Future Planetwars Windows only

Future Planetwars Windows only

A dynamic game undergoing constant development and refinement, that attempts to balance playability with fresh and innovative features.

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Agon
Posts: 527
Joined: 16 May 2007, 18:33

Future Planetwars Windows only

Post by Agon »

Hello,

I heard the other day that the new Planetwars will be for Windows users only.
I really want to play Planetwars if it will be released but I will not boot Windows to do so. This means Planetwars is for me dead and since most ZK players will probably play Planetwars, ZK will be dead to me, too.

Why would you choose to not support none Windows user?
The last Planetwars was playable in a browser for nearly all users.
Why throw that away? Use that as a base and continue there and please don't go, "I don't care about other players who don't use what I use".

A suggestion:
- .Net framework for the model
- A http server for the view and input
The http server can host any language which outputs Html and JavaScript. A REST communication between mode<->view|input.
This way you can get all of the players, you have .Net somewhere and Planetwars (metagame) is accessible from all platforms with a browser.
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Licho
Zero-K Developer
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Re: Future Planetwars Windows only

Post by Licho »

Basically, if you want other technology than .NET and WPF you have to code it or get people to code it.

WPF and .NET is simplest way to make rich GUI for us - compared to hacking crazy javascripts together and fighting with browser compatibilities.

Developer motivation is the most important thing and we have to make it easy to develop. We also have prototype in Silveright already which is easy to port to WPF.

We could not even find people to maintain lobby for linux, thats why its windows only now.

Linux has been huge waste of time for us. We spent months making lobby linux compatible to get what - 2 users and no maintainers for linux.
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Agon
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Joined: 16 May 2007, 18:33

Re: Future Planetwars Windows only

Post by Agon »

I don't care about the lobby, would be nice to have the ZK-Lobby on Linux, thought.

I care about Planetwars. With PW as a webapp, you don't need to maintain for different OSs. To get around different browsers you can use a javascript library like jquery or Ext js. If you don't like JS use a php framework which does the JS for you. And it is much easier to test for different browsers than to test for different versions of Windows, Linux, Mac OS.
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SinbadEV
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Joined: 02 May 2005, 03:56

Re: Future Planetwars Windows only

Post by SinbadEV »

Agon wrote:I don't care about the lobby, would be nice to have the ZK-Lobby on Linux, thought.

I care about Planetwars. With PW as a webapp, you don't need to maintain for different OSs. To get around different browsers you can use a javascript library like jquery or Ext js. If you don't like JS use a php framework which does the JS for you. And it is much easier to test for different browsers than to test for different versions of Windows, Linux, Mac OS.
I'm not even part of the project and I see the wisdom of their decision... Microsoft just makes it dead easy to develop... between intellisense, form designers, drag and drop database connections... really, developing a .NET/WPF application is so easy even I can do it.

Now, It's understandable that you will feel hurt by this decision but unless you are offering to develop the platform agnostic version I think your cries will fall on deaf ears.

That said, it's too bad they need lobby integration for it to work right because it is really easy to develop a ASP.NET application which would be available as a web site to all users...
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Agon
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Re: Future Planetwars Windows only

Post by Agon »

Well I expressed my opinion about future PW.

Time to move on.
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Licho
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Joined: 19 May 2006, 19:13

Re: Future Planetwars Windows only

Post by Licho »

Actually lobby has browser so its not big hurdle to have planetwars in web-form (it has browser and can handle clicking on some links internally providing simple integration). Existing mission and map browsers are done as web applications.

Issue is lack of devs willing/able to code and maintain rich web application of such scale in javascript.
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Agon
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Re: Future Planetwars Windows only

Post by Agon »

If you provide a JSON or XML REST API for the Planetwars logic server, I would maybe spent a few hours a week on it, besides playing.
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Licho
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Re: Future Planetwars Windows only

Post by Licho »

The server use ASP.NET MVC 3 so yeah it works by providing JSON data.

