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raimian

raimian



  4/20/2017  3

hello everybody

since summer last year I have been discussing with Gameware the possibility of a update to C3/DS.

I have great news.
Gameware have agreed to let a few lucky community members update C3/DS on a voluntary basis with NDA's of course.

I will need Windows, Mac, Linux programmers to update the engine and tools to current OS's

so if you are a Creatures fan who knows C++ contact me to discuss.
I am on cc-chat most days from 12pm gmt onwards

thanks raimian

 
Munknorn93

Munknorn93



  4/20/2017

I'd love to.

Lover of cute
 
Norngirl

Norngirl


 visit Norngirl's website: Norngirl's Temporary Storage
  4/20/2017

So,only a few people will have updated Creatures 3 & Docking station? I guess that means for testing maybe.

Now I am very curious about in what way could it possible be updated in and make it differ?
Is it anything special that just this few lucky drawed members will experience that other will not?

Also this something everyone will enjoy later on perhaps?
(just as JcNorn said,but she expressed it better thought)

I do not know C++,so sorry can't take part in it.





 
Brynn

Brynn



  4/20/2017

Any chance you can share the correspondence you had with Gameware? I'm optimistic, but these sorts of agreements are usually laced with some kind of weird legalese.
 
jcnorn

jcnorn



  4/20/2017  1

This is very exciting news. And will the rest of the community get to enjoy the updated versions on our machines as well at a later date when the updating has finished?
 
raimian

raimian



  4/20/2017

as far as I know the windows version is the only working version, but even that has its quirks.

C3/DS will be updated to run on modern OS's (No new features) and re-released under the same exodus name and DS be also released separately too in its usual free format.

the source code is outdated and needs updating to current C++ standards so that the engine can be recompiled, (currently it doesn't compile under current visual studio or gcc


 
Norngirl

Norngirl


 visit Norngirl's website: Norngirl's Temporary Storage
  4/20/2017

Ah I see, thank you so much for the info Raimian.
Im still using the old Docking Station that was downloaded for free
on Gameware's site way back and it works well on Windows 8,as far I can tell.
Much better compared to the DS that was included in my Creatures Triple pack (XP Win compatible edition, aka is what I belive G.O.G use too,or so I heard). It worked,but that one never could get the catalouge files right with pressing F1 on a agent and the info never appeared and didn't like to sync with genetic kit,CAOS tool etc.

The old Docking station standalone download allways worked better for me and is what I use right now.

 
Geat_Masta

Geat_Masta



  4/20/2017  1

To those that missed out on our chat conversation, this is the summary:

- gameware is a company that consists of one man and makes $1k per year
- meaning you get nothing for helping out.
- gameware has the rights to redistribute the old games, but nothing further than that
- point 1: updating the game in any way other than getting it to run on new machines is literally illegal, no patches, no new features.
- point 2: we would get nothing from purchasing the company.
- the NDA you would have to sign would make it impossible to share anything you learned about the engine with the community,
- Similarly, if I signed on that would stop my work on kreatures, with no benefit to me.
- It's very unlikely that there are any C++ programmers here skilled enough to do it aside from me, given that no one volunteered to help with kreatures. Similarly, I contacted chris double, fuzzy, and jenny and some other C++ people that used to be members when I started on kreatures, and none of them responded.

In summation this project is basically dead in the water.

I also find the "updating to current C++ standards" part very concerning, C++ is designed to be backwards compatible, meaning that they wrote it in non-standard C++ to start with. This is especially bad considering that they used STL to program it, as opposed to openc2e, which stopped working because other libraries changed.

Furthermore, it took them longer to release an OSX version than to develop the engine in the first place, which just wreaks of bad design. And they never updated the engine for re releases when they had business doing bamzooki, which to me, indicates that no one wanted to touch the code. In short I wouldn't expect it to be well written code by any means, and updating it would likely translate to a complete teardown, which as noted before, would be unpaid and uncompensated.

 
Doringo
Lodestar

Doringo


 visit Doringo's website: Abacus & Ettinus
  4/20/2017

Geat_Masta wrote:
In summation this project is basically dead in the water.



Well that's a bummer..

 
Intyalle

Intyalle


 visit Intyalle's website: Nadia Eat Hand
  4/20/2017  1

I disagree re: bummer. It's not like much was being offered in the first place. GOG's already done a pretty good job with compatibility, and the community here has already done a bang-up job improving the game. What, exactly, were we *ever* really going to get out of this?

Also known as bab_5_freak from the old Gameware forums.
 
Elana

Elana



  4/23/2017  1

Geat_Masta wrote:
...
- It's very unlikely that there are any C++ programmers here skilled enough to do it aside from me, given that no one volunteered to help with kreatures. ...


Skill isn't the problem.
Time is a limiting factor.
(And as this is technically a commercial project I probably would also need to get permission from my employer to work on that)

 
ElasticMuffin

ElasticMuffin


 visit ElasticMuffin's website: The Creature Repository
  4/27/2017  2

Any C/C++ code suffers a fair amount of bit-rot as time marches on. The code's the better part of two decades old at this point - even if it was written beautifully at the time, it'd definitely be pretty ramshackle at this point. The advances in compilers and build systems since then mean that even very well-maintained projects from that era are tricky to update to modern machines, let alone something as complex as the C3/DS engine (just look at openc2e's code for an idea).

It's frankly impressive GoG does what they do, and they do that with people who are paid for their work.

That said, the biggest thing that could possibly gained from this (IMO) is the potential restoration of a warp server. If there's any chance of acquiring anything for that (be it code, server binaries, whatever) then you should definitely try to pursue that. The games themselves are under good stewardship with GoG, in my opinion, but the lack of a warp server has plagued DS for years.


The Creature Repository / Eem Labs
My Creatures download archive (Bibbleworld, C12DS, and more)

 
raimian

raimian



  5/4/2017

yes im also discussing getting the warp server set up again with gameware.

yes the gog version and the mac version work well, but they wont remain compatible forever. and the linux version is broken. also the tools dont all function on win 10 and are non-exsistent on mac and linux

 
Missmysterics

Missmysterics



  9/4/2017  3

I don't agree with what Gameware is "letting" people do.
It's voluntary work but involves the kind of demands to be expected of paid work,not just in effort but in the complete lack of creative freedom and the inability to corrospond with others (NDA), he (assuming "one man" isn't an exaggeration) should be paying someone for this.

 


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