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What would I need to start coding?[message #256058]

Tue, 13 July 2010 01:27

Shifty

Messages:33
Registered:August 2009
Location: The Frozen North

Well, I've been playing JA2 since it came out, like most of the people here, and I've really been enjoying the everloving hell out of 1.13. I started fiddling with XMLs and whatnot, and reading these forums has shown me how much one person can add. Now I'm thinking of trying to give a little back to the game that's brought me so many hours of joy.

Problem is, I'm as green as spring grass.

So then, if (and that's a substantial if) I want to start contributing to the actual coding end of things, what sorts of things will I need? Obviously source code and a compiler, but what else? Any recommendations for which compiler to use? Where should I start? What's the best way to learn, and where is the most help needed?

Now's your chance to help design a future coder, people! Get on it!

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Private 1st Class

Re: What would I need to start coding?[message #256067]

Tue, 13 July 2010 02:10

silversurfer

Messages:2791
Registered:May 2009

I would start with a good tutorial preferably in your native language which explains the ins and outs of C and C++ programming. That way you can learn the basics like variables, classes, objects, functions and so on. A good tutorial includes lessons to train what you have learned.
Having a book for reference is also a good thing.

You can look at the code of other people and try to read and understand it. Look at Ja2 code for example if you feel ready. I started programming about two weeks ago (with a little knowledge of the basics from years ago) and found it very interesting to work with the game code and see what can be archived by a few changes here and there. Smile

Don't get discouraged by a few setbacks. Good programmers are not made in a day, this requires years of hard work.

If Visual Studio 2008 is available to you I would recommend that compiler. There is an express version available which is free to use. I have some problems here which seem to be related to Visual Studio 2010 so I already regret to use it. Maybe I should get VS2008 as well...

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Lieutenant

Re: What would I need to start coding?[message #256073]

Tue, 13 July 2010 04:14

Shifty

Messages:33
Registered:August 2009
Location: The Frozen North

Yeah, VS2008 needs the BITS service turned on, and I'll be cold and dead in the ground before I let Microsoft tell me what I'm doing with my bandwidth, even the little idle bits of it.

Any other suggestions? Open source would be preferable.

[Updated on: Tue, 13 July 2010 04:15] by Moderator

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Private 1st Class

Re: What would I need to start coding?[message #256077]

Tue, 13 July 2010 06:36

usrbid

Messages:1506
Registered:December 2008

Hi Shifty, I don't know how VS2008 uses BITS, however bits is not something which happens in the background secretly eating your bandwidth. When BITS is in use you will know about it. For example when you download patches for Windows it will use BITS to get the files to your hard disk.

Coders / anyone feel free to chime in and correct me.

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Sergeant Major

Re: What would I need to start coding?[message #256088]

Tue, 13 July 2010 09:04

Shifty

Messages:33
Registered:August 2009
Location: The Frozen North

BITS: Background Intelligent Transfer Service. I like all my transfers up front, thanks. It's mostly just my paranoia talking. I still don't know why I'm not using a *nix OS.

Anyways, I settled for Code::Blocks, which is open source and free, and supports multiple compilers with a host of other goodies. Now give me a few weeks to nail down the basics, and we'll see what happens.

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Private 1st Class

Re: What would I need to start coding?[message #256115]

Tue, 13 July 2010 13:19

silversurfer

Messages:2791
Registered:May 2009

BITS is not as evil as you might think. Actually it is used for transfering updates to your computer with Microsoft Update for example. It makes sure that the update download doesn't take up all of your bandwidth that you probably need for other things at the moment. So it uses the idle bandwidth to download the updates.
Automatic updates run in the background by default anyway but can be disabled or set to download only when the user says so with the help of the GUI which causes BITS to have nothing to do except looking for new updates if you didn't completely disable them.

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Lieutenant

Re: What would I need to start coding?[message #256222]

Wed, 14 July 2010 15:36

silversurfer

Messages:2791
Registered:May 2009

Went back now from VS2010 to VS2008 and this works much better. Don't need to fix any freshly downloaded source code in advance anymore just to be able to compile it. Debug build runs as well. Now it's actually possible to debug! Hey! Smile

Don't use VS2010 except you know exactly what you are doing and which options you have to set for VS and the project properties!

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Lieutenant

Re: What would I need to start coding?[message #256236]

Wed, 14 July 2010 20:08

BirdFlu

Messages:438
Registered:September 2007
Location: Lampukistan

FYI, there are working VS2010 project files in the MP branch. The main branch doesn't have them, yet.

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Master Sergeant

Re: What would I need to start coding?[message #256237]

Wed, 14 July 2010 20:23

wanne (aka RoWa21)

Messages:1961
Registered:October 2005
Location: Austria

If you want to make any changes to the source code, get the latest development source code from here:
https://81.169.133.124/source/ja2/branches/Wanne/JA2%201.13%20MP

This code has all project files set up for VS 2005, 2008 and 2010. Just get the code files with Tortoise SVN and then start the proper (2005, 2008, 2010) VS solution file (*.sln) and you are ready to go.

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Sergeant Major

Re: What would I need to start coding?[message #256242]

Wed, 14 July 2010 21:36

silversurfer

Messages:2791
Registered:May 2009

Ah, another link. I only knew this one:

https://81.169.133.124/source/ja2/trunk/GameSource/ja2_v1.13/Build/

from the Source code SVN access thread

Thank you.

It's easy to get lost in all these folders in SVN because I don't know what they are for.

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Lieutenant

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