prboom icons: a thought
I was thinking about adding an icon to prboom and how to go
about doing it. Recently gothicx provided one that I had to
remove as it was derived from the copyright doom graphics.
The next logical thought would be "well let's use a freedoom
sprite then!" However, that doesn't represent the original
doom very well and that might be what people play.
Then it occurred to me that really, when you play "doom",
you aren't playing just the engine, or just the data, but
the combination of the two. So, in terms of desktop entries
and icons, you'd probably want one for each combination of
engine/data available.
In that case, perhaps a 3rd party package could manage the
entries and icons. Some kind of hook in postinst/postrm
executed by the installation or removal of any doom engine
or data package could ensure that there was a launcher for
each combination and kept up-to-date.
It could even extract and use the sprites from the copyright
data file.
At the moment, we only have one viable doom engine in the
archive, but that won't always be the case. Mind you,
perhaps better than a proliferation of desktop files and
icon files would be a doom launcher program, which would
also let you specify other settings (PWADs, resolution, turn
sound on/off, etc.) -- there are loads of historic DOS
launchers knocking around, but fewer F/OSS ones. A chap has
just posted details of one "PyGtk PrBoom Launcher" to the
prboom-devel list which I'm going to check out.
--
Jon Dowland
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