FreeOrion

Alright, let's hope for the best for the forums.

Now that's a good find with the WPFg project there! SirP is right now rewriting all UI code classes from regular GDI to GDI+ (which is equal to changing more than a couple of thousand lines of code) so if that thing turns out to be even better by making WPF usable with C++, one might even spare the side panel problem here, since we basically could copy your solution then (with your permission of course ).
I need to ask him if he already got the mail. I think if he does it then he'd need as much coding help as possible since it would certainly be a major task to rip off MFC completely out of BotE and replacing it with that WPF for games, especially since he does not know a lot about the implementation and usage of WPF and has to read into it first. One question, would you have the time and be willing to help him in depth and on code level on that issue provided he wants to do this?

Btw. sir p. has recently opened two tasks for potential additional developers, one being that side panel and galaxy map visualization upgrade and the other one improving our auto-battle algorithm with more maneuvres and better targeting/fire-coordination systems. Cdrwolfe has recently got the source of that algorithm as far as sir p. was able to code it till now. It's still greatly improvable and surely usable to some degree for Supremacy too, so it might be a good thing to work together on if surplus dev resources are available .

Sure, I'd be willing to help SirP come to grips with the WPF architecture. Granted WPFG has some significant differences, as it's based on native C++ and does not target the .NET Framework. As such he cannot use any of my code directly, but much of it could be fairly easily translated. I could also recommend some good reading material.

great, thx! I talked to him and he is finding WPF really cool. One thing we didn't find was if WPFG still needs .NET 3.5 Framework installed on client machines to run. From your knowledge of WPF, do you think that this project is already advanced enough to start implementing it or should one wait for future releases that are either more stable or bring more features with themselves? It's just that if the project is still in a stage where major changes can be expected resulting in larger coding adaptions needed on our part while transforming our client than we better wait some time don't we .

From what I've seen, the project looks to be pretty far along. The API is modelled pretty closely after the .NET implementation, so anything that's not quite functional yet should be pretty easy to predict. To my knowledge, WPFG does not require any version of the .NET Framework to be installed--it's completely native with its own Direct3D-based rendering engine. It's actually designed to run on mobile devices as well.

Do the last few posts have anything to do with FreeOrion? The ongoing discussion would probably be better held on forums for the relevant projects...

Right, sorry. It's just that they are down for a while and still no one knows when the admin finds time to set them up again.

@Mike: Talked to SirP and he's using WPF for some other software he's writing. Right now, it's too much work for him to completely rewrite the client and the more knowledge he gains about WPF doing his stuff the more he thinks time won't be enough to do that unfortunately.

I think we settle for GDI+ with possible OpenGL support.

Thanks for clearing this up Mike. I've sent an email regarding some details.


That's great, I really like his work. I hope he'll be back when we need sound effects and combat related music.


I've added Star Trek Supremacy to our Space Strategy Games wiki site. I'm not sure what else, we could do - maybe adding link on the frontpage?(Geoff?, Tyreth?).
We certainly could need more coders.

The mutual linkage sounds like a fantastic idea. At the moment it seems like we have only two serious contributors for art at the moment (pd and josh) and 2 for coding (geoff and tzlaine). I'm not nearly as experienced with graphics as either of the two listed above, and tzlaine and geoff have a lot on their shoulders. We could use more coders (probably a good number more) and maybe some extra artists. We could link to the BOTF project as a sticky on our forums, front page of the wiki, that sort of thing. (at the moment, I'm getting nothing but mysql errors from the BOTF project links)

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Photobucket account for FreeOrion and List of Techs and Icons

[[[===LEAN, MEAN, PURPLE AND GREEN MACHINE===]]]

Once forums are reinstated (might take another few weeks) the mysql error will be gone as well as the botfii.armadafleetcommand.com site and moved to http://www.star-trek-games.com as far as I know, so that would be the site to link with banners or something alike..

BotF2 forums are back online, temporary URL is http://www.star-trek-games.com/distribution/. The permanent URL will be available from the main star-trek-games.com site shortly.

Just thought I'd post an update. The credits screen has been checked into source control, and I'm just waiting for one of our team members to finish compiling a list of contributions before I push out a new build. I also included a nice, big, "Special Thanks to the freeOrion Project" line at the bottom, complete with hyperlink .

Great, thanks Mike! Could you perhaps notify us, once this new built is ready for download?

The build is ready for download: http://www.startreksupremacy.com/releases/SupremacyTest_20080516.zip. The download links on the Supremacy site have been updated as well.

the little project made it into Gamespot: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/start ... lt;title;0 , in the netherlands, it's currently even the top game of the week .

I have a gut feeling this will lead to something in the future considering the license status of the game and CBS (read: Paramount) running Gamespot.

That makes two of us . Let's try not to jinx it .