Working on a new submarine sim: Sub Commander - advice needed!

[BubbaJake]

It runs with no flickering. Thank you so much!

Originally Posted by TheGeoff

Sub Commander is actually coded in Blitz Plus (a successor to Blitz Basic, available here: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Home/_index_.php). All of the game was written from scratch except for a few functions for processing .ini files.

Hi TheGeoff,

First off: congratulations! What an accomplishment. I just downloaded and installed your game within a VirtualBox VM on my Mac (I don't have any Windows machines). On that note, do you know if BlitzMax let's you compile existing BlitzPlus code for a different target (e.g., Mac or Linux)?

Relatedly, do you think you'd ever open source the code to allow others to contribute? You are clearly a beast productivity wise with all the updates you've cranked out -- I just read through the 19 page thread -- but if it were possible to assist in some way (I'm a developer by education/profession) then I'd love to send pull updates your way on GitHub.

In particular, I could really see this game evolving into what SHO was meant to be for the online sim community: a place for us all to gather, chat in realtime, and stalk the f' out of our prey/each other -- either 1v1 or in teams. Anyway, if you ever wanted to build server-side code to network the individual environments, there's a decent repository of snippets for Blitz (http://www.blitzbasic.com/codearcs/codearcs.php?cat=4); alternatively, may just be best to implement the network client in Blitz (obviously) and the server-side in something like Node.js or an existing platform designed for games. Given my expertise and experience designing networking protocols, this would probably be the best use of my time (again, if you're looking for any volunteer coders)!

Best,
Patrick

[Tango589]

In before the Committee!!

Welcome aboard Patrick!

[Aktungbby]

PatrickSF!

[Jimbuna]

Welcome Patrick

[TheGeoff]

Originally Posted by PatrickSF

Hi TheGeoff,

First off: congratulations! What an accomplishment. I just downloaded and installed your game within a VirtualBox VM on my Mac (I don't have any Windows machines). On that note, do you know if BlitzMax let's you compile existing BlitzPlus code for a different target (e.g., Mac or Linux)?

Relatedly, do you think you'd ever open source the code to allow others to contribute? You are clearly a beast productivity wise with all the updates you've cranked out -- I just read through the 19 page thread -- but if it were possible to assist in some way (I'm a developer by education/profession) then I'd love to send pull updates your way on GitHub.

In particular, I could really see this game evolving into what SHO was meant to be for the online sim community: a place for us all to gather, chat in realtime, and stalk the f' out of our prey/each other -- either 1v1 or in teams. Anyway, if you ever wanted to build server-side code to network the individual environments, there's a decent repository of snippets for Blitz (http://www.blitzbasic.com/codearcs/codearcs.php?cat=4); alternatively, may just be best to implement the network client in Blitz (obviously) and the server-side in something like Node.js or an existing platform designed for games. Given my expertise and experience designing networking protocols, this would probably be the best use of my time (again, if you're looking for any volunteer coders)!

Best,
Patrick

Hi Patrick, welcome to Subsim! Glad you're enjoying the game. Good to hear it's working fine on a Mac too.

I tried the trial version of BlitzMax a while ago and it doesn't seem possible to compile BlitzPlus code. Unfortunately it looks like it's a fair bit of work porting BlitzPlus code to BlitzMax - there's an automatic import function in BlitzMax but it doesn't seem to do a great job and there's still a lot of stuff which needs to be done by hand. One day I'll get around to buying BlitzMax and porting everything over though.

The open source question is an interesting one, it's something I've thought about a lot. More people contributing to the project would definitely speed up development, and it would really help develop areas (like multiplayer) where I have very little coding experience. But on the other hand making the game an open source project seems like it would really complicate things (managing version control etc), and the community isn't very big yet so I doubt there would be many contributors (for example version 0.23 has had the most downloads so far, just under 4000). There's also something really nice about personally understanding every little algorithm and every line of code in the game - if there's a bug or a crash, I know where to look and how to fix it. That wouldn't really be possible if a group of people with a wide range of coding styles were contributing.

So at the moment I don't have any immediate plans to go open source, but it may happen in the future. If I reach a point where I don't feel like developing the game any further I'll definitely release the code to the community.

But thank you very much for your offer! And thanks for the link too - I've been thinking about adding multiplayer more and more seriously recently so it could come in really handy soon.

[Arsonide]

As a coder that really enjoys your game, I wanted to voice my support of the fact that you are considering open sourcing it when you are done. Too many games die when their creators are done with them, even games with gigantic communities. (Cubeworld)

[Tango589]

A thought of another system that can go tits up: the ballast tank pumps and inlet valves. If something breaks you may try to surface or dive and nothing happens, or you start taking on ballast and diving uncontrollably, or you suffer an uncontrolled ascent. Is this realistic or am I taking the disaster scenario too far?

[Torkovsky]

TheGeoff, thanks for using the improved sound loops. I feel really honoured!
Best,
Torkovsky

[Aktungbby]

Torkovsky!

[Jimbuna]

Welcome Torkovsky

[TheGeoff]

Development of Sub Commander has been progressing pretty slowly lately (partly due to some real life commitments, partly due to an exciting new project I've started work on ). I have added a lot of the code for handling ballistic and cruise missiles though, which should be a nice addition to the next version.

Originally Posted by Tango589

A thought of another system that can go tits up: the ballast tank pumps and inlet valves. If something breaks you may try to surface or dive and nothing happens, or you start taking on ballast and diving uncontrollably, or you suffer an uncontrolled ascent. Is this realistic or am I taking the disaster scenario too far?

Good idea - a ballast system failure could definitely be an interesting (and difficult!!) situation to deal with. Not quite sure how to implement it, since there's no actual in-game object representing the ballast tanks, but I'll give it some thought and see what I can come up with.

Originally Posted by Torkovsky

TheGeoff, thanks for using the improved sound loops. I feel really honoured!
Best,
Torkovsky

Thank you for making them!

[Tango589]

Another exciting project from TheGeoff Corp. sounds promising, if it's anywhere near as good as SubCom! I look forward to being able to launch TLAM's at unsuspecting targets, will there also be TASM's available?

Keep calm and command on!

[DxMarovitch]

Just made an account on here just so I could say, this game is amazingly fun for how small it is. I can fit it on a crappy little USB drive and use it at work (lol!) and the new features and improvements are consistent.

I'm really looking forward to seeing TASMs and TLAMs added into the game!

Has there ever been a thought of there being a way to designate a specific crewmember to certain repairs? For example one person will automatically stop what they're doing and perform hull repairs, and another person will automatically repair damaged equipment?

Keep up the good work!!

Dan Marovitch

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by DxMarovitch

Just made an account on here just so I could say, this game is amazingly fun for how small it is. I can fit it on a crappy little USB drive and use it at work (lol!) and the new features and improvements are consistent.

I'm really looking forward to seeing TASMs and TLAMs added into the game!

Has there ever been a thought of there being a way to designate a specific crewmember to certain repairs? For example one person will automatically stop what they're doing and perform hull repairs, and another person will automatically repair damaged equipment?

Keep up the good work!!

Dan Marovitch

Welcome to SubSim Dan