What can I do to help further Mids??

[Crytilis]

What would be required of me if I wanted to help with the continuement of Mids Hero/Villian Designer? It's really a great program and wouldn't mind helping out if I could. I have some graphics design experience as well some coding and database knowledge. Mostly I'm more familiar with the LUA and Purebasic languages.

I think it would be awesome to be able to give back to the CoH community and help out where I can.

[Diellan]

Mids was originally written in VB.net, and has since been partially ported to C#.  You can apply to join the development team, or the Titan Network in general, which has a variety of other projects, some related (City of Data, for example, does not have a dedicated developer).

The code of Mids is not open source, by request of Mids himself, so if you don't join up with the Titan Network as a developer, I wouldn't really be able to utilize you for much.

[Crytilis]

Can totally understand that where would I need apply?

[Diellan]

Uh... Usually, you contact TonyV and chat with him about it, and then you'll get access to the Developer Recruits forum where you can ask questions and whatnot.

[Crytilis]

Will do thanks Diellan

[TonyV]

Say, how good are you at HTML/CSS/PHP/Javascript development?  The reason I ask is because we've been seriously talking about making the next major hero planner an HTML 5 web app, not a standalone app.  (Although as an HTML 5 app, if it's written right, it could function without network connectivity if need be.)

[Crytilis]

I would say I'm intermediate with HTML 5 as some of the new APIs I'm not yet familiar with. I'm better with PHP and Javascript, as for CSS to be honest I'm not that great with but I do get around and accomplish what I need to.

Have you thought about using LUA? It's a great language and very powerful it can easily accomplish what your trying to do as far as being able to function independently without network connectivity. Just a suggestion of course, mainly because I love the LUA language its so powerful and you can do just about anything with it.

[TonyV]

Have you thought about using LUA? It's a great language and very powerful it can easily accomplish what your trying to do as far as being able to function independently without network connectivity. Just a suggestion of course, mainly because I love the LUA language its so powerful and you can do just about anything with it.

I understand, but egads, we're already swimming in different languages.  One thing I'm trying to do is encourage standardization on our toolset, and Lua isn't really on our radar.

[Crytilis]

I completely understand was just an idea I thought I'd throw out there. But I am definitely available to help with the project if you can utilize me.

I have been working on another project for CoH using LUA that allows you to have more autofire powers, but in a simulated way using simple keybinds and reading recharge data. But I am having a bit of a problem with it as without a better understanding of the C API and intercepting some DLL calls (Not to modify anything just to read certain data.) I am unable to obtain the results I'm looking for. It works, just not as well as I'd like it.

[Diellan]

The bigger issue is that not many people know LUA, so it'd be harder to find somebody to maintain the code when you moved on.

[Crytilis]

Point well said, it was merely a throw out to see what your opinions were on it. But as I said I am capable of doing other languages and various things includes GUI and Intermediate graphics design.

[Jumpman]

If you are needing PHP/HTML/CSS/JS people, I may be able to help as well.  CoX really NEEDS an online (& ideally mobile friendly) hero/villain planner.  If there's something I can do, let me know.

JM

[Crytilis]

Once the online side is revamped I could easily port it over to an Android App =p

[GuyPerfect]

You mean the fact that Android natively runs HTML5 applications will be easy for you to handle? (-:

[Crytilis]

LoL Whatever man I know several different coding/database languages here's just some of the languages PHP, SQL, HTML5, LUA and a few others. But think what you like.

[Aggelakis]

LoL Whatever man I know several different coding/database languages here's just some of the languages PHP, SQL, HTML5, LUA and a few others. But think what you like.

Don't get snappy, it doesn't help your offer to help. Guy Perfect was commenting that the new planner is going to be in HTML5, which doesn't require a port to Android. It doesn't need a port to iOS either; it can be used on most (all?) modern browsers, so it's usable on netbooks, laptops, and desktops.

[KAZMAICOH]

Say, how good are you at HTML/CSS/PHP/Javascript development?  The reason I ask is because we've been seriously talking about making the next major hero planner an HTML 5 web app, not a standalone app.  (Although as an HTML 5 app, if it's written right, it could function without network connectivity if need be.)

This is a bit off topic but, what would be the difference in the standalone and a web app?

[TonyV]

Honestly, the main difference is that a web app is immediately portable across most platforms, including PC/Macs, Android, and iOS. Also, we don't have to worry about things like having to pay fees for developer licenses, app store distribution, etc.

The main downside is that programming in JavaScript/HTML 5 is a lot more low-level. There aren't any robust frameworks nearly as advanced as native app development frameworks and tools. So what you save in not having to develop on multiple platforms, you have to give back some for not having native libraries available for many features.

Also, it is very difficult to make a web app have a native app "look and feel," so it's usually not as intuitive or easy to use a web app for someone who is really familiar with a platform or device. In other words, a web app on a iOS device is going to work slightly differently than a native app, and if the developer isn't careful, those slight differences can turn into major annoyances for the end users.

[Crytilis]

Don't get snappy, it doesn't help your offer to help. Guy Perfect was commenting that the new planner is going to be in HTML5, which doesn't require a port to Android. It doesn't need a port to iOS either; it can be used on most (all?) modern browsers, so it's usable on netbooks, laptops, and desktops.

