Shogo: Progress Report
02-April-2000: Progress update by Hans-Joerg Frieden
The Linux version of "Shogo: Mobile Armor Division" and the LithTech engine it is based on, is coming along nicely although it was somewhat delayed because of our contract-work on LithTech V2. The Linux (and Mac) port is based on the sources of the Amiga port which is nearing completion. Most of the work required to get Shogo and LithTech to run on Mac, Amiga or Linux is identical: removing Windows dependencies of all sorts (Direct3D to OpenGL, MFC etc.), removing Visual C++ dependencies, implementing a DLL-mechanism etc. The Amiga team, headed by Thomas Frieden, has been careful to minimise the amount of platform specific code. This has slowed down development of the Amiga version somewhat but was well worth the effort especially in view of the upcoming LithTech V2 engine.
An additional advantage of basing the Linux port on the Amiga sources is that the Amiga team has already gone through the tedious but laborious process of removing endian-problems. This was necessary to allow a Linux PPC port as the PPC family of processors are "big endian" whilst the x86 family is "little endian" which can wreak havoc if the code is endian-unaware (as was the case). Finally, because of the intimate knowledge the Amiga team now has of the LithTech engine and Shogo, Hyperion is now able to provide "in-house" technical support.
The Linux stand-alone server is currently up and running and this qualifies as the brunt of the work. It took the Amiga team no less than 5 months to get a working Shogo server. The Linux server was up and running in less than 24 hours! The fact that the same compiler (GCC) is used on both Amiga and Linux has been a great help. Currently, work is in progress on the Linux client. The full game is expected to be completed in Q2/2000. More details will follow soon.
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