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GNU is Not Unix Entertainment Games

MSWL Olmec PBEM Soccer Game GPL'ed 181

Posted by michael from the corner-kick dept.
zeb writes "MSWL is one of the most popular PBEM football (soccer for North Americans) game, which is itself a variation of a game of postal soccer invented by Alan Parr in England around 1970. In this game, each manager has to organise his team, manage fatigue, train his players and trade them. Olmec is a game engine written by Alla Sellers. It helps the commissioner (game master) to simulate the games and publish the results. Allan has decided to release the source code of Olmec under the GPL, so that everyone can enhance the program. The actual version of Olmec is written in Visual Basic and uses MS Access as a database. The author suggests Olmec could be rewritten in a multiplatform language, for example Java, using MySQL as the database. This task is made easy because of the rich documentation about the game engine (PDF format)."
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MSWL Olmec PBEM Soccer Game GPL'ed More

MSWL Olmec PBEM Soccer Game GPL'ed

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  • Reading the headline (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I come to the ultimative conclusion..

    what?

  • Great (Score:2, Funny)

    by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 )
    All the excitement of soccer without actually any of the playing.

    Anyone got an appropriate Simpson's quote?

    • Re:Great (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      EuroTrash: In the rest of the civilized world, it's called "football".

      Homer: Here in America, it's called, "soccer," and we pay about as much attention to it as we do to UPN.

    • Re:Great (Score:3, Informative)

      by Gabey ( 18874 )
      I think you're looking for:

      Maggie: [holds up an `Aztec' flashcard]
      Lisa: No, Maggie. Not Aztec, Olmec. [slowly] Ol-mec.
      Maggie: [falls down]

      (episode 7F22, "Blood Feud", quote courtesy of snpp.com)
    • The Continental Soccer Association is coming to Springfield! It's all here--fast-kicking, low scoring, and ties? You bet!

      You'll see all your favorite soccer stars. Like Ariaga! Ariaga II! Bariaga! Aruglia! And Pizzoza!

      This match will determine once and for all which nation is the greatest on earth: Mexico or Portugal!

    • Re:Great (Score:3, Informative)

      by mandalayx ( 674042 ) *
      All the excitement of soccer without actually any of the playing.

      Yeah, who would have thought this concept would become the #1 best selling game in the UK ever?

      see Championship Manager [sigames.com].

      ******

      LLM, I'm doing Fiorentia Viola

  • And there was a time... (Score:5, Funny)

    by gloth ( 180149 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @08:50PM (#6547627)
    ...when game developers were divided on the question whether C was fast enough, or if assembly was the only way to go.

    And these days people write games in visual basic? What has this world come to?!

    • Re:And there was a time... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dtfinch ( 661405 ) * on Sunday July 27, 2003 @09:18PM (#6547787) Journal
      If you don't like that, this is sure to piss you off:

      http://home.att.net/~r.jarrett/bNES.html

      It was the first release quality, full speed NES emulator to be written entirely in Visual Basic.

      I contributed most of the graphics and sound code, but stopped working on it during v1.3, and the author has since rewritten large portions of it, fixing some major bugs but introducing many new ones in the process.

      • No offense, but...

        NES processor (it's 6502, IIRC) is about 1.79 MHz and computer nowadays are thousand times faster than that. I would appreciate it if you can run your VB emulator on 386 computers and still have a decent speed.... I know that some of the older NES emulators like Nesticle still manage to run smoothly in old computers like that. Back then, Nesticle was a combination of C and assembly, IIRC.

        • I think Don (the author) developed it on a 350mhz PII and I had (and still have) a 500mhz Celeron. I got Super Mario Bros to run at 350fps (frame skip of 3, idle detection enabled, tile based engine), so I suspect that it'll run full speed on computers much slower than mine.

    • Re:And there was a time... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I recall having played -very- fast shoot 'em up platform games written in Amos Basic on a 8 MHz Amiga 500 about 12 years ago.
      Todays PC's are simply too fast for most uses, so a game written in basic, even a bloated implementation like Visual Basic, is possible.
      What kind of load that choice will impose on the target system is a completely different issue though.

