SGE Game Engine - News
SGE 0.10.1 + xSGE 0.1.0 Released
Item posted by Layla Marchant <onpon4> on Mon 07 Jul 2014 12:47:28 AM UTC.
I mentioned when version 0.10.0 of the SGE was released that I was developing a set of extra modules called xSGE, and that one of these would replace old functions that were removed from the SGE in 0.10.0. Well, xSGE 0.1.0 is here, as well as a small bugfix release for the Pygame SGE.
The bugfix release of the SGE mostly just has minor internal tweaks, but it has one important bugfix: projected text wasn't being aligned properly in version 0.10.0 of the Pygame SGE, and this has been fixed with 0.10.1.
xSGE 0.1.0 includes two modules: xsge.gui, and xsge.transition. xsge.gui is a simple GUI framework, adding support for windows, dialogs, and widgets. Built-in widgets are labels, buttons, checkboxes, radiobuttons, and textboxes; and built-in dialog boxes are message boxes and text entry dialogs (i.e. approximately the same ones provided by the old sge.show_message and sge.get_text_entry functions).
xsge.transition provides a transition framework for the SGE, mainly for transitions between rooms (though some other kinds of transitions are possible if you're clever). It currently supports fade, dissolve, pixelate, horizontal wipe, vertical wipe, diagonal wipe, matrix wipe, iris in, and iris out transitions.
So, what is the purpose of xSGE, exactly? xSGE is a set of very high-level (pure SGE) extensions, all licensed under the GNU GPL, not the GNU LGPL. This means that only software under the GNU GPL (or GNU AGPL) is permitted to use xSGE. So the purpose of xSGE is to exclusively help the development of free/libre software games.
Since modal dailogs are now a part of a library under the GNU GPL, proprietary software games can no longer use them. Short of writing your own dialog box code (which is certainly possible), developers of proprietary software games have two solutions: either use something simpler (like asking the user to press a key to indicate a choice), or use the Tkinter toolkit. I found out recently that you can use the Tk.withdraw method to hide the main Tkinter window that shows up automatically while still being able to use modal dialogs. In fact, this is the main reason I didn't add a file selector dialog to xsge.gui.
Expect more modules to be added to xSGE as I come up with more ideas. If you have any suggestions for high-level frameworks or functions that you would like to see in xSGE, please let me know.
There's one more thing I want to make a note of: there's a delay of up to 48 hours between when I upload files and when any given mirror receives it. If you click on the main download link shortly after it is released and get a 404 error, this is in fact normal. Just use the alternative link if this happens.
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