Comments - SimpleCountryCoder

o.61 .exe?

That... is not a file offered to the best of my knowledge. The Xash TOOLKIT is of version 0.61; is that what you meant to run?

Xash the ENGINE is currently at v0.95 (build 2153) and is a different download. The engine includes the xash.dll.

No it isn't, and I never told you otherwise. You still need a compiler. Only one works. You refuse to listen to what people here tell you. I've asked nicely, I've given friendly warnings, I've flat out told you not to do certain things. But you do them anyway. You are on your own from now on; stop flooding this page.

Because the SDK is written in C++

Above was me; forgot to sign in

You need Visual Studio 6. Due to quirks in the SDK it would be very hard to get another compiler working. If you are planning on doing any in depth modding you would also need a map editor (hammer back in the day), something to create models and textures, and a library of sounds.

You also need to be good at programming, familiar with the era's Visual c++ quirks, and willing to devote lots of time researching a subject that has become very obscure over the years. There are some old Half-Life banthas out there that can help the truly serious, but... you really don't sound up to this task. It is not trivial, and you don't sound like you know the first thing about coding.

The forums do indeed look more active than they did previously, Xash sub-forum included. There is even a new release, 0.91, released in December.

There's still the language barrier which I can skirt around later, but for the benefit of other English speakers could you update this moddb entry and describe the newer engine's features?

Triver (RE Xash3d):

I am reluctant to take over someone else's project, especially when I have such limited information on its history. I'd join a team if said team was serious and I could probably drag a couple of old Half-Life banthas with me but none of us have the time to lead.

On a personal advice level, if you're new to coding I'd avoid engines, partially because they're unwieldly beasts and partially because they'll give you a bunch of bad habits.

Lastly, if you decide to work on the project anyway, I can act as a general purpose information source. I know or can look up a fair bit regarding the inner working of regular Half-Life mostly in the networking or memory allocation and some of the physics. I know very little related to audio or video and I haven't looked at Xash itself in depth. Sing-Engine might be a newer code base but I'd try to get someone who speaks Russian to hit up this Uncle Mike for details and a newer base first.

If you take up the code mantle send me your preferred contact info and I'll stand watch. Otherwise I'll message you here if I hear of anyone else taking up the project.

Triver: Not right now. Moving conversation to PMs

At this point I've tried contacting all members of the team I can get information on, and the members of sing-engine, with no success. I had a Russian friend look at the forums and she said the site was effectively dead, and that there was no recent activity relating to Xash3D. I tried contacting Uncle Mike directly and he blocked me without a word--not sure if it was the English or if he's just done with the engine.

There doesn't seem to be any community here. Or activity. And I've seen that more than enough times to know that development is probably dead. Good thing the code is available; hopefully someone will resume what has begun here.

Okay, you're not a dev, so no development questions to you.

I and my merry band of English speaking developers (and a few other languages, but not Russian) would love to ask a developer questions. Lots of questions. And we'd like to help, especially since we've read that the networking isn't up yet and we have some experience in that realm. We've been in the business of abusing Half-Life for years, and an open source engine that works is enough to get us out of retirement. But we can't do that until we bridge the language barrier.

Who should English speaking people talk to? Where should English speaking people go to learn more about this project? Is there an IRC channel? Inquiring minds want to know.