Earn fame and fortune adding multiplayer!

[princec]

An idea I've toyed with for months and months is adding a multiplayer deathmatch to Alien Flux.

Would anybody like to take up the challenge of adding this and writing the server too? (It'd be hosted, not peer-peer).

Pros:
Fame and Fortune*!
Get the entire source code of Alien Flux!
Learn all about realtime multiplayer network gaming!

Cons:
Loads of work!
Loss of hair!
Using my shitty code as your base!

Cas

* If you actually come up with a slick product at the end of it that can be actually played, we'll talk about payment for your efforts. But mainly you'd be interested in the fame aspect

[kevglass]

Surely Herkules' JPilot and HeadQuarter engine is 80% of the work..

Have you already got ideas how you'd like the game play to work?

Kev

[Herkules]

Surely Herkules' JPilot and HeadQuarter engine is 80% of the work..

yes .... and you know that 90/10 rule?

Using my shitty code as your base!

You know your code is beautiful!

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[princec]

Not that beautiful It gets the job done and not much else.

Cas

[rreyelts]

Would anybody like to take up the challenge of adding this and writing the server too? (It'd be hosted, not peer-peer)....

* If you actually come up with a slick product at the end of it that can be actually played, we'll talk about payment for your efforts. But mainly you'd be interested in the fame aspect

Neat offer. I am very sorely tempted.

What kind of payment are we talking about for the "slick product"? Tens, hundreds, of dollars? Royalties?

God bless,
-Toby Reyelts

[princec]

Probably just flat payment from me (seeing as Alien Flux has only lost me thousands of dollars over the last year I can't see it suddenly becoming a honey pot on the royalty front...)

It won't be a lot because I'm broke but it should be fun to try I suspect it won't be that easy either as nothing in the architecture was designed to cope with multiplayer at all.

Cas

[the2bears]

Cas,

I'm very interested in this, let's talk some more.  My "day" job is writing multi-player middleware for mobile devices.  I'd be very interested in experimenting with AF on our platform, to see how it works in a different environment.  Plus I'd love to get ahold of your source code;)

By the way, I'm "the2bears" from your own forums,

Regards,

Bill

[vrm]

I don't get the concept of deathmatch & alien flux, 2 ships fighting each others ? that make sence ?

[abies]

Why only two ? Think about team versus team, with frequent respawns. Capture the flag, last man standing etc. Ability to spawn monsters which would go automatically against other team/player would be certainly cool (just shooting laser at each other could be boring/too random). I don't know if there are any weapon upgrades/choices in AF, but they are probably also a nice feature for multiplayer.

Multiplayer AF (maybe also cooperative ??) is certainly a good idea. I'm not so sure about massive multiplayer frogger I'm contemplating upon for last few days...

[princec]

Ok then, I shall release the source code in to the wild and make it into a little competition for you to see who can make it happen first

Pay particular attention to the BSD-like license, in the source code, and then hack away. Sorry about the code quality, it's not brilliant, but *ahem* *cough* I finished it and released it so nerrrr.

So here it is: Alien Flux Source Code

The graphics etc. are in the game, so download that too if you haven't got it. You will also need to get the latest LWJGL and SPGL source code to compile against. SPGL is available only from CVS at http://www.sf.net/projects/spgl and LWJGL is available from http://www.lwjgl.org

Any chat about it is probably best done on Puppy Games forums to avoid boring the hell out of everyone here.

And no, I really don't have the time to help

Cas

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[SpuTTer]

wow, sweet

Very nice of you Cas.

[the2bears]

Yes, thanks for releasing the source.

Bill