Game Launchers (WX and Java)

November 14, 2006, 22:33:37

Currently we do not have one of these, but I'll list some possible things and their priorities (for the wxWidgets version).

High: Wad downloading, possibly using a heavily modified version of getwad or be rebuilt from scratch.
Low: Multi-language (Launcher supports UNICODE, but the codeblocks project doesn't have it switched on, the reason is that the client and server don't support it.... yet)

Status:

• + Runs on multiple platforms - Need testers for Mac,
  Linux and any other OS

Key:
* - Implemented
+ - Partially Implemented
X - Not Done

November 15, 2006, 01:23:40

Stickied.

November 15, 2006, 19:29:19

Keep this updated!

January 15, 2007, 01:59:49

Updated (a bit late now)

January 15, 2007, 22:59:27

Multi-language support should be shit easy to implement with a little code and some config files. The only problem would be to find English-to-foreign language translators. (Which, again, may be easy to fulfill.)

January 16, 2007, 01:01:48

The other problem is the fact that odamex has no unicode style ingame language font, so this feature might be considered useless unless someone wants to develop one.

January 16, 2007, 09:12:01

Well, other than Russian and Chinese, I think most languages can be covered by standard Greek alphabet fonts(minus the accents).
Anyway, I can do English -> French translations.

January 16, 2007, 14:17:27

The other problem is the fact that odamex has no unicode style ingame language font, so this feature might be considered useless unless someone wants to develop one.

I'm positive you can't get all 95,221 Unicode characters in the Doom font, not only is this impractical as hell, but it'll make for a ridiculously huge download. (And you would probably have to enslave someone to work 24/7 on it.)

Unless, of course, you don't go with the Doom font, and replace it with a real anti-aliased one, which would probably look gaudy in-game.

January 17, 2007, 10:32:13

some filter (In the GIMP/PS definition of 'filter') could probably be applied to the text as it is rendered to make it look doomy.

True-type is probably the way to go if you want to have scalable text where it is not too small at uber-high-res, and yet not too huge when scaling is enabled.  It could be used for the score-board as well. :)

I don't necessarily mean *the actual ttf format,* as there are patent issues (does anyone care?), however equal technology should suffice.

January 25, 2007, 02:39:24

I'm positive you can't get all 95,221 Unicode characters in the Doom font

Don't be ridiculous, you would only need the characters for the supported languages, which would never be 95 thousand characters.

November 04, 2007, 20:17:31

Hi developers.

I am new but I am interested in contributing to this great project. Back in the days of ZDaemon 1.06 I developed a Linux launcher based on GTK that supported threaded server queries. It did a good job and was able to query very fast. I became slightly disgruntled with that project when the ZDaemon source was close, not ported to Linux, and the launcher protocol was closed. I would enjoy working on the threaded queries in the wx launcher. Most of my experience with threads has been in the use of pthreads. I would be able to develop a pthread based query rather quickly. I also have some experience in developing threads in Windows using both the pthread library as well as the Windows API for threads (though I develop mostly on *nix platforms.) I realize that requiring the pthread library could be a hassle for the Windows developers so I am wondering if there have been any thoughts on this subject. I have experience in developing multi-platform applications and I have previously developed applications that used pthreads when compiled on *nix OS's while using the Windows API when compiled under Windows (VC++6, mingw, cygwin.) Is this direction that is desired?

EDIT: After looking around on the board and seeing who the posters are I think most of you should recognize me. In particular... hey Russell, deathz0r, slayer! :)

November 04, 2007, 22:33:29

Hey HyperEye! Long time no see :)

Yeah, as you can see the launcher does need a lot of work,
posix threads are an interesting implementation, apparently wxwidgets also has its own threading system aswell (check: http://www.wxwidgets.org/manuals/stable/wx_wxthreadoverview.html)

If you'd like, stop by irc for a chat: irc.oftc.net #odamex :)

November 04, 2007, 22:55:17

Interesting. The wxwidgets thread API looks to be very similar to the pthreads API. It looks like it is also a portable implementation (it would compile in Windows using the already required wx library.) I will play with wxwidgets and their MT API. I should have a good handle on it rather quickly. I will then dive into the launcher code and see what I can cook up. Thanks for the info Russell... I will make sure to pop into the IRC channel sometime soon.