  • MSWL Olmec PBEM Soccer Game GPL'ed (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dark Lord Seth ( 584963 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @08:52PM (#6547641) Journal

    Did anyone else just stare blankly at the subject for a few second and wonder who took what kind of drugs?

  • mswl olmec pbem soccer game gpl'ed? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 27, 2003 @08:53PM (#6547650)
    omfg!

  • Popularity of play by email football.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 27, 2003 @08:54PM (#6547657)

    A recent Gartner Group study has revealed the surprising news that play by email ("PBEM") football ("soccer") is actually slightly more popular than repeating punching yourself in the balls. However, compulsive genital self-pugilists insist that their sport is growing rapidly in popularity and will soon outpace PBEM football, even given the influx of free software nerds that this GPL announcement is likely to attract. "Punching yourself in the nads is simply more fun than PBEM football," said a spokesman today. "Also, it's less gay."

  • Java Flamebait (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Bonker ( 243350 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @08:56PM (#6547670)
    Yeah, write it in Java, and then anyone who has trouble installing the VM will never be able to run it.

    If your game cannot be installed by a complete moron, chances are, it won't get popular enough to acheive any kind of critical mass. Yeah, VB and Access are a piss-poor choice of design language here, but Java is just asking for nobody to ever run the game. Even if they already have a VM installed, you have to make sure it's the RIGHT VM (Yeah, MS's fault) and that you don't have a funky enivronment variable munging up your classpaths.

    My suggestions?

    For sheer compatibility's sake, the game should be written in ANSI C and use a non-platform specific database format (Dare I say it? XML delimited data?) to keep its data in.

    • you're right about the flamebait part. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kunta Kinte ( 323399 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @09:28PM (#6547817) Journal
      Yeah, write it in Java, and then anyone who has trouble installing the VM will never be able to run it.

      I installed Netscape 7.1, never had to know or do anything about the JVM. Why? Because it has a decent installer. You can't blame Java for problems caused by bad installers.

      A developer could wite a Java application, build the '.jar' file, then tell the user "you're on your own". Or that developer can build a platform specific installer that checks for the proper JVM and install it if needed.

      There are programs out there that take either approach.

      Even if they already have a VM installed, you have to make sure it's the RIGHT VM...

      No the application's installer needs to make sure you have the right JVM

      (Yeah, MS's fault) and that you don't have a funky enivronment variable munging up your classpaths.

      I work with Java frequently, I can't remember the last time I had to set, or find out anything about the CLASSPATH environment variable.

      CLASSPATH was an issue maybe *years* ago around Java 1.1, but has has been fixed for a long while. Part of the reason is that nowadays a Java developer can put just about all the resources he/she needs in a '.jar' file, which is a zip file with a meta information. The jar file acts likea mini file hierarchy within a single file, making software distrubution and resolving runtime dependencies easy.

    • Near as I can tell, the game's been around for 12 years. If it hasn't reached any kind of meaningful critical mass (which, depending on the author could just be "it works for me") by now then I don't think future language choice is going to have any substantial effect.
    • Good grief, when you said flamebait you were right. If you can't install a Java VM then you've got a much bigger problem. Last time I installed one it was a matter of downloading and running the setup. I've never have had a problem on Windows or Linux. Now getting it to work with your browser, that I can see people having problems with but I'm sure an application like this wouldn't be run from an applet.
    • People seam to be able to download other browser plugins. If they can download flash, quicktime realaudio or some of the numerous updates to windows media player I don't see why they shouldn't be able to download and install Java.
      Besides on some OSes Java is installed by default and some major PC venders install java on all the boxes they ship.

      It seams that its bin quite some time since you last used Java. Nowdays there is no need to put a java application on the CLASSPATH. Provided the application is pack

    • If your game cannot be installed by a complete moron, chances are, it won't get popular enough to acheive any kind of critical mass.

