Commander Genius and beyond (Galaxy Support?), Talking about the future of CG

[gerstrong]

Hello everyone,

I have been developing a lot on CG and I also have been trying to manage that project.

A lot of appreciation, to the people that has been supporting me lately. Without you the project wouldn't have gone that far. But let's get to the point of that topic.

The future of CG. As you may know there are a lot of ideas, but we need to work more in team.

I have split the code the way everybody can enhance it with new features, trying to leave bit code in every file. The good thing is that we have a good overview, the bad thing, many files. That we have many files I don't think it's really a problem, more matters the organisation and flexibility of the code.

I think Commander Genius 0.3.0.4 got into the feature freeze. There are some bugs left (especially in Ep2 and 3) that ought be removed, and it's ready for a release.

If someone owns the a SVN Version and discovers some bugs, please report them under Sourceforge.net using "Trac". You can do that creating a new ticket.

The following things I still want to implement:

- Cmake for linux and Windows build. I never used that system. I still need to adapt that. Albert, Pickle und Pizza already did that for their builds (Wiz and Mac support). Nice job!

- improve the graphics engine. In this part I only will take out the colourkey and use Alpha surfaces instead. I think it makes more sense, and provides better shadow effects.

- All the text must be read from the exe-file. I only mean strings like "you see in your mind" or the vorticon elder messages. Also some of the status screen. It will be a tough hack, but one class will manage that. That also will improve the mod support, because the text isn't changed in those when loaded with CG.

- Autodetection system for the games. No more games.cfg to configure your games. just drop them as folders into the "data" subdir and they will be detected.

- Ingame Menu Support. This means, the game loops must be changed a bit. We will do that bit by bit. (Open the menu anywhere in the game)

- Sound Architecture. Some improvements and code stripping. I want to support volumes for sound and music. Also the possibility to turn off or on HQ Sound or PC Speaker. Audio Menu may get similar to the ones in Keen 4

- Ubuntu debs or maybe rpms. Not sure though, if I'll really do that. Fedora Core showed interests in using CKP for their package system. Let's see if people want it for Ubuntu. I would prefer to let another person let manage that.

- Finally Commander Keen Galaxy support. This is one is very important. I have been promising it time ago and I finally will implement it. I have been thinking to at least create a framework for it, so more people, if they want can, help me with the support. I want to create another game loop and new physics for the Galaxy. The games have similarities, but many things like the physics wouldn't fit to well, if we'd take those we have. On the other hand, the physics of Vorticon series also aren't perfect. So better to have them split. If someone is very interested in the Galaxy support I can prepare that framework, but I'd prefer to handle the other todos, in order to implement that Framework without getting logical messes.

There are other todos I promised, but I will need help. Especially I forgot to mention Mod support and multiplayer support. I will be working on improvements, but I won't have time for improving the entire patch reader. There are a lot of things that has to be done in order to better support our vorticon mods.

[Pickle]

CMake build: I was using it for linux32 builds too. (although its a bother to switch cmake between builds all the time, so currently im using codeblocks to do my linux32 build)

Graphics Engine: be aware alpha can slow things down for non hw-acclerated platforms.

Im fine with all the other ideas you have for the current engine.

For galaxy I think it should be considered if it should be a separate project all together. I think it would help to start many things from scratch.

[pizza2004]

There are many advantages to having it be either way, but for the sake of the players, I think it would be best to have it all be one game packaged together.

Now, what we need to do is finish up with 0.3.0.4 and release it, then move on and begin building an entirely new physics system for the new game. Eventually we can combine them together as to reduce the code, but let us start by making it decompress the Keen 4-6 EXEs and then make it do the other things before continuing work on Keens 4-6.

[Pickle]

My concern would be being tied to the old code or having to do something less desirable to include support for the old way of doing things.
If you want one application, I would propose that there be a framework for game selection. Upon selection of the game then the code would run into 2 different code paths/different source.

The biggest issue is the cgenuis is a combination of c/c++, im pretty sure gerstrong wants to have only have c++ in the galaxy parts.

If things are made common, I think it has to be taken with great care not to make a mess of the code.
By starting fresh things can be made more object oriented (i.e c++) and simple.

I agree decompressing resources is the first step, but the a decision is needed on where and how the new galaxy engine will be started.

[pizza2004]

Actually, all of the game is programmed in C++, it is just that frameworks commonly are programmed in just plain C. So we have to have the C bits in order for the thing to work at all, but all of our code is made in C++.

[Pickle]

I your meaning say the c code is only in epi's 1-3 specific areas. So im fine with using the project as is, i just hope there arnt compromises on design because of it.

[pizza2004]

Okay, Personally think that while we can share things between the two, I think it would be better to have a separate loop for Galaxy, so that we can build it specifically for Galaxy. We should develop it to be as much of a separate engine as possible in order to avoid problems in compatibility. The only things that should be shared are the options in the configure menu, although a few will require to be specific to either Vorticons or Galaxy. I just want to ensure that they don't damage each other, so we make a new engine, as much from scratch as possible.

Because of the major differences in the engines of the two groups of games, it would be irresponsible to try to make them one engine. Dreams will also need it's own loop, and we might want to make a slightl different loop set to deal with compatibility with mods. Basically, if you choose a mod it tries to emulate the originals more perfectly (ie. Bugs included, because mods ignore them) which means we wouldn't have to worry about certain problems in the games. Mainly it would allow us to change things in the regular game without worrying about having the mods supported.

So, while this seems like a lot of loops, they overlap substantially, and only one runs at a time.

[baboyes]

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