I wasnt getting snappy, I already know that android uses HTML5 natively and that the new planner is going to be done in HTML5/PHP/JS. My point was although he was merely commenting he was also being a smartass at least from my point of view (I may be wrong but that is how I saw it). And as far as helping goes I merely offered to help you can either choose to use it that is up to you. And on another note TonyV is right when you use a language that you can easily cross platform with (which is usually a low-end language) such as HTML5 you lose alot of capabilities that other more powerful languages offer natively. And although I do see where I may have caused confusion in my previous post. I meant to say if you should ever choose to make it an actual web application not just a page that utilizes HTML5 and a couple other languages that I could help with the porting over to another platform. But personally if it were me (and its not) I would use JAVA or LUA...very powerful languages and easily used on multiple platforms. I understand this may not be practical either though since not alot of folks understand the JAVA or LUA languages, which is sad really the syntax of both languages aren't hard in any means to grasp LUA by far is one of the simplest in terms of learning and relation with other language syntax's. If you have prior knowledge of programming in just about any language you can use LUA it's really not hard at all. I urge you all to look at it...I'm sure you will be surprised how easy it is to understand.

[TonyV]

...he was also being a smartass at least from my point of view (I may be wrong but that is how I saw it).

Guy?  A smartass?  I'm shocked! 

I think you may have confused what we mean when we say a "web app."  We're specifically talking about a client-side application that runs completely within the browser.  We can't use Java or Lua, because most mainstream browsers don't natively support Java or Lua.

I'm not saying that Lua is hard, I'm only saying that it's not really suitable for the purpose of building a client-side web app.  And while it may be easy to you, there's still a learning curve involved that everyone else at the Titan Network would have to go through if we wanted to use it for any back-end work, plus a learning curve I'd have to go through to get it set up and configured to process HTTP requests and make sure it's secure and efficient.

If it ever becomes more mainstream as a web platform, or if there's something that just screams out that it would be much more easy to implement in Lua than in one of our standard languages, I might change my mind.  But for now, I just can't imagine that it will happen anytime soon.  I might look at it at some point, but probably not as a server-side web language.  If anything, I might give it a glance-over to implement parsing functions in a native client-side app if we ever need to, for example, develop a scripting language or something.  From what I understand, that's where Lua is really in its element.

[Crytilis]

I completely understand Tony if nothing else maybe only look into LUA (in your spare time) to perhaps at least enhance some features since it will literally interface with almost any language. Very cool stuff =) but I have no doubt that you all will succeed in whichever way you go in the future just a matter of brainstorming =). Tony I had asked you before I think or I thought I did. How did you guys intercept the in game data using the windows API? I know you prob wont talk bout it much here in public but more insight would def help me with a program I'm working on "nothing to do with anything titan is working on though so no worries (as if you ever were lol)" Cause I'll admit my knowledge of C is lacking lol but if you could drop me a pm and perhaps even give me some pointers I'd appreciate it. Once I am done I wouldn't even mind dropping the program to you if you should choose to add it to those already here in the Titan Network.

[Supa Troll]

Lua is a nice language, extremely simple and elegant syntax. My one pet peeve with it is its practice of treating any variable not explicitly defined as local as a global variable, which leads to difficult-to-debug problems involving variable leaks and global namespace collisions.

It's not really suitable for developing a full-fledged application in, however. It's designed first and foremost as a scripting language, and is really intended to be embedded in another executable that provides an interface (in fact the language itself bends over backwards to make it easy to embed). There are some ways to run it standalone, and a couple of UI libraries like Qt/GTK bindings, but those have a much steeper learning curve than the language itself, and in my experience tend to be fragile and a little clunky.

It's also not very fast. While it's probably comparable to Python and other interpreted languages without a JIT, it really suffers if you have to do anything compute-heavy in it. Most environments that use it punt and provide native code callable from Lua to do the heavy lifting. It's also not thread-aware, which is problematic if you're trying to write an entire application in it and still have the UI be responsive.

Now, a lot of those problems you're going to have with HTML5+JS as well, but at least you get a cross-platform UI for free without having to do any extra work. Lua and Javascript's approach to object-orientation is actually fairly similar, in that neither are very rigid frameworks.

You should write the next hero planner in Scala

[Fleeting Whisper]

I'm not saying that Lua is hard, I'm only saying that it's not really suitable for the purpose of building a client-side web app.  And while it may be easy to you, there's still a learning curve involved that everyone else at the Titan Network would have to go through if we wanted to use it for any back-end work, plus a learning curve I'd have to go through to get it set up and configured to process HTTP requests and make sure it's secure and efficient.

Actually, I've already got fairly extensive experience with Lua, Tony

As SupaTroll said, though, it's not really suitable for writing an app with. It's a simple scripting language that's easy to write an interpreter for, to use alongside something else. My experience with Lua was extending an existing application, to open it up to another set of rules for tabletop gaming. I do know Lua's used in Dawn of War to keep track of various things in campaign mode (you can even edit a specific Lua file to skip levels), and it's used in Call of Duty to assist with the AI.

That said, I've never heard of someone using Lua as part of a web app; I suppose you could use CGI to run a Lua script, but I don't think installing Lua on the server would be necessary when you could just use JavaScript.

It kinda reminds me of the grad student I knew who worked at Google, who -- instead of simply writing the program he needed -- wrote a Scheme interpreter, and then wrote his program in Scheme. It's an extra, unnecessary step to achieve a goal.