      And that's where I come in. I write installers. For client side applications, I make sure a complete moron can install it (server specific packages are a different matter, entirely).

      Unfortunately, I see too many installers written by the moron, not for the moron. What's with you people? You spend two years and huge sums of money developing the "killer app", but you w

  • And if you read that and knew what it meant, you DEFINITELY don't have a girlfriend. ;)

  • Mirror (Score:2, Informative)

    by imadcow1 ( 559289 ) *
    Here is a mirror of the site including the source code: http://www.madcowworld.com/mirror/mswl/www.mswl.or g/mswlsoftware.html [madcowworld.com]

  • Play by email football/soccer? (Score:5, Funny)

    by domovoi ( 657518 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @09:36PM (#6547856)

    So if I get a mail through your mailserver, I score. Meanwhile, you tweak procmail/qmail to bounce it. Likewise, I'm doing the same while you try to get a mail through my server. Standard rules.

    Otherwise...play an actual (fantasy) sport via email? Gah. I'd be less bored by remote-control hamster ball races.

  • So I actually downloaded the code to see what's up and I'd say that the chances
    that someone is going to rewrite this in Java are pretty damn low. Think whatever
    you want to think about Visual Basic but this code is almost entirely uncommented,
    and whatever language you are writing in that's a crime.

    In fact a lot of the comments are... commented out code.

    Here's a quick sample which actually has comments in it, one of which is a totally
    useless explanation of what the "Randomize" function does in Visual Basic, the second
    is just about is pointless.

    (If you are not initiated into the VB way of doing things: a ' starts a comment)

    'Randomize Random Number Function
    Randomize

    'Set Vis Team Home Bonus
    VisTeam.HomeBonus = 0

    If GstrMatchType = "Neutral" Or _
    GstrMatchType = "SONeutral" Or _
    GstrMatchType = "C1Neutral" Or _
    GstrMatchType = "C1SONeutral" Or _
    GstrMatchType = "C2Neutral" Or _
    GstrMatchType = "C2SONeutral" Then

    HomeTeam.HomeBonus = 0

    Else
    If GstrHB = "S" Then
    If HomeTeam.HomeBonus <= 8 Then
    HomeTeam.HomeBonus = 8
    ElseIf HomeTeam.HomeBonus > 8 Then
    If HomeTeam.HomeBonus > 13 Then
    HomeTeam.HomeBonus = 13
    End If
    Call CheckHomeBonus(HomeTeam)
    End If
    ElseIf GstrHB = "A" Then
    If HomeTeam.HomeBonus <= 3 Then
    HomeTeam.HomeBonus = 3
    ElseIf HomeTeam.HomeBonus > 3 Then
    If HomeTeam.HomeBonus > 8 Then
    HomeTeam.HomeBonus = 8
    End If
    Call CheckHomeBonus(HomeTeam)
    End If
    End If
    End If

    Call MatchRevenue(VisTeam, HomeTeam)

    This sort of code is a pet peeve of mine. Just because it's been released under
    the GPL means nothing if others can't actually work on the code and make sense of it.
    The story says that the extensive manual will help (which it will a little), but some
    explanation of the actual code is vital for any open source project to survive beyond
    a few programmers initiated into the dark secrets of the code.

    If we want open source to thrive we need to start having some standards of coding
    so that others can use the code. Companies do this internally for a reason: they know
    that they are going to hire new people who are going to need to look at the existing code.

    Why do so few project bother with comments? It's almost as if the Open Source Initiative
    should have a quality stamp that gets given to projects that actually care about their
    longevity.

    John.

    • Re:Puts some comments in open source code! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 27, 2003 @09:51PM (#6547938)
      People like you are a pet peave of mine.

      Having uncommented code is a hell of a lot better than having no code at all. As someone who has reverse engineered (well, re-implemented) closed source binaries starting from nothing more than a bunch of strace logs, I can tell you I'd take the source any day, and in any condition.

