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Does anyone remember the PC strategy game Battle Isle?Well, someone made an open source of it and it looks and plays superb! 
You can get the Linux and Windows versions (binary install) at:
P.S
The game comes with an editor They also need people who would like to work and test the campaign for ASC 2.
Introduction
ASC has a long history. The project was start in summer 1994 using Borland Pascal as the programming language. But even then the graphics engine was already available since it was written in 1993 for a simple Tetris clone. In 1995 we started using object orientated programming and in 1996 we converted the whole project to C/C++ (Watcom). We started the port to GCC and Linux in 1999. In autumn 2000 the port to Windows was finished and in winter 2000 the DOS version finally dropped, together with support for the Watcom C/C++ compiler (which doesn't support all features of ANSI C++).
Most parts of ASC itself were written by me (Martin Bickel), while Marc Schellenberger wrote the map editor and Alexander Schäfer wrote the first "small editors". ASC was the project I learned serious programming with. If you look at the source you will see this, both the technical history with its DOS origins and my progress in designing software.
If I started such a project now from scratch I would design it completely different. But we have the project as it is and it is now a game that can be played really well. So rather than starting from scratch it is better to rewrite only one part at a time. This has several benefits:
The game is always playable.
development on the non-programming areas like graphics, sound, units and maps can be done in parallel and all these data work is simultaneously available to both players and programmers. And it can be tested immediately.
Real testing is only possible in real games, which requires a more or less feature-complete game
ASC already has a very solid and much refined gameplay.
So our goal should be to improve ASC one part at once, with frequent releases to keep the players happy :-)
Originally we didn't care about source documentation and modularization. We always preferred writing cool new features instead of cleaning up the code :-)
But the ASC project has reached a point were it can no longer be maintained by a single programmer and I myself don't intend to spend my entire life just working on this single project. But since it would be an enourmous loss for humanity if this project would die :-) my primary goal now is to get the source code into such a shape that others can join the development and hopefully, sometime in the future, take the whole project over.
During the last year, I've spend much time to clean up the source, document and modularize it. While the work is not finished and I intend to further work on it, the code should already be much more accessible now.
Martin Bickel, October 2001
ASC has a long history. The project was start in summer 1994 using Borland Pascal as the programming language. But even then the graphics engine was already available since it was written in 1993 for a simple Tetris clone. In 1995 we started using object orientated programming and in 1996 we converted the whole project to C/C++ (Watcom). We started the port to GCC and Linux in 1999. In autumn 2000 the port to Windows was finished and in winter 2000 the DOS version finally dropped, together with support for the Watcom C/C++ compiler (which doesn't support all features of ANSI C++).
Most parts of ASC itself were written by me (Martin Bickel), while Marc Schellenberger wrote the map editor and Alexander Schäfer wrote the first "small editors". ASC was the project I learned serious programming with. If you look at the source you will see this, both the technical history with its DOS origins and my progress in designing software.
If I started such a project now from scratch I would design it completely different. But we have the project as it is and it is now a game that can be played really well. So rather than starting from scratch it is better to rewrite only one part at a time. This has several benefits:
The game is always playable.
development on the non-programming areas like graphics, sound, units and maps can be done in parallel and all these data work is simultaneously available to both players and programmers. And it can be tested immediately.
Real testing is only possible in real games, which requires a more or less feature-complete game
ASC already has a very solid and much refined gameplay.
So our goal should be to improve ASC one part at once, with frequent releases to keep the players happy :-)
Originally we didn't care about source documentation and modularization. We always preferred writing cool new features instead of cleaning up the code :-)
But the ASC project has reached a point were it can no longer be maintained by a single programmer and I myself don't intend to spend my entire life just working on this single project. But since it would be an enourmous loss for humanity if this project would die :-) my primary goal now is to get the source code into such a shape that others can join the development and hopefully, sometime in the future, take the whole project over.
During the last year, I've spend much time to clean up the source, document and modularize it. While the work is not finished and I intend to further work on it, the code should already be much more accessible now.
Martin Bickel, October 2001
You can get the Linux and Windows versions (binary install) at:
P.S
The game comes with an editor They also need people who would like to work and test the campaign for ASC 2.
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