SS1src: Pre-Planning with the source releases

[6647dc6ed24e8JosiahJack]

I don't really like Discord much.  It, like Facebook and other annoying mediums, puts me miles of text away from where I last checked in.  Always feel like I'm missing stuff.  Prefer to keep it here too.

[6647dc6ed26d3winterheart]

Hello

I'm one of those individuals that attemped to port shockmac to modern OS (Linux). So here my thoghts.

It' better to wait SS EE source code as NDS promised. While huge part of sourced literally hardcoded into MacOS PPC architecture, most of code left intact or has commented out PC originals. Most difficult part is graphic representation to new platform (I decided to use LibSDL2 for that, but not even started this task).

Since SS1 code is strongly C project, there may be difficult to port it to c++, I decided to follow ANSI C99 standard, that would be easealy ported to modern platform.

Wery important task is 64 bit system support. Current code is 32 bit and uses Big Endian wrappers.

Currently I heavily rewrited FIX library (throwed away ppc asm code and rewrited it with c). Other thing is CMake build system. And currently I stuck with main application compliation as it depends to carbon library. I saw that other guy gets to compile on modern macOS, and now he is struggle with bugs.

One of my feature in mind would be externalizing resources, that allows mod support and other things such as localization or enhancied graphics.

So, when code will be available, I'd happy to help with porting community driven SS1.

[6647dc6ed2844icemann]

I tried to port one of my games that uses SDL over to Linux. Was a pain in the ass. Best I was able to manage was to get everything working except sound. Give me Windows any day. MUCH easier.

[6647dc6ed2b0esarge945]

I would love if this port was handled similar to the ZDoom project. That is, huge extensibility and power incrementally added over time, with graphics becoming secondary.

[6647dc6ed2ddcJDoran]

I would love if this port was handled similar to the ZDoom project. That is, huge extensibility and power incrementally added over time, with graphics becoming secondary.

That would be great!

[6647dc6ed2f15Gawain]

Nah. The game is perfect. No need to add or remove anything.

[6647dc6ed31cbdertseha]

Your friendly Discord report here:
Asked what they use for graphics and sound, Axemelon (the one doing the source port) replied:

I'm using the kex 3 framework

A quick internet search only produced this: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Kex_2 (though, the information there checks out in relation to NDS).
Apparently no SDL then.

[6647dc6ed32d6Gawain]

Quite strange choice. I would have gone a totally different route and tried to implement the low level draw functions in OpenGL. I must admit I haven't looked the source code enough to do good decisions.

[6647dc6ed33e8winterheart]

KEX3 is based on SDL2 (at least as I can see on Strife VE), so there all ok about portability to Linux and macOS. KEX is mainly 3D-graphic related framework (ie 3D Render), so other aspects of engine such as sound, texturing, music and controls should be ported to SDL2 libraries.

[6647dc6ed34cficemann]

What does KEX3 have over SDL2? I've never heard of that one before.

[6647dc6ed3641voodoo47]

the NDS port requires DX11, OpenGL3.1 capable gpu, Net Framework 4.7 and VC++2015. it would be great if the community port could do away with as many of such dependencies as possible, and allow execution in legacy environments (vista, XP, win2k, pre-dx10 hardware).

[6647dc6ed3746icemann]

Doing away with the need for VC 2015 should be easy enough to implement. You just set a few things in the Visual Studio project settings and it builds it into it. No VC dll's required after that.

[6647dc6ed382eJosiahJack]

Ya something about merge modules.

[6647dc6ed397eZylonBane]

DirectX 11? Jesus. Someone had no sense of irony.