Quick poll for Zeus development

Everything about HD, MD, and their mods.

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Zeus Development?

Poll ended at Fri Mar 22, 2013 10:20 am

Mac OS X Universal Binary
0
No votes
Mac OS X UB & Windows
3
60%
Web Site
0
No votes
Mac OS X UB & Web Site
1
20%
Mac OS X UB, Windows & Web Site
1
20%
 
Total votes: 5

nil
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Re: Quick poll for Zeus development

Post by nil » Thu Mar 28, 2013 8:58 pm

When something is deprecated, it usually means a better alternative exists; this is a good thing because it makes developing easier and/or more reliable. Change is not bad, but it will hurt you if you are on a slow-pace development cycle.

I personally, like others, think this is too ambitious for a first project, and if you are not thoroughly interested in programming, it's unlikely you'll go far or for it to even be enjoyable (it's unclear to me whether you are, as it appears you just want to stick with what you know - PHP). My usual advice is to start rolling out small programs and get them tested out. Things I started with were like tic tac toe, a calculator, pong. Another thought is a simple tool that even manipulates map files (renames tags? I don't know). One small program I started out with was HDemoLauncher which was initially very simple and only few hundreds of lines of code. While such small programs may not be very "useful", they will be a good resource to learning say, Cocoa, for instance. There's a huge difference between learning about practices/specifications like UTI's, function declarations, header files, struct's, classes, etc.. and actually building something on your own.
I am no longer active to Halo or MGM, and don't guarantee a response on the forums or through email. I will however linger around the discord room for general chatting. It's been fun!

Sparky
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Re: Quick poll for Zeus development

Post by Sparky » Fri Mar 29, 2013 7:10 am

the only roadblock for me now is the question of value and usefulness.
look at my plugins for eschaton. were they worthwhile to even this MGM community?
now consider that I'm doing this: writing a "Guerilla" for mac. the initial usefulness of this program will be shy even of the usefulness of my plugins for eschaton.
the usefulness of such a program which lets you read and write HEK tags on the mac would need to coincide with building map files. in other words, I would need to have Zeus be an HEK for mac: a tag editor like Guerilla, and a tag and map compiler like Tool... and preferably a scenario editor like Sapien, as icing on the cake.

In terms of usefulness presently, here is what I perceive:

- the Guerilla tag authoring and editing tool will be of little to no use
- the Tool tag and map compiling tool will be entirely necessary in order for Zeus to be useful
- Sapien or whatever availability of scenario viewer and UI editor would just be a nice OpenGL addon

So essentially, I'm spending most of the time developing something that is of little to no use initially, and it is only when I develop the Tool capabilities will the usefulness present itself, and then after this, the more exciting feature of Sapien would be added. So there are at least three stages here to the development of Zeus.

There would be some usefulness in the Eschaton tag format editor, and later also in the model viewer and exporter, where you would export the mod2 with their shaders/bitmaps as .obj files, and do the same export with collision with the sbsp tags. The sbsp export feature is already developed for use with 3ds Max on the Windows end: FireScythe's BSP Extractor.
Either you are groping for answers, or you are asking God and listening to Jesus.

nil
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Re: Quick poll for Zeus development

Post by nil » Fri Mar 29, 2013 9:24 pm

You just talk about tools that you'd like to exist or have. Do you actually enjoy writing computer programs - the biggest motivator? If so, start writing ones you can complete in short periods of times, and have them tested by others. If not, then I would not continue further.
I am no longer active to Halo or MGM, and don't guarantee a response on the forums or through email. I will however linger around the discord room for general chatting. It's been fun!

Sparky
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Re: Quick poll for Zeus development

Post by Sparky » Sat Mar 30, 2013 6:17 am

When I do something, it is not that it is for myself or for enjoyment that I see as valid motivation. I get more motivation from the doing of something being beneficial to others and doing good.

I like programming, but I don't like serving myself. I tend to go through great lengths and pains to achieve goals -- that much should be evident to you already. But any further discussion about myself results in this statement, that The Lord is my Righteousness and my Salvation. He said not to work for food which spoils, but for food which endures to eternal life that He gives me. And to worry and be upset about so many things in life is unnecessary, because only one thing is needed.
Either you are groping for answers, or you are asking God and listening to Jesus.

nil
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Re: Quick poll for Zeus development

Post by nil » Sat Mar 30, 2013 10:20 am

You will not be able to build something this ambitious solely on the fact you want to benefit others. You have to do it for your own enjoyment too. Even I went a long way before my software started to benefit others.

You will not be able to build something like this unless you thoroughly enjoy doing the programming aspect of software.

You will not be able to build something like this unless you accumulate experience quickly with deploying functional programs - this is how people learn programming, by doing it, there is no other way out. Each time you start a new project, you reflect on your previous ones looking at mistakes you've made, things that went well, and a sense of how difficult/easy some things really are. You (and I) are actually quite lucky to have a community like this around. Take advantage of it.

This is what I believe.
I am no longer active to Halo or MGM, and don't guarantee a response on the forums or through email. I will however linger around the discord room for general chatting. It's been fun!

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