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Re: Introduce yourself :)

Posted: Fri Oct 27, 2017 11:02 pm
by Munin
I was a programmer - mainly assembler, C/C++, and Lua - and also did GUI graphics (fonts especially).
Despite GOG still not having adjusted to studios that are able and willing to support their games - they only sold old games at first, as the name Gold Old Games implies - I prefer it to Steam by far. Most games will never get there, but fortunately for me you did release the game and the expansion on GOG as well, for which I'm very grateful. This is the Master of Orion successor I sought for so long and the graphic style fits perfectly IMHO, amazing work!! :-)

Re: Introduce yourself :)

Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2017 6:49 pm
by Jodet
I'm a retired programmer living in Idaho. Just started playing SIS and am enjoying it very much so far. Love the artwork and music. The tech tree is a little daunting but we'll see.

Re: Introduce yourself :)

Posted: Sat Oct 28, 2017 11:10 pm
by cpl_kindel
Hello

I am Cpl. Kindel, long time strategy game player. I go way back to Avalon hill boardgames in the late 70s, I playtested ASL for TAHGC and that's where my username comes from (I'm the 7-0 cpl german kindel leader in that game, for those of you who play ASL). I played all kinds of strategy games, been to many tournaments in my day, for the past couple decades I mostly play 4x TBS strategy games & pretty much played most of them in my lifetime ... i can remember playing the Grandaddy of them all, Interstel empire back in "87ish.

Re: Introduce yourself :)

Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2018 1:29 am
by Pherdnut
Alright, alright, I'll register here... Interesting that there's so many programmers. I've been javascripting web-browsers since web browsers were a PITA (<=2011ish - started ~ '08). And all the server-side/general-code exposure has made me something of a generalist. Also node.js which is awesome. Before I truly found code I was wandering and among other things wrote for a gaming mag that is still relevant.

I like this game. I like that you guys have devoted as much time to it as you have. Mostly I wanted a MOO2-ish-fix but I think you went above and beyond that. Fun to see it evolve.

Re: Introduce yourself :)

Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2018 9:16 am
by Kruos
Hi there!
I monitored SiS since its release last year, and just bought it this week end for my space 4x fix. So much love in this game, so MoOish, I really enjoy it! It's quite impressioning to see the involment of the dev, I hope the sales are enough good to allow them to further develop the game.

Re: Introduce yourself :)

Posted: Fri May 11, 2018 10:34 pm
by Kaelzoroden
Hello!
I'm a part-time game designer who's come to love this game, especially with the diplomacy rework being something to look forward to. Logged about 100 hours in the game so far, planning to put in many more. Playing this on one monitor and watching Star Trek on the other is a recipe for good interstellar times.

Re: Introduce yourself :)

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2018 2:47 pm
by onomastikon
Hello everyone! I've been a gamer since I could run the text-based "adventure" game on our brand-new Zenith CPM back in the 1970s. I teach at a small university in Germany. I know nothing about coding or modding and have no computer skills beyong being a "user", sadly. Today I am not only a full-time employee but also a father of two so my gaming time is quite limited. I love this little gem SiS which I found on GoG recently. Thank you for it!

Re: Introduce yourself :)

Posted: Tue Oct 02, 2018 8:47 pm
by akkamaddi
Um... Hi? Again? :oops:

Sorry to vanish. Basically, I dropped out of everything I was doing during the last hurricane season, and I'm firing up a game for the first time in about a year. I'm really happy the forum is still active. My minor races mod still works, but I have to update it if I re-post it.

I fired up a game of Stellaris to get one last hurrah before Le Guin breaks all my major mods (including my own), and I started missing this game.

Re: Introduce yourself :)

Posted: Sun Aug 25, 2019 4:37 pm
by Backfire_22
Hello everyone!

I've started playing SiS in the first days it was available to the public, and quickly stopped as I got my @ss handed to me quite violently during my first game :lol: fortunately, I found it on my computer recently and managed to be semi-decent at it this time. So, I'm here to learn and see if I can actually become a good player!

Re: Introduce yourself :)

Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2019 11:35 am
by spacemarinov
Hi all,
I've been playing SIS on and off since it was initially released on steam ... I'm not too social so that is why I just joined this forum.
The devs are awesome and helped me out a lot in the beginning with bugs and errors...
I REALLY want the game to continue developing, and maybe even reach multiplayer stage.
I have bought a copy for my buddy and he's become an awesome Phidi player, and I'd love to show him my Yoral skills. We deserve to conquer the galaxy together!
SIS MUST NOT DIE!! :D

Re: Introduce yourself :)

Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2020 7:22 pm
by andy
Loving the game. Thank you.

