aaronlcj / machines

The 3D Real-Time Strategy video game from 1999 developed by Charybdis and distributed by Acclaim.

Machines: Wired For War

3D Real Time Strategy video game GL port source code

Released as a free software under a permission of Night Dive Studios who owns the rights to the game.

Followed conventions:

• file names use a DOS convention (8 chars + 3 for extension), not strictly followed any more,
• macros are all UPPER_CASE in code, sometimes it may be enum cases,
• classes are named WithUpperCaseLetter on the beginning and between words,
• class private members are named with dash on the end someVar_ and with lower case on the beginning,
• pointer names start from p pPointerVar_,
• some class members are "seamleslly" declared from implClass with CB_DEPIMPL macro,
• use _NEW, _NEW_ARRAY, _DELETE, _DELETE_ARRAY, _STATIC_CAST, _CONST_CAST macros instead,
• comments added now to cut out the code starts from the beginning of the line// (no spaces before),
• std::string and string are different classes - the second one is added to support persistence (dump to/load from binfile),
• old watcom compiler did not support namespaces,
• templates were instantiated explicitly in separate sources, this was commented out in most of the cases (not sure if it was reasonable),

The main code is spilt into a set of libraries:

• afx - SDL app window creation, string resources handling,
• ani - smacker animations,
• base - compiler type things, new and delete overloaded global operators, leak and stack tracker (not used), persistence and logging mechanisms,
• ctl - charybdis template library - this was created to improve STL functionality, now it is a wrapper around gnu stl - note it uses public inheritance from std containers, found no problems yet? Only ctl containers support persistence,
• device - mice, keyboards, timers, (back when they did that stuff and didn't just rely on direct x), cd audio (music track),
• envirnmt - maps, sky loading code,
• gui - base classes for gui concepts (buttons, list, scrolling dialog windows and such like),
• gxin - parser for old .agt text format meshes,
• machgui - the real machines based UI,
• machlog - the logic stuff, AI, choosing levels and such like,
• machphys - the renderable bits of machines (agressors, administrators, mines, etc),
• mathex - maths libraries,
• network - low level communication layer,
• phys - base classes of some physics types things - this is NOT real time physics - by how to fiddle it,
• profiler - not used now,
• recorder - allows to record and replay all the in game activity, events, random seeds etc. Game works in single thread, useful when reproducing a bug (not checked if it works),
• render - base library for rendering primitives, triangles, meshes, textures, materials, surfaces, etc,
• sim - base classes for things that can be simulated,
• sound - loading and playing wave samples 2D/3D,
• stdlib - now a little has left from it (there was cout, cerr, etc ),
• system - mostly file device handling, msgbox, metafile, registry (xml config),
• utility - helpers of various types, e.g. file parsers. again a lot of this stuff you wouldn't bother with now but back then there was no source forge or even google,
• world4d - built on top of the render libraries, turned basic rendering into multi-mesh entities (W4dEntity is a base class for lot of things),
• xin - .X mesh file loading into game engine (added now),

Build dependencies Use provided Docker image for building or manually setup your environment.

libsdl2-dev libsdl2-image-dev libopenal-dev libalure-dev libenet-dev libfreetype6-dev libglew-dev libglm-dev libaudio-dev

Building git clone && git lfs pull

• Windows exe on linux/docker: sudo apt-get install mingw-w64 mkdir buildMingw64 && cd buildMingw64 cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=../cmake/Toolchain-mingw64.cmake .. or 32-bit mkdir buildMingw32 && cd buildMingw32 cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=../cmake/Toolchain-mingw32.cmake -DBUILD_32=1 .. Extra parameters for release optimizations: -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE -DDEV_BUILD=OFF

• For linux: mkdir build && cd build cmake .. make -j 9

Class invariant checks export CB_INVARIANT_CHECKING=on

Debug streams To turn on a stream define environment variable with correct name, eg. set CB_HAL_TO=cout or in linux shell export CB_HAL_TO=cout. Target cout is a current shell of course, replace it with filename to write log into or leave empty to turn off. Avaiable streams: (base/diag.hpp)

• BOB
• HAL
• IAIN
• JERRY
• RICHARD
• JON
• YUEAI
• LIONEL
• CERI
• NEIL
• MISC
• WHERE
• TRACE
• MEMORY
• RENDER
• PER_READ
• PER_WRITE
• NETWORK
• WAYNE
• DANIEL
• MOTSEQ
• CS2PATH // Config space pathfinding stuff (domain and normal)
• CS2VGRA // Visibility graph diagnostics
• OBSERVER // trapping observer pattern problems - stream added to due volume of output
• PATH_PROFILE // Debugging the path profile across the planet surface
• SOUND
• REC_RECORD
• REC_PLAYBACK
• NET_ANALYSIS
• A_STAR
• LINEAR_TRAVEL // Stream for use by PhysLinearTravelPlan
• PLANET_SURFACE // Used for reporting errors in a planet surface
• PHYS_MOTION // Physical motion stream
• NETWORK_ERRORS // Specifically to help us spot network errors (such as loss of synchronicity)
• MEX_GRID2D
• CONFIG_SPACE