      It's not as if the guy removed comments that used to be there for the purpose of obfuscation. You are looking at a "Golden Rule" situation -- you get what he got.

      You don't like at the absence of comments ? Add them as you assimilate the code.

      That's what I do with the commentless code I get from my co-workers. Do I bitch at them to add comments ? No, because I'd rather the guys write more code ! Code is what runs ! Code makes me money ! I don't want these guys oppressed by my bitching of some bureaucratic requirements doc or checkin procedure.

      If I have to decipher something, I always make notes to myself in the form of comments. If his code works perfectly, it probably never gets commented.

      So quit winning and turn out the annotated version of this stuff. If your comments aren't just so much repetition of the code, maybe we'll work from your version.
      • > Having uncommented code is a hell of a lot better than having no code at all.

        Agreed.

        And the open source model means that someone can come along and fix that problem and many others. And yes I sympathize with doing reverse engineering. In my first job I reverse engineered Novell's DOS TCP/IP API and it's ugly work. Of course, having the code would have made my life easier.

        But... that's not a good reason to object to the idea that open source software can do better. It can set a high standard.
        • I suspect the guy you responded to was somehting /. hasn't seen much of; a clever troll.

          If he isn't, I would like him to send me his resume so I can be sure never to hire him.

          look at this:
          " I don't want these guys oppressed by my bitching of some bureaucratic requirements doc or checkin procedure."

          what does he mean "these guys oppressed"?
      • I'd send my developers back to comment their code. Maintainability is much more important to me than how many lines of code they can crank out. I don't know what industry you work in, but I'm in the Air Traffic Management field, and maintainability is hugely important where systems that are written may well be live for a number of years.

  • postal? (Score:3, Funny)

    by DragonWyatt ( 62035 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @09:45PM (#6547910) Homepage
    ...a variation of a game of postal soccer...

    So how does that work, you run around in funny jerseys, kicking round balls and, uh, shooting people?

  • The Most Popular Soccer Computer Game (Score:3, Interesting)

    by my1wong ( 152358 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @09:51PM (#6547941)
    The most popular is, hands down, Championship Manager.
    (Ref sites:
    www.sigames.com
    www.thedugout.net)

    Has MSWL been able to implement 10% of the features of CM?
    • Another quite popular Football (soccer) game.
      Actually I think it's the largest online game of that kind right now. I enjoy it. Give it a try.
      Find it here: Hattrick.org [hattrick.org]

      The best thing about it is that it runs in real time, a week in the game is a week real-time. Two matches a week (cup/training and series) and a 14 week long season. Finally a game that I can play that doesn't require me to be logged in 3-4 times/day.

      .haeger

  • Like looking into the face of God (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Soccer is pretty godawful boring already. Now you're supposed to play by mail?

  • PBEM?! Argh. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Feztaa ( 633745 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @09:56PM (#6547961) Homepage
    When I first read the summary of the story, I thought they were talking about some 3d accellerated soccer game written in Visual Basic, and I started crying. Then after reading a few comments I found out that PBEM meant 'Play By EMail', and I started crying again because this is way too lame to be on the front page.

  • YEs! (Score:2, Funny)

    by luekj ( 692478 )
    Finally, Duke Nukem Forever has been GPL'd and we can compile the epic ourselves.

    Time passes

    Oh no! We have to write the entire shader and physics engines BY OURSELVES!!

