CBoard Project?

I've been thinking a lot about different things lately and thought one thing that might be kind of cool for cboard to do is to have a project that everyone could contribute to in some way. It would not only be a learning experience for a lot of people, but it would also be fun to do. Even people working on current projects could just put in a few tips or help out in small ways if they wanted.

I was thinking of a few things that we could possibly do that would allow a lot of different areas of expertise:

net browser that incorporates DirectX/OpenGL with a scripted language for the sites so you can have interactive GL/DX-driven websites...something I haven't seen before
a small game of any sorts
a massive game in 3d with tons of functionality
multiplayer games (to get the networking people to show off some of their stuff)

any other ideas would be cool to hear.

-and btw, so i don't get flamed (as much, hopefully)-
if you think this is a bad idea, sorry, I just think it would be kind of interesting to see what we could produce here collectively.

Good luck with that.

lol....that's not what i was hoping to hear....

hmm, suppose it'll be a bit harder to get everyone here to work on one project, considering most of the higher level people here are busy with their own projects or work or..........stuff...

but yah, twas only an idea, i think this has probably been brought up in the past most likely, not sure if those old ideas ever got anywhere

Hey! I'm out! :)

It's not that it's a bad idea, it's just that people have tried this about a thousand times, and it inevitably crashes and burns because of lack of communication, people get bored, or people get lazy.

yah, i know what you mean, i've had this happen before (the old "The Developer's Alliance") We had a group over there for a while and actually managed to, as a group, finish a full complete game and finish it in time for a seminar in california at NYLFTech. Then when we got back we tried to jump from a puzzle game to a full 3D space sim/fps game in one giant leap, and that inevitably crashed the whole group because it was overwhelming for a lot of the people.

I'm not saying we have to do a big project, and actually I don't really WANT to do a big project, because the bigger the project, the more likely it will fail. I'm just throwing around ideas right now.

hey im a loser with no project i might try doing something

Project idea: Some way to verify that the person has actually attempted to do some research on their own before being allowed to post :)

i might be guilty of this here for this post....i didn't exactly search too long before i posted this, lol.

However, that aside, we could just send missiles to their homes if we can find the answer on the boards in...say..under thirty seconds? :D

Hmm we could hijack the star wars program and make it do our scourging :)

30 seconds on google
15 seconds on faq.cprogramming.com
?

that sounds legit.....not much coding there though, heh



But before the topic goes astray....

I was thinking more of something in C++, and possibly with an API.

Hey we can do it will C++ and an API.

Code:

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Location loc = findlocation(C+++C_forever);
Coords target = TargetLocation(loc);
Fire(target);

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See totally API orinated :)

lol, you'd have to do "C+++C_Forever" or it won't compile correctly ;)

gah, well, i'm gonna play some final fantasy X or XI for a while, and come back to see what everyone said....i should eat some food too, that'd be good

I think it might be more productive if we were to do a contest slant on this intra-community development thing, i.e. put up a post for programming the core of a Tetris clone, get a load of submissions in, use the best-made one (But mention clever coding tricks or other useful things in the other submissions), do the same for the graphics, etc., glue it all together. :cool:

Hey I'm helping Shakti and I actually contributed some code to him. I'm so proud. Much better than any group project I did in college. :D

And perhaps we should have a direct link to the google website.

Somehow I think that the success of the cboard has indirectly contributed to the success of google.

Heck google should have a checkbox:

[ ] I am a cprog member

:)

Heck, I have nothing to do with my time. PM me with any serious project ideas or offers. I personally like the idea of the advanced graphics web plug in, and have already been interested in learning DX/OGL. And after we finish we can sell it to MS to put into their Longhorn version of IE :D

Nah let's let them steal it so we can sue them later and lose.

could you program me a girlfriend? brown hair and eyes, not to fat. cheers. ;)

on a more serious note, i can't really see what kindof project could be coordinated by Cprog that would be worth it. maybe get an existing program, open source it and work from there?

All kinds of ideas are worth it....but we are all headstrong uncooperative nerds so working together is next to impossible.

