[OT] First official Ashes "announcement"

[Andrea B Previtera]

...with plenty of screenshots.
http://ashes.lalista.org/press/announcement.html

Again, I know it's not strictly exult-related. But our game takes so much inspiration from the Ultima VII style and features, and Dr. Code, Wjp and Sam from Exult 3d helped me a lot whenever I bugged them with coding questions So I felt like posting (again) about it here, as admirers of what the UVII world offered in terms of gameplay and interactivity, the other board members might enjoy it as well.

Thank you in advance for any opinion you'll express

[Dominus]

yes, I'm sure we will enjoy that a lot. I like the screenshot with the dialog of the "engine demonstrator" - made me laugh

[drcode]

This looks like it could be a lot of fun. And some of those trees look familiar:-)

[Dominus]

yeah, those trees reminded me of something, too

[Tristan de Inés]

That looks very exciting.

I guess it will still be a long time till its released (if you plan on replacing all that borrowed art with your own), anyway, how will it be released? Are you planning to sell it, free download, open source, etc?

[Andrea B Previtera]

Completely free. Opensourcing it would be useless since it's coded in (obfuscated) pascal+assembler, a solution which I think I am the last one using on Earth Nonethless, all the file formats are open and 90% of them are text-based, so modding will be extremely easy.

The only "borrowed" content actually, up to now, are the U7 trees and Neverwinter boar/deer/goblin models

[dag]

'Opensourcing it would be useless since it's coded in (obfuscated) pascal+assembler, a solution which I think I am the last one using on Earth '

well, you're not alone... most oft the projects i'm currently working on are coded with delphi 7 (some even with a few lines of inline assembler code, but all are closed source... *sigh*)

[nadir]

> 'Opensourcing it would be useless since it's coded in (obfuscated) pascal+assembler, a solution which I think I am the last one using on Earth '

I'm sorry Andrea, but IMHO this is not a good reason for not opening the source of your work. OpenSource is not just for people out there who might join in and help you develop, but also for others to learn how certain algorithms can be done. It is like an educational tool. Obviously I don't want to tell you what to do with your code: it is yours and you can do what you want with it, and also tell me to mind my own business

Tristan

[Andrea B Previtera]

Dag: Really? But are those probjects gaming-related stuff? Make me feel less alone!

Nadir: Sure, I wasn't thinking of anyone helping with the development! I just think that the code is too obfuscated for anyone to learn anything... expecially because I don't plan on documenting it, something I've always been extremely bad at. Also, I implement algorithms the worse way they can be implemented, with absolutely no eye for optimization and speed, and I think if someone could learn something... he/she would learn how to write BAD code

Truth is that it's a unspeakable miracle that the game runs at a decent framerate (but you need modern hardware anyway), and that it rarely crashes. And still, it's mined by little glitches which are not real bugs, just side effects of bad algorithm implementation. BUT, in the end if someone will ask for the code, I will hand it out and hide in shame.

[Colourless]

If your code is as bad as you say, then perhaps opensourcing it is a good idea since others may actually fix your code for you...

[drcode]

Worked for me:-) Also, you can learn a lot when other people join in.

[486DX2/66 Dragon]

Looks very sweet! Congratulations for putting so much time and effort in to it.

Btw, the trees should stay as is.

[DirtyHairy]

Congratulations, the screenshots look very nice. Opensourcing it might also make it possible to port it to linux; there is the freepascal compiler which is highly compatible with the object pascal and delphi extensions and can produce code for many platforms and systems...

[Andrea B Previtera]

Well, thank you again. Since this kind of code-specific feedback, at this point I think I am pretty sure I will release the source code for the game despite all my doubts. Nothing would be better than someone porting it to other platforms!

[Annorax]

Looks great, can't wait for a demo.