Outpost Universe Forums
Community => Introductions => Topic started by: Indigo Jones on May 22, 2013, 03:50:47 AM
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Hello, I am a fan of Outpost 1. I especially like it's hard science based approach and the city/urban planning (city-building) aspect approach that the game has.
It reminds me of some other favourite games such as Fragile Allegiance and Dwarf Fortress.
I would like to know if there are any mods for it or modding guides for the game out there? I think that a lot of very exciting stuff could be done off the foundation that the game has set.
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I'm not aware of any mods for Outpost 1. I think part of that is Outpost 1 is 16-bit, which makes writing code for it a bit more difficult, and also causes some compatibility issues around the game. Most of the modding effort here went into Outpost 2.
There have been some Outpost 1 rewrite attempts though. None have been finished to date.
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Thanks Hooman, thats good to know. I dont know if I am up for modding in 16 bit but then again there is always a first time for anything. I just have no idea how to get started. Any ideas?
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If you really want to mod, you'll probably want to learn how to use a debugger. I believe I once used Borland Turbo Debugger back in the day for some 16-bit stuff, and found it to be quite good. I vaguely remember it working similar to how OllyDbg works (which is a 32-bit debugger I've used with Outpost 2 stuff). You'd need to know assembly though, and it would probably take you a rather long time to get a foothold on even something simple.
If you do play around with it, and feel a bit lost, and looking up assembly opcodes isn't getting you very far, maybe trying reading about the C ABI (Application Binary Interface). You can google for it (but remember it's platform specific, and sometimes a bit compiler specific too), and it will describe things like calling conventions, and generally give you a better sense of how C code would translate into assembly code. That, along with knowing a handful of opcodes would help you make sense of function call sequences. Once you get a feel for that, you might be able to start figuring out what a few simple functions do.
Working on a rewrite is probably a bit easier, but still a rather large task. It's also a bit more open ended, so it can be hard to know what to do if you don't have a plan.
Either way, you're bound to learn something by just making an attempt.