“Typically on a Friday night after a long hard week I’ll go down
to the pub, have a few drinks with good mates and end up shooting
some pool. If the cricket or football was on television, I’ll go to
another mate’s house and intermittently watch sport and play pool.
I can even recall studying for an University exam earlier this year
– the plan was to revise notes all afternoon with friends, but an
afternoon turned into half an hour – and for the rest of the
evening, I managed to lose every game of pool I play. So you’d
figure that if I had some spare time at home, I’d play pool –
problem being, I don’t have a table.”
“Enter GtkPool, an open source alternative to beating the pub
rules. Created by Jacques Fortier, GtkPool was originally intended
as a “learn GTK+” project that gained community support and
consequently continued to grow. Arriving at version 0.3.3, the
latest and greatest offers numerous bug fixes (for compiling under
newer versions of gcc), a new table pixmap (donated by Daniele
Madri) and a new nine-ball option. As well as this, hidden
additions such as GUI elements for mulitplayer/network mode have
also made their way into 0.3.3 – which is in line for future
releases and the long-term plans of the author.”
“Still in its early stages of development, GtkPool is a
simple pool simulation requiring the GTK+ environment and X
Windows. Showing off a nice layout, my first impression of the
product could be regarded as “on the ball” – looking neat and tidy,
it certainly presents itself well to the crowds which will help
attract more interest over future releases.”