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PARSEC the forgotten LAN game

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DarkOne
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Not too many have heard of Parsec. But I have been watching it for years and unfortunetly the project has stalled. This game was mainly a multiplayer PvP style game where people could get together over a LAN and just have fun killing each other. There are powerups and such that appear to make it interesting. The game was supported on multiple OS's (Windows, Linux and MacOSX)

There is a 1 or 2 of the developers left and a small group of people trying to get together to bring Parsec back to life. When it was being worked on it had some nice graphics and the soundtrack was really well done. In May 2003 the developers released Parsec to GNU and they created the OpenParsec Sourceforge Project. And once again over the years it looks like the source files are not present for download 🙁

There is an original developer that comes and chats on the sourceforge page and is looking for support/help to continue on with the project. So go over there and give them some support to let them know their hardwork will not be unappreciated. The original website ( http://www.parsec.org ) is still up and running but most of the links and downloads are dead.


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 Anonymous
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the download link is 404 🙁


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DarkOne
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Lost the files when the file area got corrupted and haven't found any one with the files. If you know of any one I will gladly put them back up.


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Geraldine
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DarkOne
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Uploading these now and should have t hem available shortly.


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CrazySpence
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Guess what I've been doing the last 3 weeks, working on the TCP server for parsec

check out my progress:

http://www.philtopia.com/?tag=parsec

Also I have someone else rewriting the client UI in SDL because the old code is vet dated and in most cases (excluding linux) does not function properly


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DarkOne
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This is some great news CrazySpence and thanks for all the work and I hope Jason W can get the windows client running. But it is great to see that game running again, even after 10yrs the HUD still looks good. CrazySpence is the music that was in the original demo will that be in the source code as well? Because they had some great music. There was a great following around this game when it came out and as always if you want a forum for Parsec you just need to say the work.

So are you and Jason technically parsec developers since it is open source and abandoned?


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CrazySpence
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The data pack I put up comes with the original music, I don't know what it was about those tunes but the get you into the mood to fight

I suppose since Jason and I are te only ones to touch the source in the past four years that we would be considered the developers however more help will be needed eventually as all the original art is dated (and still belongs to the original devs) and while I have had success with porting the p2p remote events to the server any actual network layer bugs that may exist would be above my head and also modernizing the GL renderer is something that also needs to be done due to lots of deprecated GL calls

But currently the game is playable on the server I run with the functioning Linux and Mac x11 bins I put out. If Jason succeeds with SDL maybe it will get more attention again.


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Simbad
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Have been off a while.

Its great to see someone is working on parsec. First I ran it on a Pentium 60 with a Geforce2MX and a 20" Sony Triniton on 1280x1024 resolution. At this time it seems that development will go on. But than the web-site fell asleep and it was going to be a problem to get the test binaries. Later I did run the original binary client on a 6x900MHz machine connected a 2GHz Athlon X-Terminal with a NVidia card to it. On a 1600x1200 Samsung it ran perfectly.

Very good core. But never had the time to start over with it again. Later on I tried to compile the original sources, but with newer compilers it did not compile. So I gave up because I am short on time.

Hope you wont give up again.


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CrazySpence
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Last week we were given admin access to the old Sourceforge project and have been cleaning that up with our changes

https://sourceforge.net/projects/openparsec/

the source in the svn trunk will compile and run on linux, you need data files which my blog links or can be retrieved from a lan test


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DarkOne
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CrazySpence does that mean that soon people will be able to compile the whole client with your changes from sourceforge?

Jasom get any new headway on the Windows client?


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Simbad
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I will check compilation on my 64-Bit Slackware.

Is there a working forum/mailinglist available. Have seen the mailinglists on sourceforge. Are they working again?


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Simbad
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I can help a bit. Near to the 25 years of software development work.

Build-System as long as you dont change away from make.

Remove all warnings. And transfer to 64-Bit.

But who is responsible? Any workflow? If a few more people start working on the code you are getting crazy about all the changes they make.


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Simbad
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Started to help them.

Made cleanup of the sources so that they compile with a actual gcc-4.5.x compiler. Any help, especially checking the build process, would be welcome.


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DarkOne
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I don't have a Mac or Linux machine only Windows at home, least until I setup a dual boot system in a few months. Soon as there is a windows build area I will have no problems in giving a hand because I sure loved playing this game 10yrs ago 🙂


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Simbad
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Because I can boot my Windows into a virtual machine I am near to start compiling a windows version. But that must wait until another weekend.


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DarkOne
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Any new progress CrazySpense?


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CrazySpence
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Whoops I disapeared again. Yes there has been tons of progress since last year here is a video i made recently

 

 

the SF project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/openparsec/

 

The dev chat logs: http://spenced.com/~spencep/parsec/irc/

 

Essentially, it stalled again in march, but in october I got everything going again, we have  SDL clients for windows, linux, mac, Almost all weapons and items are implemented, a master server has been made, stargates work, preliminary planets.

 

We plan to release before march (10 year anniversary of open source)


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DarkOne
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I will be interested in the server code, maybe I can install it on SSC and see if I can get something running to test on as long as it doesn't kill to much performance on the server.

 

Have any clue in resources the server side takes?

 

 

 

Oh btw the video looks great and you still have the original music 🙂


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CrazySpence
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It's very low

0.7% CPU, 5.5meg Virt, 3.3meg RES 1.3 Shared


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Vaipa
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I still have the MP3 theme on the hard drive somewhere, straight from the first release of Parsec.


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CrazySpence
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We moved the project to GitHub this week https://github.com/OpenParsec


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CrazySpence
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February update video:

 


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Simbad
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Its running.

 

http://sourceforge.net/p/openparsec/

 

I did not test it, but it seems to work.


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CrazySpence
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That is correct we have launched our first public binary since the source came out 10 years ago

 

http://www.philtopia.com/?p=1248


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