GENERAL: I am slow

[Mr Ogre]

But I finally put together the comment-stripped source package for Activision. That's what was holding things up, not anything at their end, so heap your insults upon me, not them. Unless it takes a long time from now too, then it's them, not me .

Anyway, they still need to slap some license and copyright notices on it, and maybe a simple installer (self-extracting zip or whatever) and then it should be out.

The only thing that's going to hold up making it work immediately for those of you who download it is the lack of Miles sound libraries. It is unfortunately a commercial library, and can't be included with the release, nor is it a free download. Someone will need to a) strip references to it from the code, which shouldn't be too hard but will leave you with a soundless but otherwise functional game, and b) write a replacement for Miles to get sound in the game again, which may take a fair amount of work .

Anyway, that and a few more things are covered in the brief README I wrote to go with it. I look forward to seeing what comes of all this!

[Maquiladora]

I play with all sound off anyway (thats not to say the sound is bad, i play music is all) Thanks Senor Ogre!

[Peter Triggs]

Great stuff Thanks, MrOgre.

Ever since it was announced that the source code would be released I've been spending my spare time trying to learn about C++ and Object Orientated Programming. Never bothered before because SLIC doesn't support classes and all I ever wanted to do was to play with CTP2.

It's a pity that all the comments had to go so we can't expect little gems like this from John Carmack's Doom:

#define INV_ASPECT_RATIO 0.625 // 0.75, ideally

// Defines suck. C sucks.
// C++ might sucks for OOP, but it sure is a better C.
// So there.

[The Big Mc]

its ok i don't even have a soundcard

[Keygen]

Good news Mr Ogre

So it seems that the release of the source code is imminent and that is important.

Well, I guess the lack of sounds doesn't sound so terrible in the event of the source release. I am sure there will be some workarounds with two of them already indicated by you.

I think the most tough thing to deal with will be the luck of comments. And there's a question of mine. Did you strip all comments or some? If all then I hope we have some help from you to better understand the code. A little help, not much of your time

[Gilgamensch]

feel a:shamed: !!!!!!!!!

But anyway: What takes long will end good (free transalation from a German saying)

I only hope you still left some comments in

I hope you have done a good job

And sound: which sound??????? Wo needs it, it isn't an Action game, so what.........

[child of Thor]

Any news is excellent news Thanks for the update

[Martin Gühmann]

We are getting closer thanks for the status report Mr Ogre.

Originally posted by Keygen
Did you strip all comments or some?

That is also a quewstion of mine. Winnie indicated that it is not a good idea to remove everything that is in the comments, like the pacman stuff. So did you used the easy way to remove everything that is not important or did you strip them all per hand and left for instance unfinished code?

Originally posted by Gilgamensch
And sound: which sound??????? Wo needs it, it isn't an Action game, so what.........

I need sound , or how should I test my slic code without needing to write and put in a messagebox, just a PlaySound here and there and I know the stuff is executed.

Anyway we will find a way to replace these sound libraries. So what is there for gratis download or what is there that can be used instead?

-Martin

[Solver]

Great news, Ogre .

Martin, I think we can start looking for alternatives when we get the source...

[Mr Ogre]

All comments are gone, sorry. It's a large code base, and hand pickiing stuff to remove, or not remove, would have been a very time consuming task.

Replacement sound libraries: I suggest either writing to DirectSound, umm, directly, or using SDL, a cross platform library for sound and graphics (which will make porting to other operating systems easier if anyone gets really ambitious).

[Tamerlin]

Thanks for the news Mr Ogre.

I agree with Martin, though I never use the music I appreciate the other sounds for the atmosphere they create and because they are also indicating whether something has been accomplished or not.

[Solver]

Ahh, all comments gone . That means that the code parts unfinished are also gone, some of them at least.

I know sh*t about how sound works in this game, but why can't just the simple API function be used to play a wav file? The function was very simple, and then all we have would be to declare it, and write a better front-end function for it that would take the wav file name as parameter.... why all the Miles stuff, and something else?

[Leland]

Apparently the Miles sound library has quite a few features that make it superior to using plain API functions or writing your own lib. Makes sense for Activision to use it instead of reinventing the wheel.

However, if I understand Mr. Ogre correctly, the problem is that unless you happen to be a licensee of the Miles lib, you can't compile the code. So the very first thing you have to do is clean the code so that Miles is no longer used anywhere. This will take a while, depending on how deep-ingrained and/or cryptic the Miles references in the code actually turn out to be.

[Solver]

According to Mr. Ogre, stripping Mile from code shouldn't be too hard.

strip references to it from the code, which shouldn't be too hard but will leave you with a soundless but otherwise functional game

And I do believe that we would be able to throw a replacement up quickly somewhat. A simple API function for the working prototype, and at some point see what feautures are we missing from Miles, and code those in somehow.

[Peter Triggs]

Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL)is quite popular and was used by Mr Ogre to port CTP1 to Linux. Here's a link to the audio subsystem.