Far Horizons: The Awakening

[GrimFinger]

holy frack, you found the source code!

looks like it's all in C (which is fine), made to run on Unix (which I do not have). I will either need to get access to a unix machine or server, or modify the code to run on windows. I'll look into it this weekend...

I hope that you modify it to run on Windows.

[ixnay]

This is going to take a back-seat to my Even Horizon game project. I will use the FH code as a wellspring of ideas, mechanical constructs, and a shining example of a (somewhat) finished game. But it's not worth it to invest so many hours into an ancient code-base for a game that will likely only be played by a dozen of us forum users.

I thank you for finding the code, and hopefully I can put it to good use in my new project.

[kwll]

I was able to download the whole source code from the GitHub link in first post of this thread. I am using a Windows laptop, but the code compiles without error with the latest version of Cygwin (I only installed GCC and some version of MAKE).

I was even able to create a PDF version of the rules after installing TeX Live and all its additional packages (see attached file).

The game seems to run well at first sight. At least I was able to create a galaxy and homes, and list the corresponding map.

So all in all, the whole project seems to be in relatively good shape!

[Ramblurr]

Hey guys!

Back from the dead here.

Glad you found the source code! (For posterity here it is: https://github.com/Ramblurr/Far-Horizons). The documentation source is is doc/, and is built with LaTeX as kwll discovered.

Back in 2011 I did a bit of work modernizing the code so it compiles on modern systems, so I'm glad that's still the case!

I don't recall the specifics, but while everything seems to run ok at first, in practice I ran into bugs upon every turn submission. Nearly every turn required manually editing of the data or the code. It was a real PITA. Unfortunately I don't remember specifics, just that the brittleness of the whole codebase inspired me to start from scratch.

Moroever, I think a new version written in Python or another more accessible language would be a huge improvement.

[kwll]

I haven't had the chance to actually look at the code yet, but how easy is it to tinker with it? Is there any kind of design documentation about it?

[Ramblurr]

It's obtuse to say the least.

There isn't any game design documentation nor API/coding documentation to speak of. Aside from the rules, there is a small file explaining to the GM how to process turns.

The codebase is reasonably well architectured, as well as an old C codebase can be. It is fairly highly coupled, lacking inline documentation, which makes refactoring quite difficult. As someone who had never played the game, and therefore was quite unfamiliar with the rules (I should have played as well as GMed), tinkering was difficult.

One improvement that could definitely be made is to automate the turn processing, but there are bugs (unfortunately I don't remember the details) that make turn processing an error prone process that requires manual intervention

If people enjoyed the FH rules, that is the game itself, and think its worth improving (bug fixing, modernizing the UI, etc), I'd be willing to help do so. But there would have to be some interest in doing so Personally, I'd love to see an active, open source, sci-fi themed, PBEM.