OverdriveGDX

Discuss and distribute tools and methods for modding. Moderator - Grognak
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TheOneAndOnlyRuffDuf
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Re: OverdriveGDX

Postby TheOneAndOnlyRuffDuf » Sat May 23, 2015 2:14 pm

Just thought I would say that I'm pushing for a comment from Justin over this and Clonebay, Ill say more when he responds again.
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TheOneAndOnlyRuffDuf
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Re: OverdriveGDX

Postby TheOneAndOnlyRuffDuf » Wed May 27, 2015 5:11 pm

Though Justin may have thought I was the creator of Clonebay, here is his response:

Code: Select all

Sorry for the delayed reply. We appreciate that these mod-focused versions of FTL are being made out of love for the game, but we hope that you can understand that it's an awkward situation from our perspective. You're asking for permission to clone our game. A strange aspect of the US copyright system is that if we don't actively protect our copyright, it is no longer valid. So we have to stick to a few rules regardless of the situation.

1) FTL fan inspired projects (fan art, fiction, mods, etc.) are mostly acceptable as long as they are non-commercial.

2) You cannot distribute any of our copyrighted assets. That means any art, music, sound effects, event texts, or any other sort of data from the game's xml files.

Overdrive, as we understand it, is acceptable because it will rely on any user having a valid version of FTL already on their system. It is, at its core, an extremely advanced mod.

Operation Clonebay seeks to clone FTL and distribute it freely. You can see why we might not be in love with that idea. But as long as it really uses none of our copyrighted assets, as previously described, then that is acceptable as game design cannot be copyrighted.

Does that answer your question?  Are you the creator of Clonebay or just an interested fan.

Thanks,
-justin
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Estel
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Re: OverdriveGDX

Postby Estel » Sat May 30, 2015 2:52 am

Great work kartoFlane, I can't imagine better person to push forward that once-abandoned project! Your knowledge about FTL insides always made me a little jeaolous ;)

/Estel
jr2
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Re: OverdriveGDX

Postby jr2 » Wed Jun 03, 2015 2:22 pm

If FTL is required, Overdrive should increase FTL sales / popularity if anything.
ispambeams
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Re: OverdriveGDX

Postby ispambeams » Wed Jul 01, 2015 11:05 pm

Is there an updated repo to look at? The link in the first post is 2 years old, so I'm not really sure if I'll be looking at correct stuff or not.
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kartoFlane
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Re: OverdriveGDX

Postby kartoFlane » Thu Jul 02, 2015 10:25 am

There's my fork of the original repo, however I haven't had the time to work on it much recently.
Superluminal2 - a ship editor for FTL
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Shrooblord
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Re: OverdriveGDX

Postby Shrooblord » Thu Aug 27, 2015 1:28 am

(Warning: this post is big. Sorry. I ramble.)

Is this still being worked on?

If it's not, then I mourn the project. It looked very promising and exciting.

Regardless, I wish to commemorate Vhati for so much planning and setting up work done as reported in the last few pages. And of course, the other coders who have been exciting my joy glands far too much for the past five hours of reading (gosh, is that the time--?!). Excellent work, DiEvAl, kartoFlane and John Luke Pack Hard. I'm probably blatantly forgetting some others -- appologies. It's been a long read.

I'll respond to some things said in the last two pages (of Overdrive) with my thoughts.

Vhati wrote:Events are posted to an outbound queue where veto listeners can cancel any action they don't like (undamageable ship). Any events that make it through are shipped to the server via serialization. The server ships the events back (in the order received) to each player's inbound queue.
If I understand what you're trying to say correctly, you propose the client-side handling whether or not a ship should receive damage before telling the server "hey, I need to be damaged". That's generally not a very good idea. You want the server to be the one to decide whether or not players get damaged, or players get what-evered in general, to reduce complications with slow/faulty network connections and (even worse) client-side hacking.

Vhati wrote:Each station's system icon would be rendered on the station's square. Not great from a usability standpoint, since crew would often obscure it... but traditional icon placement could still be used for rectangular rooms with one station.

If necessary, another requested feature "Ship foreground image" could help (I think referring to a togglable overlay to bring up as a reference diagram for things like teleport door pairs). Cover the area with a picture of an empty room with just the icon.
Can I interject here that, instead, you could have a dynamic icon? If a system occupies only one square, then yes, its icon only overlays that one square. But if multiple adjacent squares are assigned to a system, then the icon could sit in the average space in the centre of those adjacent squares.