Though few hours per week are probably not enough for project of this scope. Initial PlanetWars and PW2 cost at least 400 hours.
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Agon
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Re: Future Planetwars Windows only

Post by Agon »

But I would only develop the GUI not the logic. And 400h are not much.
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Licho
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Re: Future Planetwars Windows only

Post by Licho »

But GUI is the most complex stuff - have you seen PW2? With animated zoomable/scrollable starmap where fleets and planets and moons and stuff move in real time and you can accelerate time, zoom up to planet level to see gui details and manage planets etc?

Or various interfaces like trading screen, planet lists - they are complex grids likely with special features and buttons.
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Agon
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Joined: 16 May 2007, 18:33

Re: Future Planetwars Windows only

Post by Agon »

No, how can I see PW2 in action if I don't use Windows.

Well my offer stands, a few hours per week for PW2 web developing.
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Licho
Zero-K Developer
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Re: Future Planetwars Windows only

Post by Licho »

Ok, I will talk this through with quantum.
jeykey
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Joined: 28 May 2009, 16:24

Re: Future Planetwars Windows only

Post by jeykey »

would love to see a linux port, i think it's a must for it's success
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SinbadEV
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Joined: 02 May 2005, 03:56

Re: Future Planetwars Windows only

Post by SinbadEV »

jeykey wrote:would love to see a linux port, i think it's a must for it's success
again, not a developer or on this team but:

I think the best option would to make the "pretty" stuff windows only but modularize the code such that the "functional" stuff (protocol stuff), like submitting wins and choosing targets is not tied to the "pretty" stuff. This is good software design anyways... it's like

User Interface > Business Layer > Client-Server Protocol > Back-End-Server, then you just need to release the code for your business layer and people can port it to linux... and make their own UI for it. It also means you can provide a web-application that uses the Client-Server Protocol to display current universe status/player stats etc.

edit: it also means that someone can make a python (or whatever TASClient uses) script to communicate with your Back-End-Server instead of ZeroK lobby... which opens up peoples choices.
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Agon
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Re: Future Planetwars Windows only

Post by Agon »

If you want to see what Html5 and simple JavaScript can do:
http://code.google.com/p/cakejs/
http://processingjs.org/
It's pretty impressing.
==Troy==
Posts: 376
Joined: 29 Oct 2008, 15:55

Re: Future Planetwars Windows only

Post by ==Troy== »

I wonder what percentage of spring players are using linux (last time I heard the numbers it was ~30%).

Recalling all of the .net experience and the "get the mono" I am not surprised that you only got 2 players from linux for you already small playerbase.

From my experience, any serious OSS project with linux support has 10-60% of linux userbase, depending on ease of integration into the repos or installation. Maybe you have done something wrong in the marketing department, or just released for a few months and "gave up" ?


I wish you luck competing with windows games, commercial and free ones.
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Pxtl
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Joined: 23 Oct 2004, 01:43

Re: Future Planetwars Windows only

Post by Pxtl »

@Agon

Nobody is arguing that HTML5 isn't *powerful*. You can do tonnes of awesome things in HTML5, obviously.

The problem is that HTML5 isn't *easy*.
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very_bad_soldier
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Joined: 20 Feb 2007, 01:10

Re: Future Planetwars Windows only

Post by very_bad_soldier »

Why not try a powerful framework like e.g. vaadin (http://demo.vaadin.com/sampler). You code purely in Java and you get tons of ready-to-use gui components and a bunch of addons right now. I dont think building rich web applications will get any easier than this.
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Agon
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Joined: 16 May 2007, 18:33

Re: Future Planetwars Windows only

Post by Agon »

They need something like canvas in Html5, Flash or Silverlight to draw the game-universe.
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Pxtl
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Joined: 23 Oct 2004, 01:43

Re: Future Planetwars Windows only

Post by Pxtl »

Well, if they stuck to Silverlight, you could keep the option open for a Mono port at a future date since Mono has the Moonlight project.

The problem with going full WPF is that Mono has *no* plans to implement WPF. I mean, porting .NET code is to Mono is already much harder than it has any right to be, but WPF would add an order of magnitude to the difficulty.
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