Progress report Oct 30, 2014

We have great news to share. Our team continues to work on BB. Currently Laszlo is spearheading the technical upgrades to make BB cross platform.

I quote one of his many contributions:

"I vote for using QT.
Here is why:
- support for Mac,Win,Linux, Android, IOS, Raspberry Pi (SFML is only for Desktop currently, but it is under development)
- good support in Linux repos
- high level abstraction or low level programming is also possible
- good documentation, a lot of examples
- Qt is complete framework, not just OpenGl wrapper:
- easy to install IDE for all Desktop platforms
- GUI description language with easy syntax ( QML )
- support in qml: buttons, lists, sprite, animated sprite with smooth transition, web browser, video, image, rotation, transition,...
- new QML objects can be implemented in C++
- javascript scripting
- sound wrapper
- build system (like CMake)
- and so on....
- you can also embed SFML widgets in QML programs! So this is also an option.

Disadvantage:
- the performance can be slow because of the high abstraction but I think there is not much animation in BB

Pros:
- it makes easy for new developers to start using it
- it is productive for GUI development.
- we can achive better results later, if new components are developed for QT.
With SFML only we have to implement each GUI feature".

He already implemented several demos including screens, custom buttons, galaxy windows, and stars. So far so good, but too early to declare full success for all platforms.

So we are moving from C# to C++ and use QT runtime environment for now unless we find a dead end or major performance problem. We maintain open source repo.

Meanwhile Brent and I had lots of discussions and made some key changes in design and have early implemenations, such as hex based space battle.

Ivan contributes with technical expertise, experience, and testing for now.

In addition, I have searched for and hired 2 master composers who agreed to compose original music for this game. Fingers crossed that they will actually deliver as promised.

So everything is heading in the right direction, but please volunteer if you think that you can help and feel the burning desire like us to do something good about this project. We do it in our free time as a service to the community and our progress is slow.