Hacking the BZFlag Server GUI

The BZFlag Server GUI has been placed under the Academic Free License. If you are interested in changing it or adding to it, please do! Note that at this time, the BZFSGUI is available for WINDOWS only, and this page assumes you are interested in hacking the current Windows version; if you'd like to work on the (as-of-yet unreleased) linux/osx version (being written in Cocoa and GNUStep), please e-mail the project administrator at remenakrabbits@yahoo.com; or the lead Cocoa developer at kylebot@users.sourceforge.net. Also note that CVS is now up and running; this is the recommended way to get the latest sources, although anonymous CVS is 24 hours behind and somewhat slow due to problems at the sourceforge website.

Instructions

1. Figure out what you want to change. Need ideas? Try the TODO List, or go to the SF.NET project page and look in the "Bugs" or "Feature Requests" trackers!
2. If you're thinking about working on BZFS version compatibility, first check out the BZFlag Server Version Enumerator or go to list.bzflag.org:5156 to see how many servers of that version are running at the moment.
3. A. Get latest sources from anonymous CVS. See the SourceForge.NET documentation to set up CVS.
   OR
   B. Download the latest sources from the SF.NET files page (look for BZFSGUI-2.7-src.zip)
4. Open the project in Visual Basic
5. Hack away to your heart's desire
6. When you've made your changes:
   A. Update your sources from CVS and make sure everything works, adapting your changes if necessary
   OR
   B. Go visit the SF.NET project page and see if a new release has come out. If so, download it and adapt your changes to the new code before making the patch.
7. Make a patch. Go to the UNXUtils home page, download the UNXUtils package, and use diff to create a patch file. If you can't figure out how to use diff and patch, you may upload the entire contents of the source files that you have changed, and I'll do it for you.
8. Post your patch. Go to the SF.NET patches page, and add a post!
9. If you ever have trouble with any of the above, e-mail me at remenakrabbits@yahoo.com

System Requirements

• BZFlag 1.7d9 or better (up to 1.7g2 are supported), BZFlag:Zero, or BZFlagX, for testing
• Microsoft Windows 9x, ME, NT, 2000, or XP.
• Microsoft Visual Basic
• Version 6.0 Professional, SP5 works (this is what the developers use; Service Pack 5 can be downloaded from Microsoft).
• Other flavors of VB6 should work without problems.
• Currently does not compile on Visual Basic .NET; if you'd like to work on this, please do.
• May compile on Visual Basic 5, although reports have been primarily negative. Please tell me if you successfully open and compile it!
• Almost certainly will not compile on Visual Basic 4; definately will not compile on anything older.
• Sources are <100K in size

E-mail Daniel Remenak, the project administrator
Return to the BZFS GUI home page

Copyright 2003 Daniel Remenak.