[The E]

So, a couple of weeks ago, I got contacted by some bloke who wanted to write an article about FSO (or rather, featuring FSO), for IGN's fileblog (AKA the fileplanet blog).

Here's the article: http://blog.fileplanet.com/2011/06/03/giving-older-games-a-new-shine/

[Deadly in a Shadow]

Woho, FSO goes even more public.

[Goober5000]

Woohoo!

[FelixJim]

"An entirely new engine" might be stretching the truth... just a little.

[The E]

Not that those were my words, those were his

[Kosh]

Good news.


Although I must admit my surprise at fileplanet still being up considering the trainwreck that the planet network has become.......

[Colonol Dekker]

But fileplanet was where HLP started wasn't it or was it at 3Dactionplanet?

[Kosh]

HLP started at 3dactionplanet, but had access to fileplanet. Just the other day I did a survey of several major sites on the planet network, deus ex, c&c, avp, civilization, they're all dead or dying. Planet Starcraft doesn't even exist anymore. IGN managed to run the whole thing into ground, and it was a good thing HLP bailed when it did.

[BlueFlames]

HLP started at 3dactionplanet, but had access to fileplanet. Just the other day I did a survey of several major sites on the planet network, deus ex, c&c, avp, civilization, they're all dead or dying. Planet Starcraft doesn't even exist anymore. IGN managed to run the whole thing into ground, and it was a good thing HLP bailed when it did.

I think IGN is slowly phasing out the Gamespy brand, starting with the Planet sites.  I'm not sure I blame them, as the companies have been merged for years now, and IGN has, up to this point, been maintaining the infrastructure for more than twice as many sites as it needs to or otherwise might.  That said, the Gamespy network and the Planet sites in particular have a lot of history behind them, and in a lot of ways, I'll be sad to see them go.  Hell, Planet Descent is already gone, and I spent four years writing their front-page column.

Then again, IGN/Gamespy is owned by News Corp., and seeing any part of News Corp. die warms my heart.

[Mongoose]

I was on the staff at PlanetDescent all the way up until the end too (albeit rather inactive for the last few years), and I still don't know if IGN gave any warning before taking the site down.  One day it was there, albeit increasingly-broken, the next...just a redirection to an error page on IGN's main site.  I meant to try to contact someone over there to see if they had sent out anything beforehand, but I never got around to it, and I suppose it's far too late now.  Thunderbird mentioned that he might have an old backup of the site database lying around, but there's always the Wayback Machine, I guess.

[Marcov]

Holy crap...there's even a FAQ??! Outtexts Half Life and Stalker tenfold lol

[NGTM-1R]

Not that those were my words, those were his

Serious question: how much of the FSO code base is still original FS2 code, roughly?

[Kosh]

HLP started at 3dactionplanet, but had access to fileplanet. Just the other day I did a survey of several major sites on the planet network, deus ex, c&c, avp, civilization, they're all dead or dying. Planet Starcraft doesn't even exist anymore. IGN managed to run the whole thing into ground, and it was a good thing HLP bailed when it did.

I think IGN is slowly phasing out the Gamespy brand, starting with the Planet sites.  I'm not sure I blame them, as the companies have been merged for years now, and IGN has, up to this point, been maintaining the infrastructure for more than twice as many sites as it needs to or otherwise might.  That said, the Gamespy network and the Planet sites in particular have a lot of history behind them, and in a lot of ways, I'll be sad to see them go.  Hell, Planet Descent is already gone, and I spent four years writing their front-page column.

Then again, IGN/Gamespy is owned by News Corp., and seeing any part of News Corp. die warms my heart.

It would be one thing if that was the case and they were upfront about it, but the way they did it was to disrupt the sites, which was actually the reason HLP left in the first place. It's no accident all those sites I listed started dying around the same time period.

[karajorma]

Serious question: how much of the FSO code base is still original FS2 code, roughly?

It's still a pretty large percentage actually. The SCP has added code for the most part. Bug fixes don't change that much of the code.

The only time you get major changes is when someone refactors a single part of the code. Taylor's pilot code is a good example of this as is FS2NetD.

It's pretty hard to tell how much is SCP vs code though overall.

[jr2]

WinMerge?

[karajorma]

You want to work through every single .h and .cpp file, be my guest.

Actually using annotation would be smarter than winmerge but even so, it's a pain in the arse. There's probably some coder tool out there that will do it I suppose.

[Jeff Vader]

The eggheads at our department use some plagiarism detection software when reviewing course works and other programming tasks. I'd guess such a program could give at least some numbers on the retail/FSO ratio. Then again, I have no idea where to get that software nor how much it would cost.