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Re: What to do with Xconq


:Warning <personal opinion>
I see several major issues that Stan has brought up.
1) Barriers to developing the code,
2) Barriers to playing the game/games
a) XConq used to be on the standard linux distribution.  It's no longer
there.  Years ago, I bought the Yddrasyl (sp?) Linux distribution just to
get xconq (it wasn't there.  potential copyright issues with Apple caused
them to drop it from the distribution.)
b) There should be a game-players-only turnkey install with the best of the
game-moduels available immediately upon startup.

I played XConq back in the 5x days and on a networked AIX box, it was great
fun.  Conceptually, I love the open-source nature of xconq.  There have
been any number of times that I downloaded everything.  I get all set up to
work on the code, but I just can't bring myself to get excited about
leaping backward in time and going back to hacking around with 'C'
/TCL/pseudo-Lisp code.  I've seen that movie and it just holds absolutely
no appeal for me.  It beats Cobal and BASIC, but not by much.

I was very excited a few months back when you seemed to be considering
doing a re-write in Java.  I can't speak for everyone, but I know that I
would be more then willing to spend a lot of time on developing my own
enhancements/refinements if it was written in a language that I am
currently interested in.

A lot of open-source folks are late-night college hackers.  A Java
implementation is the Y2K equivalent of 'C' back in the eighties.  To get
the best job, you need experience.  Compare the resume-enhancing effect and
marketable skills that a student gets from contributing to a major Java
module of a large-scale, distributed, networked project, versus being able
to say that they added a "game module" written in a proprietary lisp or
that they cleaned up the TCL-based interface.

Players care about the user-interface (read pretty UI, graphics, sound etc)
Programmers care about cool technology, what they can do with it and what
they can learn.

I'd suggest a survey.  Ask folks:
o - How many would rather continue work on C/TCL/Lisp  ... or how many
would be willing to help if a different technology, such as Java was used
instead.
o - How much time they might be willing to spend on it.
o - Who would be willing to develop game levels
o - Who would be willing to develop graphical "level-editors"
etc.

XConq is very, very cool!!!  Stan, don't let it die just because us
old-farts are going through a mid-life crisis :-)

-- A. Rick Anderson



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