Another attempt at de-MFC-ing DC

[SilentThief]

I know the reason why we are tied to the MFCs that govern the build of the DC project. But I keep hoping that there would be a jump to a non-MFC build so as to open the project up to non-Windows users, and thus enlist more ppl on all sides of the project. My belief is that more players, and more mod designers, and more developers would make for more action on the forums and releases. Its not that I don't appreciate Tarlanon or Manikus or the kinda recently retired CocoaSpud, its that I know that these ppl have given their free time when it is a premium for work/family/reality. Thus the idea of sharing the work load.

Thus, it is with patience (I hope) that you take my "will this work for developing DC" as I unveil my most recent:
http://www.ultimatepp.org/www$uppweb$download$en-us.html

its donation-ware, free to use for even commercial apps. I see no mention of the MFCs, tho. Interestingly enuff, I dida search for MFC library in google, and checked out the WIKI about it and apparently based upon thte WIKI the
MFCs are available for free download? but they prolly don't work without the Microsoft SDKs...

When I get the ability to put a programming environment on a computer I WILL get somehow someway the ability to work on the development of DC.


SilentThief

[Tarlanon]

Hey Silenttheif! I can say with some certainty that there ARE plans to remove the MFCs from DC, and to port the code to more platform agnostic libraries. But I can also say with some certainty that this transformation will be a MASSIVE undertaking.

Right now the focus for DC development is to get all the bugs and features completed so that the software itself is playable/usable for it's intended purpose. If there were more active developers involved, it might be possible to have someone working on porting the code, while others work on fixing it...but with our limited development staff, we need to focus our efforts towards completing the editor/engine.

T

[manikus]

Hey ST-
Tarlanon pretty much covers it. But, let me add, that we appreciate your enthusiasm. And we encourage you to become part of the team. There is work to be done that does not involve MFCs. For example, I know that you have been working with certain events and the GPDL, both of which are lacking in scripting examples and documentation. You can also help hunt bugs down and fix them (though admittedly you wouldn't be able to compile to test, but you could forward your fixes to Tarlanon).

On a sidenote, it looks like MFCs are coming back at Microsoft, or more correctly, they are back.
http://blogs.msdn.com/vcblog/archive...available.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/vcblog/archive...g-samples.aspx
ST, if you're still a student, MS has a program, called Dreamspark, which allows students to get free full versions of select MS software including Studio 2008 Pro...which can now use MFCs. It's a huge download, so I haven't done it yet, but now that I know about the MFCs, I'll give it a try.
Note, I am by no means saying we shouldn't move away from MFCs, 'cause we should, but this might help you get in on the coding now.

[Tarlanon]

Something else to consider here is WINE on Linux. WINE (for those who don't know) does provide an environment to run some windows apps on Linux. I know games like Diablo II and Morrowind are both known to run on WINE.

If we could get DC to run with WINE, that could get the Linux community involved in DC now, rather than waiting (potentially years) until we can make DC use more standard, portable libraries.

[manikus]

I was trying to get DC to run under Wine, but had a major setback (not related to DC, but another program) and haven't fixed that issue.

Wine 1.0 just came out, so did Ubuntu 8.04 and Fedora 9, so I'll look back into this when I get a chance.

I've also been reading about people using a version of Wine to run programs on Apple machines...I'll take a peak into that, too. (Though all I have is an old, old version of the Mac OS- version 7.)

[manikus]

I finally got VS2008 and the MFC back installed and running smoothly, but I still can't compile.

Here's my error in case anyone has any hints at what I should do.

The procedure entry point _chkesp could not be located in the dynamic link library MSVCRTD.dll

As far as I can tell, it's a good copy of the msvcrtd.dll.

[manikus]

I've been going through the past posts here and on the yahoo list and there were some suggestions by CocoaSpud about switching from MFCs to the STL library, even mentioning that he had this as a goal to make DC more accessible.

[Uatu]

If that does happen, and I can somehow manage to set up a compiling environment, then even I could start to get my hands on that code then...

[manikus]

I got done with today's final a few hours ago and have been trying to compile DC ever since. Each time I tweak something I end up with more errors than the tweak before...(I know, I'm going backwards) I've got notes and vagure memories of setting up the environment 2 computers ago, but damned if I can get it right. It's not all that bad though as I'm getting quite familiar with my compiler and I'm still enjoying myself (for the most part).

I personally would love it if someone were to announce that they had started converting away from MFCs...

[SilentThief]

Yeah, its the main thing that keeps me from the code now that I've started on the "teach myself C++" from the free tutorial site:
http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/

ST