Now if you put one of each of us on a separate dev team we would do good, but not all of us on the same one. Way too many chiefs.

Let me lead, I always seem to be able to get people to work together.


Maybe its because I lord over them with lots of weapons and threaten to kill their entire family and then toture them if they don't do what I say.... Nah its probably because I'm such a nice guy.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Thantos

I'm such a nice guy.

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thats probably when aren't torturing them :)

what's you idea then? i'm for my GF idea, AI isn't an easy subjcet but it could be cool

Quote:

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Maybe its because I lord over them with lots of weapons and threaten to kill their entire family and then toture them if they don't do what I say

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Cool...so when do we start?

Only problem with the girlfriend idea is that there is no logic to program. Even the choas theory doesn't apply to women so there is no way to program a girlfriend AI.

And I like my idea from above :)

i live in france, the CIA can't get me! but i'm not shure any americans livingin the USA would be willing to get jiggy with goldeneye stylie weapons :p

GF is a bit redundant too actually. maybe a spyware data miner studying GF behavior?

possibly tracking cookies for shopping sites as well :D

Well, I think that the GL/DX driven browser would probably be one thing that could push C++ in to the web development community more so. Whereas with Java you can put plugins in to browsers (that work slower than mollasses) with C++ we could make our own browser that could operate not only faster but with more power and versatility (not held back by any cross-browser issues, as we'd have our own browser).

With this sort of thing not only could we make games with it, but we could also develop applications like database driven sites that could be animated with GL and DX completely.

So basically I'll try and lay down some pros and cons here:

pros

• Fast GL/DX API driven browser for online games and applications
• No cross-browser issues
• Possibly make it system-independant, would have to make it GL if we wanted to do that however
• Everyone could contribute in some way, whether it be designing the browser, the scripted language, documentation, or even just making demos to go along with it
• Everyone could learn something from it, and would have the experience of getting to work on an opensource project

cons

• Big project, and in some ways pretty complex, too
• Speed/Platform issues with the scripted language, it would have to operate pretty fast
• Networking issues, would need it to be able to download the scripts and necessary data somewhat efficiently and yet not create long load times

Then there's a few questions we need to address before we start a project of this caliber:

Do we have enough willing and dedicated people to work on the project?
Do we have the necessary skill to create a project of this size?
How long of a time schedule should we plan on taking for this?
How many people should we have working on this project? (goes hand-in-hand with question 1)
And as some have already addressed:
How will we handle project leads and who will work where? How will we organize the code and what is the best way to do it so everyone can contribute?


I think from this sort of project not only, like I said, will we be able to learn from it, but it could also bring the community here at cboard closer together a bit. We've all got talents here in one way or another, and I believe that if we could pull them together and not be stuck up with ourselves, that we could make a project like this work out.

Tell me what you think, I'm not going to get excited about this project until we've got some people who are seriously willing to help out with it.

--The opinions expressed in the preceeding text are the thoughts and opinions of Jeff Verkoeyen: if you don't agree, I'm sorry, it's just what I think. Don't be offended or take the opinions the wrong way, as they are all offerred in a light-hearted manner and in no way intended to cause flaming.--
--I am also not perfect, some of the things I said may or may not be falsely backed, in which case I wouldn't mind you pointing them out, just don't start a war over them.--

-Thanks for all of the ideas and feedback so far everyone!
-jverkoey

I for one would be willing to put whatever skills and talent I have into the project. I think platform independent would be really cool and would give us a much wider audience, and correct me if I'm wrong but isnt OGL a lot smaller in terms of ram usage and hard disk space to include? If so that would cut down the exe size and make it easier to download. IMHO the best way to run the project would be to have a few people who handle the project itself, the ideas and decisions of what will be done and how, then below them a group of one leader for each section, like GUI, graphics, networking, etc, then everyone else below them, in the proper section. It makes the most sense to me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jverkoey

Do we have enough willing and dedicated people to work on the project?

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Well... more or less. Everyone here needs to work or attend school as well as 100 other things.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jverkoey

Do we have the necessary skill to create a project of this size?

