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pzgndr -> Quick Update (4/26/2017 5:36:19 PM)
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With the v1.21.04 official update finally out, I'm hoping that some of the grognards who lost interest in the game years ago may yet return to play again and help contribute to continued development.
Over the past several weeks since wrapping up this version and sending it off to the Matrix production team, I have been migrating the source code from the legacy CodeGear C++Builder2007 compiler to the latest Embarcadero C++Builder10 compiler. The newer compiler supports Unicode and adheres to the C++11 standard, so this required a lot of work to convert AnsiString references to UnicodeString, revise syntax, etc. I won't bother with details, but suffice to say that I have been struggling with this new challenge and having to learn a lot along the way.
What I can report is that I did manage to get the code to compile and I have worked through a few run-time errors to get the main screen up and the game files read in. So the good news is that I'm on the right path and beginning to understand how to handle the syntax for filenames and game messages and such. The bad news is that, although I think I know what I'm doing now, the road ahead is quite long considering how many times filenames and game messages and such are used. I need to start the long process of searching and manually converting many lines of code. And of course verifying things work.
What I cannot report is how long this will take. Maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months. I don't know. But I'm optimistic that I can get through this and get v1.21.04 running again as a new 1.22.00 version. I think this will be well worth the effort in the long run, being able to run the game in Win10 without having to run a legacy pre-Vista compiled code in WinXP compatibility. And then I can proceed with code development again with more bug fixes, improvements and enhancements. Whenever I get to that point and can declare success on the migration effort, I will post another State of the Game announcement.
In the meantime, please try out the latest official update and see what you think. Enjoy!
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