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Mailing lists / lazarus / 2008-12

delphi 4 project w/ database support

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Michael Edwards

I am familiar with pascal and I became aware of a project (a mud client called Portal) that I use a fair bit that has been open sourced. It was written using Borland Delphi 4. It has some significant database components and currently uses whatever database borland uses by default (I think). I am not familiar with Delphi or Lazarus but I would like to take the code and make it more cross platform friendly since many of our users are Mac or Linux clients.

Is this sort of project reasonable? Is Lazarus a good place to start with this given that I am a noob? I looked at the database sections and I am somewhat concerned that porting this part is going to be a huge mess...

If anyone is a fan of MUDs or just has some free time to help, I could really use some help. The code I am working with is available here. I don't seriously expect anyone to look at it, but if you wanted to I would be insanely grateful :)

http://www.gameaxle.com/images/PortalOS_1-0.zip

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Howard Page-Clark
to Michael Edwards
Show quoted text 10 lines
I am familiar with pascal and I became aware of a project (a mud client called Portal) that I use a fair bit that has been open sourced. It was written using Borland Delphi 4. It has some significant database components and currently uses whatever database borland uses by default (I think). I am not familiar with Delphi or Lazarus but I would like to take the code and make it more cross platform friendly since many of our users are Mac or Linux clients. Is this sort of project reasonable? Is Lazarus a good place to start with this given that I am a noob?

Lazarus/FPC is definitely a better option for cross platform development of Pascal based applications than the abandoned Kylix. However, a quick look at the source code you pointed to makes me think your ambitions will not be realised. It is definitely 'legacy' code with no concessions to object oriented main form has over 80 global variables! "I am not familiar with Delphi" - so you won't easily comprehend what is a large and complex Delphi application.

While it may be open source, it depends on two commercial libraries from Woll2Woll (Infopower and 1stClass). You would have to ask Woll2Woll if these are still available (or supported) for Delphi 4. The Woll2Woll routines (even if available for Delphi 4) would not be compatible with FreePascal runtime database library routines. The databases are all Paradox tables which are not going to port to Linux or Mac easily, if at all. I would say it is a non-starter. Better to write your own game from scratch using Lazarus/FPC (or whatever Pascal you are familiar with) based on the best ideas in the source code and using a contemporary open source database that is actively developed and supported such as Firebird or one of the sql versions.

Howard

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Michael Edwards
to Howard Page-Clark

Howard,

Thank you for your comments, it will save me a lot of time and frustration, I hope.

Is there a book/tutorial that has some good info on using Delphi/Lazarus in an object oriented fashion for this type of project?

-Mike

Howard Page-Clark wrote 40 lines
On Wed, 24 Dec 2008 11:38:00 -0500 "Michael Edwards" wrote: > I am familiar with pascal and I became aware of a project (a mud > client called Portal) that I use a fair bit that has been open > sourced. It was written using Borland Delphi 4. It has some > significant database components and currently uses whatever database > borland uses by default (I think). I am not familiar with Delphi or > Lazarus but I would like to take the code and make it more cross > platform friendly since many of our users are Mac or Linux clients. > > Is this sort of project reasonable? Is Lazarus a good place to start > with this given that I am a noob? Lazarus/FPC is definitely a better option for cross platform development of Pascal based applications than the abandoned Kylix. However, a quick look at the source code you pointed to makes me think your ambitions will not be realised. It is definitely 'legacy' code with no concessions to object oriented main form has over 80 global variables! "I am not familiar with Delphi" - so you won't easily comprehend what is a large and complex Delphi application. While it may be open source, it depends on two commercial libraries from Woll2Woll (Infopower and 1stClass). You would have to ask Woll2Woll if these are still available (or supported) for Delphi 4. The Woll2Woll routines (even if available for Delphi 4) would not be compatible with FreePascal runtime database library routines. The databases are all Paradox tables which are not going to port to Linux or Mac easily, if at all. I would say it is a non-starter. Better to write your own game from scratch using Lazarus/FPC (or whatever Pascal you are familiar with) based on the best ideas in the source code and using a contemporary open source database that is actively developed and supported such as Firebird or one of the sql versions. Howard _______________________________________________ Lazarus mailing list http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus

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