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Several questions

Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2012 2:25 pm
by darkhog
1. Can I fork ZGameEditor?
2. Which Delphi version I need to edit EDITOR? Or is Lazarus enough?
3. Do I need to install any special components that aren't in standard Delphi/Lazarus distribution?
4. Which license does ZGE use for editor & engine?

Re: Several questions

Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2012 2:52 pm
by Kjell
Hi darkhog,

Can I fork ZGameEditor?
Yes

Which Delphi version I need to edit EDITOR? Or is Lazarus enough?
No, you need CodeGear Delphi XE2. Personally I'd really like to see the entire codebase migrate to Lazarus .. since that would make it much easier to contribute.

Which license does ZGE use for editor & engine?
MIT

By the way, i PM-ed you a solution for your problem a month ago .. but you never read the message :roll:

K

Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2012 3:22 pm
by darkhog
Now I know which version of Delphi I need, and I'll port it to Lazarus, because I want to make editor multiplatform too (that would unfortunately mean removing/replacing anything WinAPI-related, including animation in About box until I figure out how to do it in multiplatform way (perhaps using game preview component)).

Why do I fork ZGE instead of contributing to it?

Well, ZGE is demoscene tool and it does good job at that. It generates small executables, etc.
-BUT-
I find it being after some modifications a great general-purpose game making tool.
This unfortunately would mean adding bloat that won't go into main branch.
Don't get me wrong, I will try to maintain small game/editor size whenever possible, but I will focus on features, so if feature would mean increasing size of executable, etc. I'll choose feature instead of small executable.

Things I'd like to add/change

- Level/map editor. It won't be mandatory and you will be able to make levels using code as well, but it will lower barrier for people who don't feel comfortable with this method.
- Replacing ZExpression with more mainstream language. Here I'll choose either Lua or PascalScript (with preference on Lua)
- Visual modeling support. So you can drag&drop objects.
- Moving computationally expensive routines to OpenCL (in future)

Of course first things first, so first version will be same as newest source release at the time I'll download code, ported to Lazarus and with removed/replaced (preference of the latter when possible) WinAPI routines in editor, so editor will work both on Windows and Linux.

Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2012 3:34 pm
by Kjell
Hi darkhog,

Yea .. i share ( some of ) your sentiments. In fact, I tried to port the Editor to Lazarus myself a couple of years ago. But since I'm not a programmer, I got stuck eventually.

Good luck!
K