Just began thinking about this great game a couple weeks ago, and then I stumbled upon this project, which I think could be awesome. I'm not certain how much help I could be in development, but I have a few questions/comments from what I have seen.
(1) While getting freeSynd to play the original game is definitely a very important goal, I doubt that getting there mission-by-mission is the way to go. One almost needs very simplistic environments to test out the very basic movements of the game (picking up/dropping objects, walking, IPA levels, using weapons/objects, killing, persuading, etc). As such, I almost feel that a basic map/mission editor is needed (and a way to bypass the intro screens and get directly to the walking around part). I know that the game??.dat files have not been fully decoded, but at least it should be possible to build small, simple environments to walk around in. Getting the intros, menus, world map, briefings, etc. to work properly seems to be somewhat less important at this stage of development.
(2) Is there ever going to be any comments/documentation about the code. Sometimes it's hard just to figure out what particular classes are supposed to do, and how it all fits together. If this is supposed to be somewhat collaborative, then getting new people involved should be quick, and not a time-consuming source-code scouraging effort.
(3) Has anyone (in particular the project admins) attempted to contact Sean Cooper about certain aspects of the original game? I have no idea if he would be helpful, but at worst the project would be no further along, and at best one might even get most of the .dat files decoded.
Again, this seems like an awesome effort, but from simply looking around so far I do have some concerns, and thought I'd share my two cents.
Cheers!
Physcher.
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Hey, all!
Just began thinking about this great game a couple weeks ago, and then I stumbled upon this project, which I think could be awesome. I'm not certain how much help I could be in development, but I have a few questions/comments from what I have seen.
(1) While getting freeSynd to play the original game is definitely a very important goal, I doubt that getting there mission-by-mission is the way to go. One almost needs very simplistic environments to test out the very basic movements of the game (picking up/dropping objects, walking, IPA levels, using weapons/objects, killing, persuading, etc). As such, I almost feel that a basic map/mission editor is needed (and a way to bypass the intro screens and get directly to the walking around part). I know that the game??.dat files have not been fully decoded, but at least it should be possible to build small, simple environments to walk around in. Getting the intros, menus, world map, briefings, etc. to work properly seems to be somewhat less important at this stage of development.
(2) Is there ever going to be any comments/documentation about the code. Sometimes it's hard just to figure out what particular classes are supposed to do, and how it all fits together. If this is supposed to be somewhat collaborative, then getting new people involved should be quick, and not a time-consuming source-code scouraging effort.
(3) Has anyone (in particular the project admins) attempted to contact Sean Cooper about certain aspects of the original game? I have no idea if he would be helpful, but at worst the project would be no further along, and at best one might even get most of the .dat files decoded.
Again, this seems like an awesome effort, but from simply looking around so far I do have some concerns, and thought I'd share my two cents.
Cheers!
Physcher.