4C5744230 wrote: [quote author=747269666F72636567757931000 link=1344317713/53#53 date=1446842666]I wonder if Vern still works on the game from time to time or if he just doesn't have enough time anymore
I wonder the same... I also wonder how hard it is to make the Level Builder available for the newer systems. I thought it might be a good task for some of my students (I work as a high school teacher), and there might even be some student who'd do it just to learn more programming. But I have too little info on what needs to be done, perhaps someone with more knowledge could tell me and then I'll look around a bit...
Hey guys! So in general I'm open to the idea of someone modifying the level builder code. There are just a couple issues:
1) The hard drives with the original game's source code are currently in storage. I bought a fixer-upper and have to finish a lot of renovation before I get my stuff out of storage. That might be a while. But, once I do, I'm open to making the level builder open-source.
2) It's a BIG project to update the level builder. Way, way more than 50-100 hours. If it were merely 50-100 hours, I'd have done it already myself. ;-)
I'm afraid few people understand just how extensive the changes were that Apple forced on software developers during the OS 7 > X and PPC > Intel transitions.
Some history: back in the old days of OS 7 and PPC machines, Apple encouraged developers to use
Resources
to store things like images, sounds, dialog boxes, and so on. Resources were an Apple-specific technology, and were not compatible with Windows.
I obediently did 'the Apple way' and used Resources.
Later, when converting to OS X, Apple did away with Resources and switched to Interface Builder. Interface Builder is much better, but it means that EVERY SINGLE DIALOG BOX you see in the Level Builder must be completel rewritten from the ground up. Not just all the menus, checkboxes, radio buttons, and text fields, but also the source code (probably 1-3 pages of it per dialog box) must be entirely rewritten from the ground up.
We're talking old code just throw out and rewritten -- not 'upgraded'.
For the GUI portion of the Level Builder, it must be written from the ground up, as if no work had ever been done on a level builder before.
Of course, that's not impossible, but I think it took me something like 2 years of development to make the original level builder.
Maybe it can be done in something reasonable like 3 months, maybe faster, I'm not sure.
But it's definitely more than a 50-100 hour project.
It's too bad.
And also a reason developing for Mac was really hard on independent game developers like me back in the day. I was making about $20,000 a year, and Apple kept making huge changes that took months of work. When I was done with the work, people saw nothing new -- the project merely continued to function on new computers. It was really hard for guys like me to survive.
Hence why I got a day job. ;-)
But -- I do wish the game were running on modern computers, so if anyone else wants to take a stab at porting the level builder, I'm all for that once I have access to the source again!
I also have a backup of the game on my website -- from a much older version of the game (probably non-HD version), so I could make that available NOW if anyone is interested.
-Vern
