The Major BBS Forums (Archive)

hit a fee snags porting this with memory bits and addresses, when i have more time i will finsh this.

I've got a version of 2.1c that I've manage to get working in a stand-alone fashion. maybe we should compare notes on this one. I'm in the middle of reworking my copy into something that uses STL objects and a massive cleanup. It already uses sqlite3 and compiles under win32 and posix (though, I haven't tried compiling the win32 version in a while)

I've been toying with it since the early 90's.

Ziffelblict wrote:I've got a version of 2.1c that I've manage to get working in a stand-alone fashion. maybe we should compare notes on this one. I'm in the middle of reworking my copy into something that uses STL objects and a massive cleanup. It already uses sqlite3 and compiles under win32 and posix (though, I haven't tried compiling the win32 version in a while)

I've been toying with it since the early 90's.

yeah that would be good, then i can get it out for wgnt

I haven't passed the code on to anyone else yet, as I'm not sure of the licensing status of it. I've heard (through this forum) that 2.2 was released as open source, but I have yet to find it. Old URLs are old.

What I'd like to do is:
Figure out the differences between the original code to the version I have (still on 5.25" floppy, I'm afraid... need a drive) and 2.2 and backport them.
Be able to call this version a fork of 2.2
Create 2 build paths, 1 for a standalone version and 1 that creates a .DLL for WGNT

What I'm currently doing to it is:
Replacing all the statically sized C style arrays with lists, vectors, strings, etc
Relocating almost all of the hardcoded configuration items to an .ini file
Adding the ANSI color version of the messages
Allow the user to turn ANSI color on and off and store the setting in the users table for that user
General code cleanup -- there's still a lot of passing indicies around instead of references to the actual objects which would simplify things and improve the readability of the code

My pipe dream would be:
Mix in a websockets library and create an HTML5 UI
Add JSON versions of the messages
Increase the rtKick rate for ship movement to a much higher rate, while keeping the actual movement the same as 2 seconds per move is reasonable if you're typing commands, but it's crazy long for a GUI. I want it to be 5 - 10 times a second.
Build a 3D enhanced client -- the game would still be 2D, but all the objects would be rendered using WebGL (or, in a pinch, the 2D canvas using something like Threed.js)
Add things like Races, Factions, Corporations, Pirates, player defined ships, etc

I've got this vision of a game who's UI is like Starfleet Command 3, while actually having planets you can orbit and more than 6 ships per map. Oh, and maps that are significantly larger.

No idea when I'd have any of this fancypants stuff will done though. I've only been spending like 2-3 hours a week mucking with this lately, and that's after not touching it for a couple of years.

Ziffelblict wrote:I haven't passed the code on to anyone else yet, as I'm not sure of the licensing status of it. I've heard (through this forum) that 2.2 was released as open source, but I have yet to find it. Old URLs are old.

What I'd like to do is:
Figure out the differences between the original code to the version I have (still on 5.25" floppy, I'm afraid... need a drive) and 2.2 and backport them.
Be able to call this version a fork of 2.2
Create 2 build paths, 1 for a standalone version and 1 that creates a .DLL for WGNT

What I'm currently doing to it is:
Replacing all the statically sized C style arrays with lists, vectors, strings, etc
Relocating almost all of the hardcoded configuration items to an .ini file
Adding the ANSI color version of the messages
Allow the user to turn ANSI color on and off and store the setting in the users table for that user
General code cleanup -- there's still a lot of passing indicies around instead of references to the actual objects which would simplify things and improve the readability of the code

My pipe dream would be:
Mix in a websockets library and create an HTML5 UI
Add JSON versions of the messages
Increase the rtKick rate for ship movement to a much higher rate, while keeping the actual movement the same as 2 seconds per move is reasonable if you're typing commands, but it's crazy long for a GUI. I want it to be 5 - 10 times a second.
Build a 3D enhanced client -- the game would still be 2D, but all the objects would be rendered using WebGL (or, in a pinch, the 2D canvas using something like Threed.js)
Add things like Races, Factions, Corporations, Pirates, player defined ships, etc

I've got this vision of a game who's UI is like Starfleet Command 3, while actually having planets you can orbit and more than 6 ships per map. Oh, and maps that are significantly larger.

No idea when I'd have any of this fancypants stuff will done though. I've only been spending like 2-3 hours a week mucking with this lately, and that's after not touching it for a couple of years.

3.2c is open source and was released by the author himself, i on times still talk to the author via email.
i would be happy to send ya a copy of his released archive with the gpls in there.

i did something similiar with tele-arena i made a c++ standalone version and also a c# standalone version, i like to tinker with the old as well.
i began porting to nt few months ago and got snagged up on old dos style memory segment addresses that are no longer used in nt, would love for someone to come on board that has more expertise than me so we can get this thing going.