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Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game[message #173987]

Thu, 31 January 2008 21:07

Madd_Mugsy

Messages:634
Registered:July 2005
Location: Canada

Quote:

6. can be adapted to some of today's code?

I don't think this is a reasonable goal, since the existing JA2 code is mostly crap. While it may worthwhile to keep some of the calculations intact, many of the algorithms and most of the code's structure should be jettisoned.

The biggest problems with the current code are that it's not extensible, scalable or moddable.

There are hard coded limits on everything. Our current solution is to try to externalize a lot of the values in the code. Prior to 1.13 there was a hard limit of 350 items and weapons only worked in the first 69 slots. I changed the limit to 5000 and externalized most of the item properties, but there are still many other limitations to overcome. Adding Mercs is still a dream, and creating larger maps (both tactical and strategic) is probably still just as a far away.

This is part of the reason why the code is so ugly. We're hacking at the existing system trying to make it do stuff it was never intended to do. Of course, it doesn't help that it was all written in C (not C++) and it was butt ugly to start Wink

We need to make sure we don't impose these kinds of limitations on the new system, and the first step towards that goal is to severely limit reuse of the JA2 code. I'd also argue that the xml file structure will have to change to accommodate the new system, so a lot of that work will need to be redone. Hopefully we can just run them through an XSLT, but at this stage it's all conjecture.

Anyway, I think that regardless of the base engine chosen, there's going to be a ton of work to make it into anything even resembling Jagged Alliance. Perhaps our best bet is to wait for JA3 and see what kind of mess they make of it before starting a new project?

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[Message index]

		Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: Kaerar on Mon, 28 January 2008 17:50
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: zed on Mon, 28 January 2008 21:32
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: Ar1z on Mon, 28 January 2008 22:05
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: zed on Mon, 28 January 2008 22:16
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: Ar1z on Mon, 28 January 2008 22:43
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: zed on Mon, 28 January 2008 22:54
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: afp on Tue, 29 January 2008 00:33
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: Kaerar on Tue, 29 January 2008 03:39
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: afp on Tue, 29 January 2008 07:02
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: Kaerar on Tue, 29 January 2008 07:11
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: Ar1z on Tue, 29 January 2008 10:06
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: zed on Tue, 29 January 2008 10:09
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: zed on Tue, 29 January 2008 13:24
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: rasz on Tue, 29 January 2008 14:32
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: Kaerar on Tue, 29 January 2008 14:32
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: rasz on Tue, 29 January 2008 14:36
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: Kaerar on Tue, 29 January 2008 19:17
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: Madd_Mugsy on Thu, 31 January 2008 02:44
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: Kaerar on Thu, 31 January 2008 09:01
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: zed on Thu, 31 January 2008 11:06
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: Kaerar on Thu, 31 January 2008 15:27
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: Madd_Mugsy on Thu, 31 January 2008 21:07
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: Kaerar on Thu, 31 January 2008 23:09
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: zed on Fri, 01 February 2008 10:38
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: zed on Fri, 01 February 2008 11:17
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: zed on Fri, 01 February 2008 11:22
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: Kaerar on Fri, 01 February 2008 11:23
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: zed on Fri, 01 February 2008 11:35
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: Kaerar on Fri, 01 February 2008 12:00
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: zed on Fri, 01 February 2008 13:27
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: Kaerar on Fri, 01 February 2008 13:41
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: zed on Tue, 05 February 2008 21:41
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: Kaerar on Tue, 12 February 2008 14:17
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: cooldeadjim on Tue, 12 February 2008 18:45
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: Kaerar on Tue, 12 February 2008 23:19
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: Kaerar on Sun, 30 March 2008 06:08
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: Stromb on Mon, 31 March 2008 21:52
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: chairman_meow on Tue, 29 April 2008 05:55
		Re: Engine discussion for next gen JA based mod/community game By: Privni on Sat, 17 May 2008 14:05

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