Convert 6 to 2008

[JSchilli1]

Hi, All!

Why can't someone sit down and convert all the Eclipse stuff to something more accessible, like Visual Basic 2008? Okay, get Visual Studio.NET. Convert 6 to .NET. Get Visual Studio 2003\. Convert .NET to 2003\. Get Visual Studio 2008\. Convert 2003 > 2008\. Now I know there'd be some debugging to do, but seriously. This would make stuff so much easier. Anyone who thinks this would be good say so. If there's enough demand I might do it myself. Also, if someone knows why this isn't possible, please tell me.

-JS1

[Ruins of Hell]

There's a _lot_ of debugging to do.

[Gwen]

It's been tried a few times. Everyone eventually gives up.

It pretty much comes down to a full rewrite of the engine. A lot of the code in vb6 is outdated and is completely obsolete in the newer languages.

[Adulese Games]

@Gwen:

> It's been tried a few times. Everyone eventually gives up.
>
> It pretty much comes down to a full rewrite of the engine. A lot of the code in vb6 is outdated and is completely obsolete in the newer languages.

As Gwen said, there are a fuckload of errors when you even just convert 6 to NET. Almost every function needs to be rewritten, which takes bloody forever. Thus, I highly doubt it will ever be fully converted.

- Adulese

[Admiral Refuge]

Gwen hit the nail on the head with the hammer; doing this requires a complete rewrite of the engine, as the .NET framework is different from how VB6 handled things.

We do have a version of Eclipse being developed known as Solar Eclipse, which is written in Java.
If you're willing to do it yourself, I'm not sure if this is still being worked on, but: http://www.touchofdeathforums.com/smf/index.php/topic,57740.0.html They may appreciate a hand :)

[JSchilli1]

Actually, I have a book on converting VB6 code to .NET. Is the Eclipse.NET team looking for another person? I'd definitely be willing to help, as long as I get credit for some. I'll look into that. Thanks, and from my understanding, it IS possible, just hard. Okay, I'll check around that link. I'll update when I decide what to do.

-JS1

[Robin]

Many people decide they want to convert the engine, but most of them _only_ have programming experience with messing around with Eclipse, which isn't programming at all, just copying & pasting and doing small alterations.

Mirage was originally made in 1 week. That's a working socket system, chat system, map system, graphics engine and data saving/loading.

If you can't do that in 1 week then the project is most probably not going to go anywhere.

[Godlord]

@JSchilli1:

> Why can't someone sit down and convert all the Eclipse stuff to something more accessible, like VB Express 08? (can't use express for commercial games…) Okay, get VS.NET. Convert 6 > NET. Get 2003\. Convert NET > 03\. Get 2008\. Convert 03 > 08\. Now I know there'd be some debugging to do, but seriously. This would make stuff so much easier. Anyone who thinks this would be good say so. If there's enough demand I might do it myself. Also if someone knows why this isn't possible, please tell me. Thanks.

Why would you want to _downgrade_? Downgrading to .net is like buying Windows Vista, as they're both full of shit.

Regards,
  Godlord.

[unknown]

VB.NET and VB6 are two completely different languages.. It's easy to go through everything in the VB6 code and convert it to VB.NET. The problem in doing that is you neglect the biggest advantage of .NET which is OOP.

If Mirage/Eclipse were to ever exist in another language it would have to be rethought, and redesigned to work with OOP.

[JSchilli1]

@unknown:

> VB.NET and VB6 are two completely different languages.. It's easy to go through everything in the VB6 code and convert it to VB.NET. The problem in doing that is you neglect the biggest advantage of .NET which is OOP.
>
> If Mirage/Eclipse were to ever exist in another language it would have to be rethought, and redesigned to work with OOP.

VB6 is OOP, it's definitely not executed serially. Not sure what you're thinking. OOP stands for object oriented programming, and variables, as well as constants, are objects, and we have constants and variables in Eclipse…

-JS1

[unknown]

Your missing the point… VB6 offers _very_ limited OOP. Developers are not encouraged to make their own objects, VB6 doesn't even support inheritance a fundamental building block in many design patterns. When people write things in VB6 they usually end up with gigantic modules of code which is the opposite of OOP. Because of this, Eclipse & Mirage code is so vastly different from modern day code that it is useless to try & move it to a new language line by line it'd make much more sense for it to be rewritten.

[JSchilli1]

The idea is not to make the code cleaner or smaller, the idea is to make it more accessible to the average user, by using accessible technologies. And  I'd bet it'd be a heck of a lot more sucessful than something rewritten in another language, like EPP is, because most of you already have a vague understanding of VB's syntax.

-JS1