kramhag: I'm sorry, could you explain exactly what this is/does? What sort of content will it add?
Q: ja2-stracciatella? Wtf is the meaning of this?
A: Well - we are porting vanilla-sources of Jagged Alliance 2. For now we don't plan to alter the game in itself except fixing obvious bugs while porting. So it is still some sort of vanilla-looking - with having some bugs fixed as pieces of chocolate
Q: Why do you do this? There is already a project tinkering with ja2-sources, ja2-v113.
A: We know. But ja2-v113 is only native to Windows - everyone with BSD, Linux, Solaris will have to use wine/cedega (and finding the right version of wine which still supports ja2, for newer versions don't, is a pain in the ass). With ja2-stracciatella there will be a portable version to tinker with - one mod may be used in Win32, BSD and Linux.
Q: So it is about playing Jagged Alliance 2 in Linux? Vanilla Jagged Alliance 2 has already been ported by Tribsoft.
A: Again, we know. Tribsoft's port has several serious drawbacks. It is linked against an old version of glibc, which is incompatible to newer versions. It has some serious bugs (crashing the moment your sectors are attacked among others) which can't be fixed by users (it is closed source) and won't be patched by Tribsoft (they are gone).
And in the end, it is not only about playing Jagged Alliance 2 in Linux. It is about playing Jagged Alliance 2 everywhere where SDL and gcc can go...
Q: So, why didn't you port ja2-v113? They made many additions to the code.
A: When we started the project two years ago (yes, there is a long gap in which we didn't do anything), we didn't know about ja2-v113. When we revived the project, we strolled on the path we had begun. On another point we really liked the game. Just plain vanilla ja2. So we will port vanilla ja2 first everywhere gcc and sdl can go. What comes after this, noone can tell...
Q: So, who is "we"?
A: "We" consist of tron, who is the real hard working part of "us" and really knows his C and wolf, who does the stupid bug-hunting and knows the game.
Q: What platforms are known to work?
A: Currently known to work are x86-based versions of FreeBSD, Linux, MacOS X and Windows. NetBSD should work, too. If it works for you on another platform, feel free to tell us. It should run on every x86 based System with SDL.
Q: Why is it limited to x86?
A: At the moment the code is dependent on little endian, 32bit architecture and no strict alignment (Sir-Tech didn't intend to use it on anything else than x86). It is planned to fix this limitation.
