The Land of 0 Linker Errors
Breakthrough is winding down at work, so that means that new projects are starting to take a higher priority. Aside from Breakthrough, I'm currently scheduled to do some work on Call of Duty with Duane, as well as starting on a new, unannounced game.
One of the most interesting parts of a game port is the initial bring-up, which I talked about before for the (still unannounced) "Russell" project. This is the time when you spend a few days fighting with the PC code, tweaking it so that it finally compiles, and then fighting again with the linker so that you can eventually run and debug it.
With Quake-3-based games, this process isn't very involved. For Q3 titles, it can take as short as a day or as long as a week to get up and running. Most other games take a week or two, since they're really not meant to be portable and are usually very PC-centric.
The unannounced project I'm working on isn't a Quake 3-based game by any stretch, and it's fairly involved, code-wise. However, the code has been a joy to work with so far. I've managed to get it from absolutely nothing to compiling and linking in less than 24 hours, bypassing entirely the Land of 101 Linker Errors. Naturally it doesn't run for very long, but now I'm to the most exciting part of the porting process. Hopefully this bodes well for the rest of the development cycle. :-)
Comments
A post dropping hints about TWO unannounced projects- it's almost more than I can bear!
Posted by: Matt Diamond | February 20, 2004 12:24 PM
I agree, porting is fun IMO. Some folks find it boring, but i love the challenge and its quite satisfying when it all finally builds and runs.
Of course, i do it for free.. but its the same:
http://fink.sf.net/
http://armagetron.sf.net/
Posted by: Ben Hines | February 20, 2004 05:57 PM
And then there are the porting projects where bring-up can take weeks, because the code was really not designed to be portable.
Of course, ever since Omni claimed to be able to do ports in a couple of months, it's expected that everybody will be able to no matter what the project.
Posted by: Chris Hanson | February 21, 2004 02:05 PM
And now OmniGroup is no longer porting games.
Posted by: a2daj | February 23, 2004 09:35 AM
Geeting Breakthrough is nice but Call of Duty!!! I cannot wait!
Posted by: Terry Thiel | February 24, 2004 11:14 PM