opensoldat VS openlierox

In the meantime the repository moved to: https://github.com/opensoldat/opensoldat

I saw mention of Pascal, so I had to take a quick peek:

https://github.com/Soldat/soldat/blob/develop/server/ServerC...

The last time I used Pascal was in the late 1980s on a VAX/VMS system. Very fond memories!

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The repo is here: https://github.com/albertz/openlierox

Unfortunately, I don't really find the time anymore. It was really fun working on it, but it took an incredibly amount of time, and now my focus shifted to many other things (deep learning, family).

I probably should release some updated binaries at some point though, such that it works properly on more recent OS.

You asked if there is a possibility to convert OLX maps into WL format - yes, it's possible, but it's not that easy (.lxl files are mostly multi-layer maps, and WL supports only one-layer maps made in classic .lev format, or in .png). Anyway, you can use official OLX tool called LevelDecompiler, which you will find here. It converts .lxl map file into multiple .bmp files. After that, you can edit those .bmp files and make 1 file (.lev or .png) out of them, using e.g. Gimp (remember only to use special custom WL palette).

I really would love to continue working on OpenLieroX (OLX), but my priorities have shifted, and I just don't find the time anymore, although I still really would like to. I guess it's the same for the other developers. We used to be three main developers.

This is kind of an infinite project though. You can always improve things, implement nice new ideas, etc.

For reference, repo is here: https://github.com/albertz/openlierox

The code you find there is already more modern than all the published builds. It is based on SDL2 now, and has lots of cleanups. The merge of the Gusanos engine and OLX engine is much more completed and cleaned up. Although this could still further improved. I would like to use Lua as the pure scripting engine (from Gusanos engine), and port over all the OLX game logic to that as well, so that the core engine becomes much simpler.

The graphics effects and drawing should be optimized further. On the transition to SDL2 and due to code cleanup, graphics has become slower. And it was already somewhat slow before. This is maybe not much a problem on a modern machine, but this game really should not require a modern machine to run nicely. One reason is that this is all purely software pixel based, including all graphics effects. We definitely should move to OpenGL, Vulkan or so, but some of the graphics effects are a bit tricky to re-implement, and probably need some shader logic. But we also want to have it cross platform, really running anywhere.

I think you refer to HawkNL, which is used for the low level networking (UDP/TCP sockets, DNS)? Yea, we definitely could replace that. Although we anyway provide our own fork within OLX, and it's not so special. One of the many things you probably could replace by sth more modern.

The (higher level) network engine is probably a more important item which needs a reimplementation to support more players, be more stable, etc.

OpenLiero (https://www.liero.be/) is a reimplementation as well. We planned to provide this (the game physics / logic / weapons) as another mod inside OLX. It already has some mods which are similar, but not exactly the same.

And many more things...