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Jagged Alliance 2 Source Code Released

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the code-wants-to-be-free dept.

kovi writes "You might remember that game - it was ported to Linux a while ago (by Tribsoft) and is one of the 'overall top sellers' at Tux Games. Well, according to this press release from Strategy First, the newest mod for JA2, 'Wildfire,' will include full source code of the original retail release! It might not be the biggest news, and it might not even matter, but it is not very frequent in the gaming industry that source code gets released." No word on what's included with the source release, but the game's been out for a week now, so likely someone with a copy knows more. S! Apparently, the Bear's Pit Forums are discussing the code as we speak, including why shooting cows is bad.

4 of 26 comments (clear)

  1. Yay Turn-Based Strategy Games! by MMaestro · · Score: 3, Insightful
    While Real Time Strategy games may be the more popular of the two, I think people should pick up the game just to see how the strategy genre would be if things had gone differently. Turn based strategy games are also more newbie friendly since players can take the time to look at all his/her options without being rushed (in both ways).

    Besides its only $20, some people spend more than $20 on food a day.

    1. Re:Yay Turn-Based Strategy Games! by mahdi13 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I enjoy turn based statagy games a lot. In Fallout Tactics it has the option for real-time or turn-based, I always play the turn based which makes managing 6 solders much easier then trying to do 6 things at once.
      NOT being turned based is what completely ruined Baulders Gate for me. It is a great game, but I can not manage 6 charactores doing 6 different things at once (telling you fighters to pull back as the mage is casting a fireball and the archers to target something else...all at once!)

      And I still love the Heroes of Might and Magic games due to the turn based gameplay.

      --
      "Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
  2. Re:Good News probably by Goldberg's+Pants · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The parent post to yours obviously has no idea what Jagged Alliance is...

    FPS has been well served in the "here, have the source code" world, so it's nice to see a turn based strategy game get it's code out there. Never played JA myself, but heard MANY good things about it.

  3. Estimates to really start improving on JA2 by ReyTFox · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Run to two years. That's to clean everything up, add portability, and externalize all the gameplay-related code, which is unfortunately heavily spread around throughout the source(written in C, not C++), so that modmaking becomes a viable option.

    I suspect that it would probably be easier to integrate an interpreter(such as Python or Lua) and start converting the gameplay to that, though regardless it will be quite a mammoth task to refactor the project :P