Does anybody know where the latest source code for FFED3D can be found? AFAIK, there seems to be 3 variants of the FFED3D project: Dreamzzz, Ittiz and AndyJ. The only source I have found (so far) was on an archived Google Code page, which I would guess is an old version of the Dreamzzz variant. After a couple of days of playing with it, I was at least able to get it to compile and link in VS C++ 2010 Express. Only the source was included in the archive I found, so I copied the resulting .exe file into AndyJ's last build and ran it. IT got past the loading textures and models and whatnot, and then after I hit 'v' to continue on the info screen, the program crashed. Something to do with stack pointer out of whack, my guess is I have some library mismatch. The source code has modify date of 2016, not sure if this is the actual last date of modification or if someone just made a copy on this date. At any rate, I will see if I can find a Dreamzzz build I can test with my built exe file, see if it works any better. But if someone has access to Ittiz or AndyJ source, that would be better to work with, as I understand their builds include many fixes from the Dreamzzz code base.
BTW, my intentions for making a build is to make the pirates-blow-me-away-soon-after-entering-system situation a little more tolerable. As it is, it seems fairly unplayable to me. I had made my way to a Cobra MK III with some upgraded shields and lasers, still got my butt handed to me. As a test, I did a money cheat to see how I fare after buying a huge freighter with tons of shields and 4MW laser, and I still got wasted before I could find the buggers on the screen. Intolerable. First thought I had was to make the pirates laser strength weaker. I already found the section of code where pirates are spawned and saw the ship object field that would need to be changed.
Beyond this, I don't have much desire to make improvements to the code. I just want to make it playable without wanting to tear my hair out. I would be happy to make any changes I make to the source available. I would even go so far to make a development VM that has VS Express installed as well as the D3D SDK and NASM assembler installed, so that any future dev would be able to just start the VM, load the project solution into VS Express, and be able to build immediately without having to figure out how to set up all the pieces of the build environment.
Update: I found a beta 3 build from Ittiz on this sites downloads. I copied the bass.dll from this build and copied it to the andyj build directory I had, overwriting the bass.dll there. I copied my ffed3d.exe that I compiled from source and dropped it into the andyj build directory and ran it... success! After 10 min of play testing, no crashes. At least one annoying bug so far: when I launch from a base, I drop thru the floor instead of going up. Weird.
And I still don't know for sure whose build I have the source to. My guess at this point is that it is Ittiz build source, because AFAIK AndyJ never uploaded his source anywhere, and I have not yet encountered a Dreamzzz build that required lua.dll (which my source requires).
The other interesting thing, I haven't made any source code changes yet, but my first encounter with a pirate was actually a better experience that when I played the AndyJ build. I actually survived long enough to blow away the pirate, which I had never been able to do before. Perhaps I had some default mods or settings on the AndyJ build that was increasing difficulty by a LOT. I will have to check into that.
If anybody has any desire for me to put my FFED3D build environment into a VM and upload it somewhere for posterity, let me know.
Good that you found somthing.
IIRC I think the game had it origins on the Russian forum Elite Games or at lest that where most early versions came from, then taken by others and expanded upon.
@pinback Yes, you are right about the elitegames.ru site, or whatever it was called... but it started even before that. From what I have found in the week or so that I have been poking around about this, it started with JJFFE, which was the first reversed engineered version of the commercial FFE. No improvements in that version, just reverse engineered source code. I think next came GLFFE, which took JJFFE and made it use OpenGL graphics. THEN I think the Russian project FFED3D came along, which uses Direct 3D graphics. And from that I think we have Itiiz and AndyJ variants that made improvements to FFED3D. So, as I said, I am not sure WHAT flavor of FFE source I have, but my best guess is it is Itiiz's variant.
Because of the bugs in the version I have, I am starting to think I would be better off using the Buffer cheat app with the AndyJ version to tone down the pirate problem. I haven't tried it yet, but my guess is it is going to be a hassle to have to change the AI ships manually with that tool on every encounter. So maybe rather than trying to fix the source I have, I can try to create a Buffer-like app to use with AndyJ version, whose sole purpose is to automatically monitor FFE memory for enemy pirate ships and modify their stats to make them less godlike. Unless I can ever come across AndyJ version source code, then I would to make the fixes there directly, because I believe that version is the most stable graphics-enhanced version.
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