PIL removal status

[donkyhotay]

As some of you know I've been working on removing a lot of the old
obsolete code in MoonPy that isn't necessary anymore. The first part
I've been trying to remove is PIL which makes MoonPy hard to install,
makes it less portable, and really slows the game down. I have
successfully managed to remove PIL and get MoonPy back up running
however a few systems were unrepairable and will need to be rewritten.
First is the minimap which I am working on first. Second is the team
colors, once I get the minimap going I will take a look at this. If for
some reason I can't recode the team colors with straight pygame then we
will simply have to have copies for each unit (one for each team color).
Third is the openRTS animation system, this wasn't something we were
using anyways but some discussion was made of having some things like
the little radar on the anti-air spin, I am planning on simply dropping
this for now. I can code the various weapons to spin as a whole (which I
am planning on doing later) but won't be animating the individual units.
Last is the entire control panel background. The buttons are fine, but
the image that was displayed behind them was completely broken because
the game can no longer dynamically resize it like it used to. I went
ahead and created a replacement image that is the correct size but as
you all know my art skills leave much to be desired and it's just a
plain gray background. Anyone willing to either draw a new panel or
manually resize the old one (I tried myself but it got too distorted to
be useful) can accept issue 245 on the issue tracker.

--
Do not be afraid to joust a giant just because some people believe in
windmills.
FOSS Moonbase Commander available @ http://code.google.com/p/tether

[donkyhotay]

All features have been reimplemented without PIL, which along with the
new command panel (special thanks to stijn for doing that on short
notice) means MoonPy is back to where it was before I started removing
that dependency. However with PIL gone I've noticed a performance
increase since we no longer have it's overhead and it will be *much*
easier for someone to port to an unsupported OS if they want (basically
any OS that can run python and pygame). I have also removed a number of
other bits of code that are no longer needed (most of it leftover from
openRTS) and set some of the more resource intensive functions to only
run when necessary to improve performance. For example the minimap now
only generates new bitmaps after there is a change to a unit (i.e.
whenever someone takes a turn) rather then every 60 seconds like it used
to. I have fixed a few minor bugs including the insta-death spikes and
the invincible crawlers. We also now have animated tethers so players
can now follow the moving lights back to the central hub. I've gone
ahead and packaged this as version 0.8.05 and uploaded onto the
downloads page.

Do not be afraid to joust a giant just because some people believe in
windmills.
FOSS Moonbase Commander available @ http://code.google.com/p/tether