That’s not a spelling mistake, I’m talking Perl the programming language.
I’ve known for a long time about Frozen Bubble, the excellent Bust-A-Move (puzzle bubble) clone written in Perl, but a search for other games revealed virtually nothing! This both shocked and saddened me: Perl is a great language for game programming. It might not have the compiled speed and efficiency of C, but as frozen bubble has shown, it’s perfectly capable of some 2D gaming action.
So with that in mind I aim to write a simple game in perl and SDL to fill the void.
What I’m aiming for is something based around parapper the rapper and horse racing. A wild combination, I know, but start simple and work up…
Anyone who’s played Elite or Frontier: Elite II would have been graded by the ratings from the Elite Federation of Pilots. The rating is based on number of kills and goes as follows, from lowest to highest:
Harmless
Mostly Harmless
Poor
Average
Above Average
Competent
Dangerous
Deadly
Elite
but I propose we use the very same ranking to judge every day occurrences. For example, while talking to my girlfriend about horse riding she was trying to convey to me the ability a rider would need to ride a particular horse. After struggling for some time to describe the necessary qualities I said, “On the elite rating, what level would I need to be to ride this horse?”. This clarified the matter as she was able to settle simply on “Competent”.
I also find it a useful gauge for programming ability:
“What are you like with Python?”
“Deadly”
just being able to say I’m a dangerous C++ programmer has a ring to it.
But why not go one step further? Use it to describe potential mates in a nightclub?
“What do you think of her?”
“Harmless. After a few, maybe mostly harmless”