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Programming, yes.
Leadership/management, no.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jverkoey

How long of a time schedule should we plan on taking for this?

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Very long, since everyone will be working on their spare time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jverkoey

How many people should we have working on this project? (goes hand-in-hand with question 1)

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At the most five persons, IMO.


The problem with this is leadership. Someone must gather a team, knit them together and assign tasks to every member. This is the hard part. Programming is easy :)

If someone is willing to be the leader and is serious, I'm willing to participate. But this is very, very hard to pull off, but not impossible.

As I said before, I agree. I dont think I have enough technical knowledge to lead the entire project, or else I would speak up for it. I will take any leadership role that is needed. And I have neither a job nor school nor homework to do, so I have time, at least for now.

Ok I know I was joking about my leadership above but actually I'm very good at leading. I had a Warrent Officer once that summed up a leaders role almost perfectly. Paraphrased it was: Its not my job to know everything you know. Its my job to know what your skills are and where you knowledges lay. It is your job to know the technical details.

He would also admit almost daily that the people under him were all smarter then he was, but damn if he wasn't the best leader I've ever known.

The key for this to work is breaking it up into small very managable pieces. Each piece should not take very long to finish (of course very long is subjective). This allows the team to feel a sense of acomplishment on a regular basis which in turn keeps moral up.

i vote thantos

as for this browser, would it interpret HTML or would we be creating a whole new language, because in this case theres already VRML i think.

We could just build off of the gecko engine. We could then incorporate opengl with our own scripting language or something.

Im just wondering, was originality supposed to be part of the proejct? I'm not shooting down the idea, I think the 3D browser is a cool idea, but I've seen an internet browser with full 3D rendering capabilities, such that you essentially walk around in a room when you type in your internet address, and the webpages show up on the walls and stuff.

looks like the proeject got owned before it strted. i also just remembere this:
http://www.adobe.com/products/atmosphere/main.html

I would be willing to take part in a project in some way, although I don't know how much I could help with my lack of skills :D

As for time, I'm almost out of school for the summer, so I'll probably have plenty...

Also, I say jverkoey could do a good job as leader...After all, it is his idea...

I like the 3d browser idea. We coul have our own language ex: something like HTML, and then the tags would set the 3d environment.

I think the principle reason things like this don't work in a community like this is because a project of any real size requires management, design, planning, quality control and a whole row of disciplines that most of the people capable of doing them, are not interested in doing for no financial gain.

Instead, you tend to get a lot of enthusiastic bedroom coders who want to get straight down to coding the sexy graphic bits, and when they all try to put it together, nothing works.

Open source collaborative project can and do work, but they are run on professional lines. When the average bedroom coder finds out what "professional lines" really means, they lose interest. They want to submit a source file, not a proposed design specification.

i know, why dont we edit and compile the stolen Half-Life 2 source code.

(did i say that out loud?)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JaWiB

Also, I say jverkoey could do a good job as leader...After all, it is his idea...

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I'm not sure how well of a leader I could be for this project. I've never led a project of this caliber before, and besides that, I'm only a (upcoming) senior in high school, so I don't have much experience working with a programming team yet. The only experience I've had working on a project in a team was with TDA and our Escape From the Funky Factory (EFFF) which I spent 2 months madly coding 10k lines of code, and our team only consisted of a couple artists and a level designer, and me as the primary coder.

I've found that I like working on the architecture of things, not as much the graphics and displays, but more the skeleton of the systems, it always intrigues me how something works down to the bone, software-wise. So if we do do this project, I'd prefer to just work on the layout for the program and getting everything working together code-wise. Maybe someone else here who's had more experience working with a team of coders would be better off as a leader for the project?

Well first things first...if we dont have a good vision our team and leaders won't mean a thing, so what exactly will the functionality of our 3d aspect be?

Hey,

Ill help with this project...tho im only up to classes...I would like to try to be a help...Perhaps i can code a bit and contribute graphics(was a photoshop junky) Nothing 3d tho. I hope i can help out (: