100 replies to this topic

[Timil]

I think UFO2000 have the best code I ever see (even if not enought commented)

Why not starting with such a source code? After all, it's a good and robust code, even if not finished.

[gangsta]

It's well coded but the OOD isn't the best it could have been.

[gangsta]

Not sure, Think it is by just one guy. Been along time since I downloaded the source.

[gangsta]

It's for both windows and linux so could possibly do visual c++. I know it does g++ for sure.

[gangsta]

http://sourceforge.n...ojects/ufo2000/

Looks like It's been worked on sourceforge reports the project has 70% activity. been 1 to 2 years since I last looked at it so maybe the OOD is better

[gangsta]

It shows if the project is active or not. Anyone can put up a project on sourceforge, but many people don't work on them. It is common to see project with 0% activity or 5%. Then projects like the Enlightenment Window manager there are people working on it everyday and those tend to have activity ratings of 95 to 99 percent. Also note that the files available for download are the releases. You need CVS to get the latest stuff they are working on. Activity rating is how active people are in updating files to the CVS.

[gangsta]

I've looked at the source code and they have been busy since I last downloaded it. OOD is better. For the network code they use sprintf instead of snprintf which should be fixed to avoid possible buffer overflows. Saw some big nested for-loops which I wonder if they could be simplified. Also I'm not sure but they might being using a byte each to store the palyer's stats. Things like ranged accuracy I might personally want to store in larger memory with 4th and on digits represent the value after the decimal point. Seems also that they are only interested in making the battlescape part of xcom. After all the name is X-Com: Gladiator. Also looks like you need g++ to compile UFO2000. I recomend you download gcc 3.2 in the form of min-gw if you want to compile that thing. might not work with 2.97 and down because I saw it use the std namespace which is a sign that they are using ISO C++.

[gangsta]

Full version of min-gw is about 10megs big. That includes gcc, g++ and the win32 API. UFO 2000 also requires allegro.

http://www.mingw.org/

[Serge]

Hi guys!

I am one of ufo2000 developers now and if you have any questions about it you can ask me ;-)

I saw here questions about the compiler ufo2000 uses. It can be compiled (at least I have checked) with MSVC 6.0 or GCC 2.95. It uses STL strings and containers but does not use any streams (streams are the main source of problems with STL on older versions of GCC).

I also read with great interest your discussion about OOD model ufo2000 uses and quality of its code ;-) I do not like current sources myself but ufo2000 is a really working project (as opposed to those projects which did not release any line of code after years of discussions in forums - just don't become offended, it's not about you ;-). But one of the primary targets of ufo2000 now is to cleanup the sources and fix all the known bugs. And I think that in the latest versions we have advanced a lot. I hope we will have clean and well commented sources soon.

PS. Sorry for my English, it's not my native language

Best regards,
Serge Semashko,
ufo2000 development team

[gangsta]

O:) ok It really is all my fault. I spoke of UFO2000 without checking the latest version (and I know better). When I spoke the last version I probably looked at was the first one to be released to the public back in 2000. I should have known someone has been busy on it since then. Heck I should have even known the open source author probably was watching. You guys are always around. Mean when I report a bug to an author I usually get a response the next day and it gets fixed right away. Sorry

[gangsta]

It basically a multiplayer version of X-Com that uses the original tiles.

[gangsta]

Why not just download the version that is on this site and see? Might not be the latest version but it probably can answer more questions than I can.

[gangsta]

:: Well the thing was that I didn't want to comment about what I downloaded 2 years ago since that already has gotten me into trouble. But I uh fired up my old 33.6k and downloaded the files here at the download directory for the windows version. It's X-Com Vs. X-Com, as far as I am able to tell. (couldn't play over the internet cause I don't know anybody to play with).. One mode lets you play against the other player on the same computer and both were X-Coms. I think the project just recently got picked up again. And from what Serge says they are cleaning up the source right now. I'm guessing once that is done pretty soon they'll start adding things. Also like I mentioned before the name is Xcom: Gladiators or something like that suggesting that it is mainly ment to be a two player battlescape game. I could be wrong but that is how I interprid. From what I hear around here I think we also want the geoscope. Personally, me before I even went to this site was thinking about making something X-Com like from scratch using 3D since it seems easier to implement an X-Com like game from scratch with 3D. But I'm willing to go along with what others want on here..

[Serge]

UFO2000 is just not finished yet. Now it is basically a tactical combat engine with some features that are not yet used. It has code for save/load but this code still is not quite usable. It was added to provide replay ability later for hotseat game (hotseat game is not very playable now as you can not see what enemy did in his turn - replay should help).

Addition of aliens is very simple (at least their skins). But if their abilities will be different, here comes another question - balance.
Also it is possible to make simple AI later (maybe as dumb as in XCOM )

And maybe the project will grow and at some point in the future will also have geoscape and all other features from XCOM.

[gangsta]

Well like many open source projects it was originally developed by someone else who then went on to do other things. Think it just recently got picked up again. Soon as they clean up the source I'm sure they start adding things. Wouldn't mind helping out but then again they might not need any help. Most good groups consit of 5 to 7 main guys working with CVS access with many more providing minor diffs via mailing list where if they do a good job they get CVS access. Having too many main programmers can be counter productive. but then again if like you said we mainly work on the geoscope it could be a diffrent story.