Also, for your ship foreground image idea, how about having a small thumbnail somewhere on the UI like you sometimes have when doing pixel art? Its visibility could be toggled and in one glance over it you could learn which doors connect where due to colour coding doors and which systems occupy which squares due to - again - colour coding, but this time tiles.



And I'll conclude by saying GREAT SCOT your setup and progess since page 1 of the original Overdrive thread has brought you far! Please don't give up on this project! It's been inspiring me since early 2013...!

It may seem I'm gushing - I am - but I just wanted to leave my praise to any and all who have contributed to this project - dead or alive as it may be -; it's been an amazing ride so far. Hope to see it reach completion.

Still rootin' for ya in 2015. Coders, make some noise!

PS
I'm an avid programmer myself and although I'm absolutely deterred by the thought of even looking at Java (I hate that language so much for some reason), this project's making me excited enough to maybe pick it up and give it a whizz! I'll let you know if I can buckle down and join you in this awesome project if University life permits. I start back next Monday...!

@kartoFlane:
You seem to be making some progress! Inspiring. Hope I can help you out but like I said - I hate Java with all my guts. I'll be skimming through your code regardless.
(An interesting thing to note is that I'm a Mac user so any and all files you'll be getting for me will be sure to work on OS X... lol.)
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kartoFlane
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Re: OverdriveGDX

Postby kartoFlane » Thu Aug 27, 2015 9:58 pm

Hey, thanks for interest and the kind words :)

Shrooblord wrote:Is this still being worked on?

Sadly, I no longer work on Overdrive in any regular (or even irregular) fashion. Currently I'm working with Sleeper on his newest project, and that consumes the vast majority of my time set aside for programming.

Shrooblord wrote:I'm an avid programmer myself and although I'm absolutely deterred by the thought of even looking at Java (I hate that language so much for some reason)...

*shrug* it's a tool like any other -- it has its niches where it's the optimal solution. It also depends on what you're looking for in a programming language. I know I definitely wouldn't want to do a desktop application like my ship editor in C++ -- you would think that pointers and manual memory management are just two levels of abstraction less between you and the machine, but it makes keeping a mental model of code in your mind surprisingly more difficult (though maybe that's just me having little experience with that language).

Shrooblord wrote:...this project's making me excited enough to maybe pick it up and give it a whizz! I'll let you know if I can buckle down and join you in this awesome project if University life permits. I start back next Monday...!

Well, this project has been changing hands constantly since its inception, you could be the next person to carry it further, maybe even to its conclusion ;)

Shrooblord wrote:@kartoFlane:
You seem to be making some progress! Inspiring. Hope I can help you out but like I said - I hate Java with all my guts. I'll be skimming through your code regardless.
(An interesting thing to note is that I'm a Mac user so any and all files you'll be getting for me will be sure to work on OS X... lol.)

I struck a vein of features that required comparatively little work, but produced easily measureable results. Most of the work thus far was figuring out stuff that isn't this flashy, like the server - client communication.

Anyway, good luck! It took me almost two weeks to wrap my head around the code base and start adding code of my own, hopefully you'll do better :P
Superluminal2 - a ship editor for FTL
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Shrooblord
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Re: OverdriveGDX

Postby Shrooblord » Fri Aug 28, 2015 10:37 am

kartoFlane wrote:Anyway, good luck! It took me almost two weeks to wrap my head around the code base and start adding code of my own, hopefully you'll do better :P
Lol I guess I'll try if I can find some time.

Haha, space elephant in the room. Cool. Yeah, it's definitely there. ;)
Consider the project having one close follower more!
ScubaSteve3465
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Re: OverdriveGDX

Postby ScubaSteve3465 » Thu Oct 08, 2015 4:46 pm

Its really sad to see this on hold once again. It would put so much new life into FTL and the modding scene, I hope someone decides to buckle down and make a team to finish this project. Sadly I keep seeing people trying to accomplish this on their own, leading to failure. More than likely due to work load, I have to say that Kart did an excellent job getting some features and work put into this in such a short time. I really look forward to the day when this is made a reality. If and when that happens, I will be the first in line to post saying how grateful I am while also throwing in a donation to show support. Good luck to anyone that has the time and courage to take on this responsibility.