search

Wargus / stargus

Importer and scripts for Starcraft
GNU General Public License v2.0
126 stars 24 forks source link

Any possibility to add support for Priority: Survive? #47

Closed SenhorFlibble closed 2 years ago

SenhorFlibble commented 3 years ago

Priority: Survive is a free, but not open source, sci-fi RTS game that is in many ways similar to StarCraft. There are only Windows builds available (and only via the Wayback Machine or mirror sites because the official site of the game has apparently been taken down), and they do not really work properly on modern OSs: I was unable to run it correctly either on Windows 8.1 or under Linux through Wine.

I tried to contact the developers back when the site was still up (sometime in 2017-2018), and wrote an email asking if they would consider releasing the source code, but received no reply. Quite possibly, the developers have altogether abandoned this project.

Because Priority: Survive is similar to StarCraft both visually and gameplay-wise, I thought that perhaps it would be possible to incorporate it into the Stargus project? I do not know what game data format is uses, but apparently some StarCraft mods use sprites from PS, hopefully suggesting that data extraction is possible.

timfel commented 3 years ago

It's definitely possible, but a lot of work. As with anything open source - unless someone comes along who wants to do that work, it will not happen :-)

yaaaaa commented 3 years ago

"I was unable to run it correctly either on Windows 8.1 or under Linux through Wine." +++ Anybody was can run it?

SenhorFlibble commented 3 years ago

"I was unable to run it correctly either on Windows 8.1 or under Linux through Wine." +++ Anybody was can run it?

Sure, you can find a number of videos on YouTube, like this. The programme does run on both Windows 8.1 and Wine, it just does not work correctly. IIRC Windows has a garbled palette, while in Wine I had issues with the mouse pointer. I was able to make some screenshots for the MobyGames entry but it was not really playable that way.

It might be that Wine compatibility has improved since then, as I played around with the game back in 2017, and cannot check in the current Wine version now. I also thought that maybe DxWnd or some such tool could fix the palette issues on Windows but again, haven't gotten around to actually try that out.

Generally it would be super nice to have a libre StarCraft clone along the lines of Aleona's Tales, although I guess it'd take a lot more work to produce the necessary art. Since Priority: Survive is free and seemingly abandoned by the developers, it could work as an interim free data set.

timfel commented 3 years ago

Since Priority: Survive is free and seemingly abandoned by the developers, it could work as an interim free data set.

Unfortunately it being freeware does not imply that it's license allows using the assets for something else. Unless it explicitly permits that, we would probably still have to ask the authors. Since they removed the downloads from their official website, it's not clear what the state is there.

SenhorFlibble commented 3 years ago

Unfortunately it being freeware does not imply that it's license allows using the assets for something else. Unless it explicitly permits that, we would probably still have to ask the authors. Since they removed the downloads from their official website, it's not clear what the state is there.

I understand that, but I don't think they'd object if Stargus had a data extractor/converter for PS assets similar to the one used to get proprietary Blizzard data. I did not suggest to just grab the free game data as the project's own.

As for the downloads having been removed, it seems to me that their domain ownership just expired.

Their main site is still up and they're offering game art outsourcing services, apparently. But I checked my mailbox and I definitely sent my email to the address on their contact page at the distortum.net domain, without getting any reply.