    Hehe

  • Languages, VB ?? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tuomoks ( 246421 ) <tuomo@descolada.com> on Sunday July 27, 2003 @10:14PM (#6548025) Homepage
    Can we, please, stop arguing the language anything is done. Language is not important - I have created high performance systems in Algol, Fortran, MUMPS, assembler ( several ), VB, Pascal, REXX, PL/I, "C", C++, APL, you name it.. Even Tcl/Tk, Python, Java, Cobol - who cares.. The important thing is that someone is giving a system for us ! Don't complain that and have a nice day..
    • Ah, but there is no VB support on my operating system, so clearly it doesn't perform as well as C/Perl/Fortran/etc. Not all languages are equal.
      • Hi - true !! But over time I have changed systems from MUMPS to Cobol ( can you believe that ? ), Fortan to "C", IMS/DB to MS SQL/DP2, RGP to APL to PL/I to "C", Pascal to C#, TAL to "C", LISP to "C", Windows to Unix, Unix to Windows, whatever.. As long as the system was well documented ( as this is ) there are no big problems, just ( a little ) work to do. IMHO actually I would like to see some VB functions implemented in other languages. have a nice day.

        • IMHO actually I would like to see some VB functions implemented in other languages. have a nice day.

          Which ones? I'm curious.
        • Why do you keep putting C in quotes? Was it not really C?
          • ?Why do you keep putting C in quotes? Was it not really C?"

            Stupid habits ? or maybe C is not just C.. Currently having fun ( not! ) to move ( re-write ) a kind of large system to Win2000 / Visual C++. Orginally we developed it in AIX, later moved it to Solaris, SUN/OS and HP/UX. Learned a lot more of different C compilers. After having years fun with original SUN C, Lattice C, Turbo C, Tandem C, GCC - each with own niceties. And of course I got Windows conversion and my friend got the conversion to Linux.

    • Re:Languages, VB ?? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by stonecypher ( 118140 ) <stonecypher@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Sunday July 27, 2003 @11:15PM (#6548226) Homepage Journal
      That's a weird laundry list of languages. Also, we're not interested in what you've programmed; granted it's an extreme example, but that a language can suck is embodied by intercal. Or maybe PL/I. (You've written in PL/I and you don't think language matters?)

      The fact of the matter is, there are a number of languages in which I can simply work quite a bit faster (Delphi, ruby, lua, PHP.) There are a number of languages in which I can express really evil concepts (lisp, C++, ml/ocaml.) There are a number of langauges in which I can write really tight, efficient code (C++, forth, assembly.)

      And then there are some languages which just gargle scrotum. I can't deal with VB. You have to bend over backwards just to get certain things done, the syntax is hard on the eyes, and so forth. Some people insist there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the language, that it does everything other languages do; that's (sort of) true, and if you like the language, fine, use it.

      Still, it slows me down /badly./ No language in this office is more prone to bugs, and that's across all fifteen of our programmers (I can say the same for previous jobs.) I don't think it's about the people I've known. No language in this office, except when we had Jim writing C, is harder to debug. In my opinion, it's just a mess.

      Normally, I'd think it was just an opinion, but nearly every proficient programmer I know also believes so. I had tried it before I heard anyone tell me about it, so I acquired my disgust fairly, and without influence.

      But, look, you quoted three languages that are famous for being awful - APL, COBOL and PL/I - and claim it doesn't matter. ou also named one of my pet peeves, Tcl. Also, you named almost no famous-for-being-good languages (*some* people would argue the point on algol. I would argue the point on REXX, but I'd probably be alone.) So, maybe you've developed in all of those languages. Maybe not. That kinda looks like it came from the "hello, world" list to me.

      But it's well known that languages provide facilities with levels of support; assembly, for example, is dead as an application language for a very good reason. Would you try to write an operating system in ASM these days? What about a word processor? Alternately, would you write a low-level interrupt handler in VB?

      Your answer: hell no. There are languages that are appropriate for certain complexities; you don't use a 4gl to boot a machine and you don't write a web server in a hex editor. There are languages that are bad at expressing things (pascal for generic programming, C for self-modifying code, or anything in your list for functional/applicative programming (haskell, ml/ocaml, scheme) or logical programming (prolog, mercury.) BTW, tell us that language doesn't matter when you learn your first non-imperative language.

