole thing is written in vim, which I've never used until now. I got a better understanding of how git works by using the terminal, instead of a GUI. For the first time I used version() for different functions. Finally, I added a releasetag, and then registered it to dub.

While I didn't think about it while writing the code, I've gotten a better knowledge of how all of these things work. And this extra stuff I learnt without even thinking about it. GC is something I've never though about before, but thanks to people from #d I now have a better understanding of how it works. Thanks!

As for actually writing code: I've gotten to design the library myself, debugged it, and everything that comes with making an library. I've had discussions with people about the rendering and generally come to good terms with many in the #d channel. Thanks to the whole D community it became more fun than I'd ever imagine.

Thanks for being here D-people!

---

The dub package: http://code.dlang.org/packages/clayers

On Thursday, 25 June 2015 at 14:56:34 UTC, Vladde Nordholm wrote:
> For the past week I've been working on my first small cross-platform gamedev-ish console rendering library for d, and I call it clayers. It has been a fun learning process, as I've used many new programs and features.
>
> The whole thing is written in vim, which I've never used until now. I got a better understanding of how git works by using the terminal, instead of a GUI. For the first time I used version() for different functions. Finally, I added a releasetag, and then registered it to dub.
>
> While I didn't think about it while writing the code, I've gotten a better knowledge of how all of these things work. And this extra stuff I learnt without even thinking about it. GC is something I've never though about before, but thanks to people from #d I now have a better understanding of how it works. Thanks!
>
> As for actually writing code: I've gotten to design the library myself, debugged it, and everything that comes with making an library. I've had discussions with people about the rendering and generally come to good terms with many in the #d channel. Thanks to the whole D community it became more fun than I'd ever imagine.
>
> Thanks for being here D-people!
>
> ---
>
> The dub package: http://code.dlang.org/packages/clayers

Awesome, congrats on releasing your first library. If you intend to work on it further, I'd like to see:
- A way to call a function when a specific key is pressed (key binding)
- More portability, better support for other terminals; see termbox source code for a reasonable level of portability
- Colors! But I guess we could probably combine your library with the "color" library for that, right?

I do enjoy the gif that shows the functionality. I bet using Unicode characters for borders and such would look nice.

On 26/06/2015 12:45 p.m., Kelet wrote:
> On Thursday, 25 June 2015 at 14:56:34 UTC, Vladde Nordholm wrote:
>> For the past week I've been working on my first small cross-platform
>> gamedev-ish console rendering library for d, and I call it clayers. It
>> has been a fun learning process, as I've used many new programs and
>> features.
>>
>> The whole thing is written in vim, which I've never used until now. I
>> got a better understanding of how git works by using the terminal,
>> instead of a GUI. For the first time I used version() for different
>> functions. Finally, I added a releasetag, and then registered it to dub.
>>
>> While I didn't think about it while writing the code, I've gotten a
>> better knowledge of how all of these things work. And this extra stuff
>> I learnt without even thinking about it. GC is something I've never
>> though about before, but thanks to people from #d I now have a better
>> understanding of how it works. Thanks!
>>
>> As for actually writing code: I've gotten to design the library
>> myself, debugged it, and everything that comes with making an library.
>> I've had discussions with people about the rendering and generally
>> come to good terms with many in the #d channel. Thanks to the whole D
>> community it became more fun than I'd ever imagine.
>>
>> Thanks for being here D-people!
>>
>> ---
>>
>> The dub package: http://code.dlang.org/packages/clayers
>
> Awesome, congrats on releasing your first library. If you intend to work
> on it further, I'd like to see:
> - A way to call a function when a specific key is pressed (key binding)

Yes please!
Can you say buttons + menus?

> - More portability, better support for other terminals; see termbox
> source code for a reasonable level of portability
> - Colors! But I guess we could probably combine your library with the
> "color" library for that, right?

https://github.com/yamadapc/d-colorize

> I do enjoy the gif that shows the functionality. I bet using Unicode
> characters for borders and such would look nice.

Another nice feature would be to lock and unlock able to have characters appear for input as part of the key binding. With that textboxs could be made.

On Thursday, 25 June 2015 at 14:56:34 UTC, Vladde Nordholm wrote:
> For the past week I've been working on my first small cross-platform gamedev-ish console rendering library for d, and I call it clayers. It has been a fun learning process, as I've used many new programs and features.
>
> [...]

Congrats!
Maybe would be useful to grab some ideas from d-tui.

https://github.com/klamonte/d-tui

On Thursday, 25 June 2015 at 14:56:34 UTC, Vladde Nordholm wrote:
> For the past week I've been working on my first small cross-platform gamedev-ish console rendering library for d, and I call it clayers. It has been a fun learning process, as I've used many new programs and features.
>
> [...]

next time post in anounce. it's better to spread to the world. General D Discussion are displayed in index Active discussion div from 10 messages and announces are always in their dedicated div.

On Thursday, 25 June 2015 at 14:56:34 UTC, Vladde Nordholm wrote:
> The dub package: http://code.dlang.org/packages/clayers

Great!

On Friday, 26 June 2015 at 00:45:41 UTC, Kelet wrote:
> Awesome, congrats on releasing your first library. If you intend to work on it further, I'd like to see:
> - A way to call a function when a specific key is pressed (key binding)
> - More portability, better support for other terminals; see termbox source code for a reasonable level of portability
> - Colors! But I guess we could probably combine your library with the "color" library for that, right?
>
> I do enjoy the gif that shows the functionality. I bet using Unicode characters for borders and such would look nice.

Thanks!

Key input is a thing I've been thinking about. Since I've already made a game in a console environment I know that key input sucks. The best thing to key input that I've seen so far is SDL which doesn't work with consoles. My idea as of now would be to make a new library (sometime) that handles key input amazingly, which would work hand in hand with this library.

Colors is something I'm working on, and I really want to implement it as soon as possible.

As for portability, I'm not really sure what you mean by that. I do however want to make this library work on as many platforms/terminals as possible!