[gangsta]

sounds good to me.

[red knight]

Glue? Could we work on glue?  Those are really nice looking BTW?  But is this guy who's protective about his stuff?  If so that may mean we have to do our own anyway.

Hi, im not protective because i want, it is because i required to (by my tutor). You dont know how much i want this project to work...

About gluing with UFO2000 is a good idea, the problem is that the geoscape and actual UI classes are just too integrated with the philosophy of the engine, so it could be a very unpleasant job to integrate the other work, besides it is posible (i think)....

As im implementing the prototype i have to hand out, i can release just in binaries (library) the 3D Engine... and a documentation in Doxygen. It is still in pre-alpha but it works (at least some things because i implement on demand) and the component library and you can start to get used to the engine's philosophy... (it is not difficult, i hope)...

If we want to make our dream game there are a lot of things that we have to do... For example Character Animation, Particle Effects (i have a skeleton of the particle system if anyone wants to fill in the blanks - code - ), Colision Detection, 3D Landscape rendering (tile movement, but without tiles like in Jagged Alliance), AI, processing Geographical data to generate similar real(like) world places (for example People Distribution in the world, terrain height, etc), all countries capitals not just some of them, etc...

Anyone interested???

Greetings
Red Knight

[gangsta]

Maybe that Serge guy can lets us know.

Well ya could get his email from the uf02000 site at sourceforge. who knows if he'll be able to come to this site again. I mean you know how it is if you are working on a project with time. Being a former sysop I know that busy people don't always have time to visit your site even if they like it.

[gangsta]

Red Knight (the guy requesting artists) has a really nice geoscape setup.

http://www.xcomufo.com/rednite.html

Wow that looked very impressive for a geoscope. Maybe after he is done with his school thing he might be willing to join us.

[gangsta]

Red Knight: First off looks like great work . The question though is if you are willing to share your work with us after you are done with school this semester. Certainly, looks like something worth waiting for. I myself am interested in working on an 3D version of X-Com. Would you by any chance be willing to open source the source after you graduate? If I remeber correctly you like ISO C++ like I do. I think I can contribute to the game design and code wise too.

[red knight]

Red Knight: First off looks like great work .  The question though is if you are willing to share your work with us after you are done with school this semester.  Certainly, looks like something worth waiting for.  I myself am interested in working on an 3D version of X-Com.  Would you by any chance be willing to open source the source after you graduate?  If I remeber correctly you like ISO C++ like I do.   I think I can contribute to the game design and code wise too.

Of course after i present the thesis we can start an open source project (with a real OPEN Source ), in fact as i told in another post i tried to start an open proyect in my university but there wasn't people interested... We had even started a Games Development Group in my local IEEE Student Branch... I started to teach basic computers graphics technics to the assisting guys (like matrix transformation, openGL, scene partition techniques, texture, i even convince a professor to gives as a small lecture (8 hs) on collision detection techniques), but they just freak out (i dont know why)... only one artist survive (and most of them were CS Students like me, some Comp Eng too) . The one that made all UI graphics (except the debug manipulator i was using, i take the blame for it, the one that looks pretty ugly; now it is fixed).

I dont know i start the semester on July, i dont think it will be finish before December, maybe April next year, but the engine turn out to be very user friendly you can use it anyway in binary form (.lib), it use OpenGL as the base and actually i'm using the Borland Compiler, but i trust it will compile with minimal modifications on Gcc or any ISO (or ANSI) C++ compliant compiler...

[gangsta]

Hmm maybe we can work on a 3D battle scape at first using a 3D engine such as Crystal space so we don't reinvent the wheel on alot of 3D tech that are there. Dunno if I can wait till aprill to work on something.. Perhaps we can use some of the stuff in UFO2000 with the 3D battlescape.

[gangsta]

Was thinking since UFO2000 does handle the battlescape part corectly and the code is 3D that we might could combine it with the isoscape generator of cyrstal space to start out with. On the other hand, we can also write that code ourselves. I feel comfortable that I already know the basic algorithms.

[gangsta]

Well like you said in another forum we probably should plan this out a bit more before coding. See who does what and so forth. Besides who all is still interested?

[gangsta]

Ok then is everybody agreed that we should use Crystal Space for the Battlescape or for that matter the graphics engine for the project? It is well documented and in C++. Only little strange thing about it is that it uses struct instead of class to implement objects. It still uses virtual inheritence. guess only diffrence would be they can't use private: and public: with structs.

[gangsta]

Ok just discovered a small problem. As far as GCC is concerned you have to compile CS with GCC 2.96 or down. It errors out on a file that uses the qsqrt.h file of the project. that file contains inline ASM code. Having experience with this sort of thing I say it is probably a bug in the precompiler of GCC 3.1. compiling XMame in the past with 3.0x had simular problems but that got fixed in 3.1. THe main diffrence with GCC 2.96 and 3.1 as far as C++ is concerned is 3.1 is more ISO C++ complient. More so that more things are in the std:: namespace whereas in the older compiler they were in the global namespace. I don't know if 3.2 fixes the problem (don't really feel like downloading it for linux right now) But eitherway I think I will email the author of CS and am sure to get a quick response.