Re: Introduce yourself :)

Posted: Sun Feb 23, 2020 5:40 pm
by DanTheTerrible
I've been playing SiS for about a year now, still enjoy it, and am looking forward to the Outlander DLC.

I always wanted to do game programming for a living but it never worked out, I eventually got into network engineering (CCNA, CCNP, never got to the CCIE level). I took some programming courses in college a LONG time ago, but those languages are almost totally obsolete now (anyone else remember PL/1 ?). The structured concepts Lua seems designed to support are way beyond my skillset.

I'd love to write mods for this game, but seriously doubt I can learn enough to do anything that is not very basic. Mostly I expect to limit myself to suggesting stuff for smarter people to implement and testing the results. Embarrassingly, I had to ask for help on how to even load the first mod I tried to use. The guys on the mod forum are fortunately very helpful : )

Re: Introduce yourself :)

Posted: Sun Feb 23, 2020 6:59 pm
by Arioch
PL/1 was actually the first structured, procedural language I learned in college (I had already taught myself BASIC, which was sort of the command-line language used by the TRS-80). I never actually used it for anything in my life as a programmer, though. :D

Re: Introduce yourself :)

Posted: Sun Feb 23, 2020 8:37 pm
by DanTheTerrible
Arioch wrote:PL/1 was actually the first structured, procedural language I learned in college (I had already taught myself BASIC, which was sort of the command-line language used by the TRS-80). I never actually used it for anything in my life as a programmer, though. :D


Sounds familiar. I learned basic on a Commodore 64, around 1984, but I had already studied Fortran, Cobol, and PL/1 by that time. Mostly I used basic to tweak C-64 games (essentially adding cheat codes to the games or busting copy protection). Later I got a Tandy portable and did a bit more interesting programming in basic, while taking a class in linear systems analysis I wrote a basic program to solve systems of up to 10 linear equations in 10 unknowns (my own notion, not a class assignment), but that was pretty much the last bit of not-a-class-assignment coding I ever did, around 1989.

I am skeptical the description "structured" really applies to PL/1, but my memory of it is so hazy I could be wrong. The only programming languages I ever studied that I would call structured are C and its derivative, Java.

Just to pointlessly brag, I have also studied Pascal (an old favorite, the first compiled language I learned that compiled directly on a desktop instead of via a batch file on a mainframe or minicomputer), as well as assembly language for both Motorola 68000 and Intel x86 processors. I really rather enjoyed assembly language, too bad I never did anything with it.

Could you recommend an entry level resource (book, by preference, but a website will do) for learning about Lua?

Re: Introduce yourself :)

Posted: Sun Feb 23, 2020 9:05 pm
by sven
DanTheTerrible wrote:Could you recommend an entry level resource (book, by preference, but a website will do) for learning about Lua?


The Lua flavor used by sis is 5.2, but the parser is pretty heavily modded. For learning basic Lua concepts and patterns, the standard reference book would be the third edition of Programming in Lua. However, to understand the eccentricities of the Lua parser in sis, you'll actually need to look at the patch notes on my personal page on the Lua users wiki.

All that said -- Lua, as a programming language, is really unusually flexible in terms of what kinds of structures and patterns you can use with it. And one of it's biggest strengths is that it interfaces very easily with C code. The problem with this, from a modder's perspective, is that while you can read all of the Lua sources in SiS, you can't actually read the C sources that interface with them, which means that big chunks of the game code are "black boxes" that may not be easy to figure out.

For example, SiS supports an undo/redo system, and at a high level, the reason that exists is that Lua's metatable system makes implementing such a thing relatively easy. But, while reading Programming in Lua will leave you with a general high level understanding of how such systems can be put together, 99% of the actual implementation of all the undo/redo logic is done in C++ code, so, if you want to really understand how some aspect of it works, your only option is probably to ask me for the relevant details.

If you've programmed, even casually, in assembly, you'll probably find the Lua language easy enough to understand. What's more likely to prove frustrating, I'd imagine, is all the ways in which the programming environment for SiS is undocumented.