MSWL Olmec PBEM Soccer Game GPL'ed

zeb writes "MSWL is one of the most popular PBEM football (soccer for North Americans) game, which is itself a variation of a game of postal soccer invented by Alan Parr in England around 1970. In this game, each manager has to organise his team, manage fatigue, train his players and trade them. Olmec is a game engine written by Alla Sellers. It helps the commissioner (game master) to simulate the games and publish the results. Allan has decided to release the source code of Olmec under the GPL, so that everyone can enhance the program. The actual version of Olmec is written in Visual Basic and uses MS Access as a database. The author suggests Olmec could be rewritten in a multiplatform language, for example Java, using MySQL as the database. This task is made easy because of the rich documentation about the game engine (PDF format)."

Comments

Java Flamebait

[Bonker]

Yeah, write it in Java, and then anyone who has trouble installing the VM will never be able to run it.

If your game cannot be installed by a complete moron, chances are, it won't get popular enough to acheive any kind of critical mass. Yeah, VB and Access are a piss-poor choice of design language here, but Java is just asking for nobody to ever run the game. Even if they already have a VM installed, you have to make sure it's the RIGHT VM (Yeah, MS's fault) and that you don't have a funky enivronment variable munging up your classpaths.

My suggestions?

For sheer compatibility's sake, the game should be written in ANSI C and use a non-platform specific database format (Dare I say it? XML delimited data?) to keep its data in.

Java and flaming Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't Microsoft's fault that Sun's VM sucks.

It isn't HP's fault that Sun's VM sucks.

It isn't IBM's fault that Sun's VM sucks.

It is Sun's fault that their VM sucks.

Yes, I'm a skeptic of the modern theory that one's problems can be blamed on anyone other than yourself.

Re:Amazing!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice mod. Reverse psychology works every time, eh? It's not a matter of being GPL'd, it's a matter of being open sourced. Isn't /.'s fault people chose the GPL over any other thing.

Personally I think it's worthy of /. on the simple basis that it's a formally closed source game that's open sourced. Got anything better?

you're right about the flamebait part.

[Kunta Kinte]

Yeah, write it in Java, and then anyone who has trouble installing the VM will never be able to run it.

I installed Netscape 7.1, never had to know or do anything about the JVM. Why? Because it has a decent installer. You can't blame Java for problems caused by bad installers.

A developer could wite a Java application, build the '.jar' file, then tell the user "you're on your own". Or that developer can build a platform specific installer that checks for the proper JVM and install it if needed.

There are programs out there that take either approach.

Even if they already have a VM installed, you have to make sure it's the RIGHT VM...

No the application's installer needs to make sure you have the right JVM

(Yeah, MS's fault) and that you don't have a funky enivronment variable munging up your classpaths.

I work with Java frequently, I can't remember the last time I had to set, or find out anything about the CLASSPATH environment variable.

CLASSPATH was an issue maybe *years* ago around Java 1.1, but has has been fixed for a long while. Part of the reason is that nowadays a Java developer can put just about all the resources he/she needs in a '.jar' file, which is a zip file with a meta information. The jar file acts likea mini file hierarchy within a single file, making software distrubution and resolving runtime dependencies easy.

Puts some comments in open source code!

[JohnGrahamCumming]

So I actually downloaded the code to see what's up and I'd say that the chances
that someone is going to rewrite this in Java are pretty damn low. Think whatever
you want to think about Visual Basic but this code is almost entirely uncommented,
and whatever language you are writing in that's a crime.

In fact a lot of the comments are... commented out code.

Here's a quick sample which actually has comments in it, one of which is a totally
useless explanation of what the "Randomize" function does in Visual Basic, the second
is just about is pointless.

(If you are not initiated into the VB way of doing things: a ' starts a comment)

'Randomize Random Number Function
Randomize

'Set Vis Team Home Bonus
VisTeam.HomeBonus = 0

If GstrMatchType = "Neutral" Or _
GstrMatchType = "SONeutral" Or _
GstrMatchType = "C1Neutral" Or _
GstrMatchType = "C1SONeutral" Or _
GstrMatchType = "C2Neutral" Or _
GstrMatchType = "C2SONeutral" Then

HomeTeam.HomeBonus = 0

Else
If GstrHB = "S" Then
If HomeTeam.HomeBonus <= 8 Then
HomeTeam.HomeBonus = 8
ElseIf HomeTeam.HomeBonus > 8 Then
If HomeTeam.HomeBonus > 13 Then
HomeTeam.HomeBonus = 13
End If
Call CheckHomeBonus(HomeTeam)
End If
ElseIf GstrHB = "A" Then
If HomeTeam.HomeBonus <= 3 Then
HomeTeam.HomeBonus = 3
ElseIf HomeTeam.HomeBonus > 3 Then
If HomeTeam.HomeBonus > 8 Then
HomeTeam.HomeBonus = 8
End If
Call CheckHomeBonus(HomeTeam)
End If
End If
End If

Call MatchRevenue(VisTeam, HomeTeam)

This sort of code is a pet peeve of mine. Just because it's been released under
the GPL means nothing if others can't actually work on the code and make sense of it.
The story says that the extensive manual will help (which it will a little), but some
explanation of the actual code is vital for any open source project to survive beyond
a few programmers initiated into the dark secrets of the code.

