Author Topic: Slash'em expansion/fork  (Read 20006 times)

enderandrew

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Slash'em expansion/fork
« on: October 10, 2007, 10:32:02 PM »
Greetings all.

As a long time fan of classic RPGs I have long desired to get into game development, but never knew the first thing about programming.  I have just skimmed through a C book, and I'm attempting to learn.

For my first "assignment" I am attempting to convert the biodiversity code from Nethack to Slash'em.

http://cec.wustl.edu/~naw1/nh/nh_bio.html

It is a pretty big monolithic patch.  I did all the initial work of inserting all the code in hopefully all the correct places, and rewriting a few bits to fit changes in the codebase.  I ran it through a compiler and fixed all the compile warnings, but I still can't get it to build.

After it compiles all the .c files, it builds a tool to generate levels, which then parse the level data to generate the dungeon.  In this phase, it chokes on some new dungeon flags.  I've been beating my head against a wall for two weeks, and I can't figure out what I've done wrong.  I've attempted to get a hold of Slash'em developers and the original Biodiversity developer to no avail and I'm stuck.

Initially my goal is to start with a heavily patched version of Slash'em (there are tons of great nethack and slash'em patches out there) and by studying both the code base, and the patches, learn how to further expand it myself.  Personally, I believe one of the greatest aspects of a RL is how dynamic and huge the games are.  Instead of reinventing the wheel when so many RLs are out there, I want to expand an existing one, and then attempt to fully test and balance those changes.

I've got plenty of ideas, but since this was by far the largest patch I wanted to work with, I decided to tackle it first and now I'm stuck.

I'm hoping someone might help me out.
Nihilism makes me smile.