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May 04, 2008 8:53 am
May 04, 2008 8:53 am
Subject: Re: US players needed...
> I admit my utter ignorance of coding, but is it possible to write an external TCP/IP communications suite,
> and simply replace (via a JMP and a GOTO) Max's own ipx code within the executable, without breaking
> anything else?
No.
"Duke" made an attempt to get rid of the out of sync bug by writing an IPX server that keeps an eye on the network messages and resends messages that don't get answered (what MAX itself doesn't).
There is a way using Khan(?) or something like that to play IPX over the Internet but that works only up to windows98.
> I mean, if you're going to reconstruct an engine, you should also replace the
> software renderer with a hardware-based one...
We don't reconstruct the engine. We have our own engine. The rendering itself is done using libSDL that is in fact pretty fast. However our code still sucks so you need a lot of cpu power and ram right now. We'll go for this later. Much later. When talking about alot I'd say you should run a 1,6GB cpu and about 512mb ram.. nothing today
> and certainly re-write the AI (which sucked and cheated).
AI is not in the plot for now. If you want to play AI use the original. This is all about network gaming. However it would be nice to see an AI in MAXR one day too.
> Also, is it possible to contact anyone who was on the original MAX team, and
> perhaps get the original source code? I tried, a few years ago, to get Interplay to
> give me the source, but they wouldn't...
We tried the same years ago too. In fact "Sal" managed to get in contact with a formal member of the team but he couldn't help us since he doesn't work for Interplay any more and has no data any more too. Interplay itself is stubborn about that topic and if you ask me they don't have any data for themself any more since the company changed, closed and reopened a lot.
> I admit my utter ignorance of coding, but is it possible to write an external TCP/IP communications suite,
> and simply replace (via a JMP and a GOTO) Max's own ipx code within the executable, without breaking
> anything else?
No.
"Duke" made an attempt to get rid of the out of sync bug by writing an IPX server that keeps an eye on the network messages and resends messages that don't get answered (what MAX itself doesn't).
There is a way using Khan(?) or something like that to play IPX over the Internet but that works only up to windows98.
> I mean, if you're going to reconstruct an engine, you should also replace the
> software renderer with a hardware-based one...
We don't reconstruct the engine. We have our own engine. The rendering itself is done using libSDL that is in fact pretty fast. However our code still sucks so you need a lot of cpu power and ram right now. We'll go for this later. Much later. When talking about alot I'd say you should run a 1,6GB cpu and about 512mb ram.. nothing today
> and certainly re-write the AI (which sucked and cheated).
AI is not in the plot for now. If you want to play AI use the original. This is all about network gaming. However it would be nice to see an AI in MAXR one day too.
> Also, is it possible to contact anyone who was on the original MAX team, and
> perhaps get the original source code? I tried, a few years ago, to get Interplay to
> give me the source, but they wouldn't...
We tried the same years ago too. In fact "Sal" managed to get in contact with a formal member of the team but he couldn't help us since he doesn't work for Interplay any more and has no data any more too. Interplay itself is stubborn about that topic and if you ask me they don't have any data for themself any more since the company changed, closed and reopened a lot.
Bernd Kosmahl
"Sir, we are surrounded!" - "Great - we can attack in any direction."