If we want open source to thrive we need to start having some standards of coding
so that others can use the code. Companies do this internally for a reason: they know
that they are going to hire new people who are going to need to look at the existing code.

Why do so few project bother with comments? It's almost as if the Open Source Initiative
should have a quality stamp that gets given to projects that actually care about their
longevity.

John.

Re:Puts some comments in open source code!

[Anonymous Coward]

People like you are a pet peave of mine.

Having uncommented code is a hell of a lot better than having no code at all. As someone who has reverse engineered (well, re-implemented) closed source binaries starting from nothing more than a bunch of strace logs, I can tell you I'd take the source any day, and in any condition.

It's not as if the guy removed comments that used to be there for the purpose of obfuscation. You are looking at a "Golden Rule" situation -- you get what he got.

You don't like at the absence of comments ? Add them as you assimilate the code.

That's what I do with the commentless code I get from my co-workers. Do I bitch at them to add comments ? No, because I'd rather the guys write more code ! Code is what runs ! Code makes me money ! I don't want these guys oppressed by my bitching of some bureaucratic requirements doc or checkin procedure.

If I have to decipher something, I always make notes to myself in the form of comments. If his code works perfectly, it probably never gets commented.

So quit winning and turn out the annotated version of this stuff. If your comments aren't just so much repetition of the code, maybe we'll work from your version.

Like looking into the face of God

[Anonymous Coward]

Soccer is pretty godawful boring already. Now you're supposed to play by mail?

Languages, VB ??

[tuomoks]

Can we, please, stop arguing the language anything is done. Language is not important - I have created high performance systems in Algol, Fortran, MUMPS, assembler ( several ), VB, Pascal, REXX, PL/I, "C", C++, APL, you name it.. Even Tcl/Tk, Python, Java, Cobol - who cares.. The important thing is that someone is giving a system for us ! Don't complain that and have a nice day..

Re:Languages, VB ??

[stonecypher]

That's a weird laundry list of languages. Also, we're not interested in what you've programmed; granted it's an extreme example, but that a language can suck is embodied by intercal. Or maybe PL/I. (You've written in PL/I and you don't think language matters?)

The fact of the matter is, there are a number of languages in which I can simply work quite a bit faster (Delphi, ruby, lua, PHP.) There are a number of languages in which I can express really evil concepts (lisp, C++, ml/ocaml.) There are a number of langauges in which I can write really tight, efficient code (C++, forth, assembly.)

And then there are some languages which just gargle scrotum. I can't deal with VB. You have to bend over backwards just to get certain things done, the syntax is hard on the eyes, and so forth. Some people insist there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the language, that it does everything other languages do; that's (sort of) true, and if you like the language, fine, use it.

Still, it slows me down /badly./ No language in this office is more prone to bugs, and that's across all fifteen of our programmers (I can say the same for previous jobs.) I don't think it's about the people I've known. No language in this office, except when we had Jim writing C, is harder to debug. In my opinion, it's just a mess.

Normally, I'd think it was just an opinion, but nearly every proficient programmer I know also believes so. I had tried it before I heard anyone tell me about it, so I acquired my disgust fairly, and without influence.

But, look, you quoted three languages that are famous for being awful - APL, COBOL and PL/I - and claim it doesn't matter. ou also named one of my pet peeves, Tcl. Also, you named almost no famous-for-being-good languages (*some* people would argue the point on algol. I would argue the point on REXX, but I'd probably be alone.) So, maybe you've developed in all of those languages. Maybe not. That kinda looks like it came from the "hello, world" list to me.

But it's well known that languages provide facilities with levels of support; assembly, for example, is dead as an application language for a very good reason. Would you try to write an operating system in ASM these days? What about a word processor? Alternately, would you write a low-level interrupt handler in VB?

Your answer: hell no. There are languages that are appropriate for certain complexities; you don't use a 4gl to boot a machine and you don't write a web server in a hex editor. There are languages that are bad at expressing things (pascal for generic programming, C for self-modifying code, or anything in your list for functional/applicative programming (haskell, ml/ocaml, scheme) or logical programming (prolog, mercury.) BTW, tell us that language doesn't matter when you learn your first non-imperative language.

You do, however, use perl for text manipulation and glue; php for scripting, glue, and increasingly for lightweight apps; c for systems programming, OSes, drivers, and baremetal stuff; prolog for symbol manipulation stuff, like language translation; lisp for lots of stuff but especially math; lua for situations where lightweight scripting languages are desired, such as user extensions for video games (qv angband); specialty languages for their specialties (AGT for example); Delphi for lots of stuff but especially RAD fast development tools and for database work; TCL for (unsurprisingly) low level machine control; the list goes on.

When you want to find out how much language matters, try writing a zip decompressor in TCL.

Can we stop arguing about languages? Of course not. Arguing about them exposes their flaws, allowing us to address them or route around them. Also, we hate VB. And maybe its supporters. Watch your back.

That was quick

[raistphrk]

Didn't take long to slashdot that site. Maybe next time we can just post his credit card so that we can just charge the amount we just put on his bandwidth bill?