New subsim, OpenSSN, in its early stages

[redtyphoon]

Hi everyone. I'm currently working on a new subsim. It's called OpenSSN and can be found over at http://openssn.sf.net. My work isn't entirely new, it's actually a continuation of the work done by the LinuxSSN team several years ago. It appears they abandoned the project after getting some basics working. Since it's open source I've been able to take what they started and run with it.

At the moment OpenSSN is in the early stages. Players can move about a map, detect AI-controlled ships and subs and use radar and sonar. So far there's no combat and no missions, but I hope to get those features added soon. I'm using the commercial game "Seawolf" as inspiration for the look and feel of the game.

Right now I'm targeting the Linux and FreeBSD platforms, but if anyone wants to take the code and put together a package for Windows, I'm more than happy to work with you to make that happen. The code is pretty portable.

Right now there isn't much to see (sea), but I will be posting updates here as the project improves and I hope you'll chime in with suggestions or send me some patches (if you're a coder).

Cheers!

[FERdeBOER]

Great news!!
I'd love to see a modern subsim linux-native...

Please, please, don't give up

My programming skills are close to zero, but I can offer myself for a Spanish translation. I know Italian also, but I'm Spanish; if no Italian offers I'll do.

Let me know if you need help and, if so, what could I do.

[redtyphoon]

Originally Posted by FERdeBOER

Great news!!
I'd love to see a modern subsim linux-native...

Please, please, don't give up

My programming skills are close to zero, but I can offer myself for a Spanish translation. I know Italian also, but I'm Spanish; if no Italian offers I'll do.

Let me know if you need help and, if so, what could I do.

Thank you, I'll try to stick with it. It's something I do "after hours", but I'm hoping to get missions included soon.

Your language skills could indeed be handy. I've written a first-draft of a manual in English. If you could translate it to Spanish, that would help me reach a wider audience. I'd also love to have the website translated into Spanish too, if you have time. Any translated documents can be e-mailed to me at jessefrgsmith@yahoo.ca

Thanks!

[Chad]

Best of luck redtyphoon.

If those screens from your webpage are in-game shots and fully functional, it's coming along really nicely

[redtyphoon]

Originally Posted by Chad

Best of luck redtyphoon.

If those screens from your webpage are in-game shots and fully functional, it's coming along really nicely

Thank you! Those screen shots are from in-game. I'd say they are "functional" though perhaps not yet "fully functional". There is still a lot of work to do to get combat and AI in place.

[Julhelm]

Would you like a hand with the graphical side of things? Making some nice GUI screens and stuff.

[FERdeBOER]

Originally Posted by redtyphoon

Your language skills could indeed be handy. I've written a first-draft of a manual in English. If you could translate it to Spanish, that would help me reach a wider audience. I'd also love to have the website translated into Spanish too, if you have time. Any translated documents can be e-mailed to me at jessefrgsmith@yahoo.ca

Thanks!

Work in progress. I'm also doing it "after hours", but I think I'll have the manual ready soon.

[Deamon]

Will this remain a pure Linux thingy ?

[redtyphoon]

Originally Posted by Deamon

Will this remain a pure Linux thingy ?

Well, I'm doing all of my development on Linux, so I suppose it is primarily a "Linux thingy". However, I am trying to keep the code cross-platform-friendly and I plan to get it ported to FreeBSD once some more features are in place.

OpenSSN is built using C++ and the SDL graphics library which runs on Windows and OS X, so I suspect it should be easy to get running on other systems.

Bottom line: I personally won't be making builds for other operating systems, but if someone else is willing to step forward and make packages for Windows, OS X, etc then I will host those packages on the OpenSSN website and work with the packagers to make the process as easy as possible.

[Weps674]

Yeah! great! I was one of the two guys working on the project and would love to help you finish the work in any way that I can.

Michael, the other developer, got a new job and lost interest in the project. I decided that it was too difficult a project to complete by myself, but I have always regretted not finishing it.

Originally Posted by redtyphoon

Hi everyone. I'm currently working on a new subsim. It's called OpenSSN and can be found over at http://openssn.sf.net. My work isn't entirely new, it's actually a continuation of the work done by the LinuxSSN team several years ago. It appears they abandoned the project after getting some basics working. Since it's open source I've been able to take what they started and run with it.

Right now there isn't much to see (sea), but I will be posting updates here as the project improves and I hope you'll chime in with suggestions or send me some patches (if you're a coder).

Cheers!

[redtyphoon]

It would be great to have you on board. It is a big project to tackle and the more people working on it, the better.

[Weps674]

Sounds good. I am building a new linux box. :-)

[redtyphoon]

Hi all, I've been taking a break these past couple of weeks to work on other things and give myself a break from all things sub-related.

But now I'm back and making some improvements, which you can follow along with in the SVN code repository. Mostly I'm trying to fix some display bugs. Today I also fixed a bug with torpedoes and added the ability for surface ships to communicate.

By popular demand, I'm hoping to add sounds to this upcoming release, if you know where I can find some good sub sound effects, please let me know.