C-evo-x
A freeware empire building game.
C-evo-x Goals
I have some specific short term goals for the C-evo-x project. Medium and long term goals are naturally broader and fuzzier.
Short Term
Currently, the C-evo source code that’s available from the C-evo site isn’t complete and can’t be built as-is. The first task of C-evo-x is to gather together all the pieces in one place and make them buildable “out of the box” for anyone who clones the C-evo-x repo or downloads the source.
The next job is build clean up. Both the Delphi and C# sources produce a bunch of compiler wornings that should be fixed. Updating to modern versions of Delphi and Visual C# is the next milestone.
In the short term, I’m intentionally keeping changes to the source code to a minimum.
Medium Term
C-evo is “legacy code” in the sense that there is no automated test suite. Figuring out how to add some tests to the project is high on the agenda in the mid term. Making the C-evo source testable will probably require some changes to the code.
Splitting up the game into separate, independently built modules is another important part of the medium term goals. Modularity and testing tend to be synergistic.
Along with better code organization, there are a bunch of small UI improvements I’ve long wanted to make, such as a “Go To City” command.
Long Term
Delphi has a very small development community these days. C# has never gained wide acceptance outside of the Microsoft world. I’m not a regular user of either language and while they’re both fine languages (thanks Anders!), my personal preferences and interests lies elsewhere.
Rebuilding C-evo in a more widely used language with a vibrant development community is the final broad goal. Right now, the choices that seem practical to me are C, C++ or Rust. Any of these three would make the core game engine portable to Linux, macOS and iOS. But that decision is still a ways off.