Asking about how wz2100 porting was for the devs and for help porting a TBS game

[qubodup]

Hi, I'll write the standard mail in a second, but first I want to ask you about wz2100, what was it like to port it? Had the whole thing to be rewritten? was there documentation? did the ex-devs help?

I would be glad if you could give some hints on how it is porting an ex-commercial game, as there might be happening such with the game I'm posting about.

If there are any logbooks about the development or irc logs maybe, which would reflect some of the porting-development, I'd love to have the links..

ok here it goes:

I am posting here, because the game The Kings of the Dark Age (KODA) has a chance of getting released under the GPL (code and media) if a team of developers can be found, who will port the game from Visual Basic 6.0 to a portable language. (C++ and Python was proposed by the game's developers.)

If you are interested in supporting the project, or want to learn more about it and the plan to port it, please visit the forum thread about releasing the source on the official forums or the wiki page on FreeGameDev, which tries to combine in a nutshell, what might be relevant for interested developers.

If you whish to help porting the game, I suggest that you introduce yourself at the official forums. You are also welcome to join the discussion about this game on the FreeGameDev forums.

Here are two screens of the game's battles:

[DevUrandom]

You probably would have to ask Noid (aka Dion Mendel) and Rodzilla (Rodolphe Suescun) about this (if you can figure out how to contact them).
Apart from that you could look into the early SVN log.

[cybersphinx]

I think most early discussion took place on http://www.realtimestrategies.net/forums/index.php, though there wasn't that much regarding specific porting issues (IIRC Noid did the initial port to SDL all by himself, and Rodzilla joined later and did the port to OpenGL). If there were discussions on IRC at that time, there are no (public) logs of them. Basically all there was was the source code, no extra documentation or support by the original developers. So I guess you wont find much helpful information here.

But I can tell you that the Warzone port was relatively easy. It is written in C and it had a software renderer, so only the low level Windows instructions had to be ported to SDL. Quake is a similar example (C and OpenGL), before good Linux clients were available I did a quick port of GLQuake to SDL which was a piece of cake. But your game seems to be partly written in Visual Basic, which can't be compiled directly on Linux. As the graphics engine seems to be C++/OpenGL that will help, but the VB part will be hard.

Basically you have two options:
1. You do a complete reimplementation in C++ with the VB source as reference.
2. You take the VB source and slowly transition it to platform-independent C++. This will need Windows developers familiar with VB, C++, and platform-independent coding, but you will always have a (more or less) working game. This seems to be preferable, if you can find the right persons for the job.

[Giel]

Hi, I'll write the standard mail in a second, but first I want to ask you about wz2100, what was it like to port it? Had the whole thing to be rewritten? was there documentation? did the ex-devs help?

No, the whole of Warzone didn't have to be rewritten as the majority of the code comprised gamelogic and isn't concerned with platform specific issues. There was no documentation (on the source code) available, nor was that necessary as the only required documentation for porting is documentation on the used language and functions. The previous developers didn't help with the porting effort.

I would be glad if you could give some hints on how it is porting an ex-commercial game, as there might be happening such with the game I'm posting about.

I cannot give you any generic hints/tips for porting "an ex-commercial game" (this category of games probably has little in common on the area of porting difficulties). You will most certainly need to have people who are proficient in both the original platform (Visual Basic on Windows) and cross platform development (i.e. to *know* which functions are platform specific and how to make the use of them interchangeable). In this case that would probably mean you need people with experience in programming with Visual Basic 6.0 (or 5.0 as it isn't that different) on Windows and programming C++ (or whatever target language you want to use) on Linux (or preferrably, POSIX in general). Keep in mind though that you only need one (very motivated!) person who is proficient in both of these aspects.

I am posting here, because the game The Kings of the Dark Age (KODA) has a chance of getting released under the GPL (code and media) if a team of developers can be found, who will port the game from Visual Basic 6.0 to a portable language. (C++ and Python was proposed by the game's developers.)

Do I understand it correctly that they will only release the source code when there's a team standing ready to immediately start on development? This sounds a bit like the world up side down to me, especially since you will have the greatest chance of attracting developers by making source code available. In other words, the most likely to happen scenario (as I see it) is to have a release of the source code first, and only then will there be developers starting to show up.

If you are interested in supporting the project, or want to learn more about it and the plan to port it, please visit the forum thread about releasing the source on the official forums or the wiki page on FreeGameDev, which tries to combine in a nutshell, what might be relevant for interested developers.

If you whish to help porting the game, I suggest that you introduce yourself at the official forums. You are also welcome to join the discussion about this game on the FreeGameDev forums.

This project definitely sounds interesting to me, and I *might* be willing to help with the porting effort. But! Before I will commit to anything I want to be able to view and judge the source code myself, because in the end that's the only way for me to be able to tell whether it is doable (for me).

As the graphics engine seems to be C++/OpenGL that will help, but the VB part will be hard.

Rewriting the VB part in C++ will definitely be the hardest of the two, but as an intermediate solution a BASIC compiler (or perhaps even a built-in parser) could be used to allow this process to happen more smoothly.

Basically you have two options:
1. You do a complete reimplementation in C++ with the VB source as reference.
2. You take the VB source and slowly transition it to platform-independent C++. This will need Windows developers familiar with VB, C++, and platform-independent coding, but you will always have a (more or less) working game.

It will depend on the size of the VB source code which one is easiest and fastest to do. If only few Visual Basic specific functionality has been used and most of it is only specific to BASIC (the language) then it might be an option to use FreeBASIC for a while during porting.

[Per]

The big deal about the Warzone 2100 source release was that the game data was released as well, making it a lot more attractive to work on and improve than other source releases where only those who had already bought the game could play it (or you had to *wink* 'wink* people to dubious abandonware sites that official distribution channels will not touch with a ten foot pole).