Help offer

[erlmania]

Moin,

I would like to help coding Forge.

I'm a software engineer from germany and working for a company programming java for more than two years now.
So some of the code i have seen so far is screaming for a refactoring

I would like to begin with a 'simple' task and refactor the handling of mana to make it easier to read and more solid. What are your opinions?

Greetings, erlmania

[Sloth]

We can always use another hand. So you are welcome.

You need a google mail account and send the adress to DennisBergkamp by private message. He will give you the commiter status in the SVN.

[friarsol]

I'd just say be careful with the Mana stuff as it affects everything. I had attempted to rewrite it about a month ago and had to stop halfway through because it wasn't working the way I thought it should. But if you are just cleaning up the code, then that should be fine. There are plenty of places that need a good scrubbing so it's easier to work with in teh future.

[erlmania]

I have had a good look into he mana pool code by now and got it working with some smaller changes to the code.

I would like to move the mana pool code from package forge to package forge.table.mana. Later the rest of the code could be moved to distinct packages too. That way you can find the right code much faster.

The biggest change i would suggest, is to remove the inheritance of ManaPool from Card. The Card object is already really big and it should be divided at least at this place to make the mana pool more simple and distinct.

[silly freak]

Hi erlmania! Gereetings from Austria

I'm glad you want to put your efforts into forge, and wish you all the best. And please don't misunderstand me, I don't at all want to drag you away from forge. However, if you're interested, maybe you could get some inspiration or even reuse some of my code (see my signature). you seem like a guy that appreciates a well-structured architecture, just don't miss it

that said, I'm not currently developing Laterna Magica; too much work at school... I should get some time in a few months

best regards

[erlmania]

Hey Forge-team,

i stopped refactoring the source code of the mana pool. I think everything i can do is not good for the already chaotic source code.
Before you develop Forge any further, you should stop and do a programm wide refactoring of the current souce code architecture.

If you are interested i can give you the (yet unfinished but running) changes to the mana pool i did.

Greets erlmania.

[Chris H.]

Thank you erlmania. Have you asked Dennis for SVN access? Your unfinished but running changes to the mana pool will be a welcome addition.

The project moves forward one small step at a time, but things are getting better. All of the CardFactory code was originally in one class and Dennis succeeded in splitting up the factories. At first, there were no packages, but then Silly Freak did a good job getting the initial work done.

Sol's recent phase work seems to be fairly stable at this time and this will allow additional improvements. Slapshot5 has created a Player class and this is helping to organize the code. Rob's idea of an ability factory is moving forward. Recently some of the messy string work was converted to StringBuilder.

It might be difficult for the dev team to stop all of the improvements that are being made at this time. And the user base has gotten used to seeing frequent beta releases and they might not stick with the project if we spent the next 6 to 12 months re-writing the code base.

What sort of refactoring ideas do you have in mind? We would like to discuss your ideas. It also might be easier on all of us if we approached this "one task at a time".