[Xconq-hackers] [xconq - Hackers] RE: Welcome to Open Discussion

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By: eric_mcdonald

Jeff - I believe your observation about the level of project activity is correct.
I certainly haven't been doing anything on it in the past few years.

The state of the documentation is not very good at present. Before I got burnt
out, I was restructuring the code and improving the internal documentation and
API documentation as I went. Documentation is just one of the many areas that
this project could use improvement - meaning volunteers. Basically, you are
looking at a bunch of source code from the mid-to-late nineties (some of it
has a heritage even a decade earlier than that). Stan Shebs was its creator
and original maintainer, but he was last active near the beginning of this century.
Since then, various others have come along with different ideas, styles, priorities,
and objectives, and the code has lost some of its original coherence and structure.
I would call this "hacking" rather than "software engineering".

In many ways xConq is now out-classed and obsolete, but I think it does still
have some redeeming qualities, especially in the flexible game engine and GDL
department. As someone who has poked around with The Battle for Wesnoth, I find
that GDL is far easier and less fatiguing to wield than WML (Wesnoth Markup
Language), and that even though the Wesnoth engine is much better documented,
it still seems more difficult to modify than the xConq one. (This is partly
because the Wesnoth engine is much more intended for a very specific family
of games, whereas xConq is more generalized. So, maybe its apples and oranges....)
If you think xConq's merits are worth capitalizing on, then I would encourage
you to contribute to the project. (Yes - there is a bit of a learning curve.)

At this point, I can't see myself implementing any more features, continuing
the reorganization and documentation process, or fixing any more bugs. But,
volunteers are definitely welcome....

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