Currently, the game is no where near done, but is playable, at least, if you get a lot of people huddled around a single keyboard :). I'd be very happy to get help developing it.

   
 


Portability
I would like to have the game be as portable as possible. I am not a fan of forcing people to use the same platforms that I have choosen to use. That said, I simply have no access to systems other than Windows and Linux, and so while I can continue to use portable libraries, try to keep my code standard, etc, I cannot produce working versions of the games on other platforms. I'd like help making versions for Macs specifically (so many potential missed artists if ya can't get that platform in), but versions for any platform are welcome. I'd imagine that getting the game running in BSD would be the easiest, as it is most like Linux (relies on GCC and uses same build systems), but, as I have said, help developing for an platform is welcome

Development And Design
Since I am "starting all over", I've got a lot of interesting design choices to make.

Consering the point of design with things that are directly related to using C++, should I use the Boost library, particulary for the smart pointers, which make memory management a lot easier? [link http://www.boost.org/]. Should I guarentee exception safety and use exceptions in the game? [link http://www.gotw.ca/gotw/082.htm].

From a game standpoint. How should I implement the net code? Should I use something like ParaGUI [link http://www.paragui.org] for the GUI, or should I try to extend my current menuing code? Should I have some form of extremely simple scripting in the game data files, so as to provide useful indirection (say, instead of repeating the frame switch speed for all the Space models, have some config file that says like SPACEMODEL_REFRESH=25), instead of duplicationg the 25 all over the places, when it is intended that they all be modified together (That's going to cause a lot of frustration, my current system is lacking this feature, modifying the data files is a pain)

From platform specific standpoint. What build system should I use in Linux? Should I go and learn automake and autoconf, which might save me time in the long run (and provide the common ./configure ; make ; make install), or should I continue using hand editted makefiles, which I currently know how to do, but is somewhat tedious. What compiler should I use in Windows? Should I stick with MSVC (which is a very different compiler than GCC in Linux, diversity is a good thing), should I also use Mingw or Cygwin, so as to enable windows users without MSVC to contribute to the project?

As you can see, there's a lot of stuff under consideration, so a it's a good time to weigh in on the decisions

Game Maps And Ideas
They are always welcome. They don't require you know anything about programming, C++, etc, so this is an area where non-programmers can help greatly.

Simple things like suggesting improvements for the interface, or features you would like to see in the game, etc. Let me hear em whlie they are fresh.

Game data (maps, graphics), as I said before, will be switched over to whatever new file formats I come up with, so even using the old editor to make a map wouldn't make it obsolete, I'll keep it.


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