      You do, however, use perl for text manipulation and glue; php for scripting, glue, and increasingly for lightweight apps; c for systems programming, OSes, drivers, and baremetal stuff; prolog for symbol manipulation stuff, like language translation; lisp for lots of stuff but especially math; lua for situations where lightweight scripting languages are desired, such as user extensions for video games (qv angband); specialty languages for their specialties (AGT for example); Delphi for lots of stuff but especially RAD fast development tools and for database work; TCL for (unsurprisingly) low level machine control; the list goes on.

      When you want to find out how much language matters, try writing a zip decompressor in TCL.

      Can we stop arguing about languages? Of course not. Arguing about them exposes their flaws, allowing us to address them or route around them. Also, we hate VB. And maybe its supporters. Watch your back.
      • Hi - I love your answer !! Mod this up, please ! Yes - it slows anybody but at least for me - the problem I have had / I still have is that the managers / customers have an idea that something has to be done in a specific language or OS, period. When I was modifying the TSO/APL ( 370 ) to fit the requirements - guess what, there was always a way to make it work. Like it - no, but learn of it, yes. MUMPS is beatiful language in it's own, as are many others, but don't even think to present it to "nerds". Pers
        • the problem I have had / I still have is that the managers / customers have an idea that something has to be done in a specific language or OS, period.

          If they're a manager, give them an estimated time to completion in their idiot language and in the appropriate language(s). If they're a customer, give an estimated cost instead.

          They'll see the light purty quick. ;)

        • if the problem seems to lie in others not understanding you, you have two options: educate them, ignore them. actually, there is a third option which combines these two, but that's never discussed in public.

      • I am hardly a VB flag waver, but some stuff in your article sure smells funny.

        "No language in this office is more prone to bugs, "
        hire somebody who knows VB. Not someone who does it becasue, well its VB how had can it be. That attitidue is the sinleg biggest problem with VB. You can not imagine the mess I have to fix that was written by a C++ 'GURU'. Clearly he did ot know the language.

        "No language in this office, except when we had Jim writing C, is harder to debug."
        I absolutly can not believe that. I ha
        • I've written 120kLoc+ tiered apps in it. I'm not a guru, but I'm also not a clown. That said, hey, maybe you don't realize that the problems don't come until a certain scale of difficulty.

          Yes, I have an axe to grind with the langauge: I hate it.

          "No language in this office, except when we had Jim writing C, is harder to debug."
          I absolutly can not believe that. I have worked with many languages, and I have never found one esier. Most of the time it stops on the line that is broken!

          (sighs) Well, I don'

  • That was quick (Score:2, Insightful)

    by raistphrk ( 203742 )
    Didn't take long to slashdot that site. Maybe next time we can just post his credit card so that we can just charge the amount we just put on his bandwidth bill?
  • Why not just write it in XML and XSLT? No virtual machine overhead, no need for a daemon, etc. It's really just pushing data around. No sense involving all that software.

  • If you're going to use Java (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Call Me Black Cloud ( 616282 ) on Sunday July 27, 2003 @10:50PM (#6548125)
    ...then why bother with MySQL? Use HSQLDB [sourceforge.net], an open source 100% Java database. The more hoops users have to jump through the fewer users will use the software. With an all-Java solution there's just one thing to install, and no configuration necessary.
  • That would be great if Tim Wisseman decided to do the same with his VGA Planets [vgaplanets.com]
  • Why rewrite in an entirely different language?
    It would make far more sense to work on the Visual Basic code and get it to work off of the Star Basic Engine from StarOffice.

    In fact now that Real Basic is available for Linux, as well as Windows and Macintosh, RealBasic looks like a really good choice if you want to make this game more portable.
    http://www.realbasic.com/

    As for the database the best idea would probably be to try and upgrade it to work with any database that understands ODBC.
  • You mean it isn't a game simulation of ancient Mesoamerica (Olmecs)? I thought it was odd that the ball court was in Manchester UK and not Tikal.
  • from postSeasonAging in basAging
    "!PlayerName = !PlayerName"

    well, d'uh.

    Maybe, just maybe there is a good reason for this, but without a comment explaing why, the author looks less then capable.

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