Hey Guys!

Two weeks ago i thought about some of my projects, discussed with some forum users about the "dying" forum. My conclusion:
We need some community project. But following my experience i knew that a game would fail and ends as another dead, unfinished project.
But what is doable for a lot of people is a collection of scripts, templates, models and so on. An expansion of the default gamestudio package.
The result is:
TUST
A script collection for gamestudio, providing a lot of new stuff or a little bit older stuff, but put together with a unified API.

What is it about?
It is about helping newbies to get an easier access to advanced stuff like lists, pathfinding, ... and it is about providing projects, snippets, templates for a quick start and better development of your own projects.

What is included in TUST?

• Nodebased Pathfinding
• Generic Linked Lists
• Easy INI Access
• Easy XML Access
• Simplex Noise
• DynamicModels (Generate models at runtime with a few simple commands)
• ...

A complete list of planned features could be find here: TODO

Who can participate?
Everyone who wants to add stuff is welcome, just PM me. You need basic knowledge about Git and a GitHub account.

Where can i get it?
Just download the current package at
https://github.com/MasterQ32/TUST
or download the daily updated package here:
TUST
TUST Source only + Plugins


Where can i find the documentation?
Check out the git repository OR just take a look at the online documentation:
http://docs.mq32.de/TUST/
An offline documentation is available as well:
TUST Offline Documentation

How does it look?
Well, not everything in this library has visual impacts, but just take a look:






If you got any questions, suggestions, anything you want to tell us?
Just answer this thread!

Happy coding!
Felix Queißner

Awesome project!

I'll pm you today or tomorrow.

Btw, what does TUST mean?

In my opinion, even this idea is a good one, a script collection will not be enough to revive the community, if it is dying...
Needs more and more tutorials, that are more deeper and detailed than the others done before.
There are two good initiatives, the AUM's Unanswered questions chapter and the Awesomium 3D GameStudio Tutorium (i hope i qouted the proper name).
These things have to be develop more forward and maybe other ideas would be also useful.
Not only the newcomers but lot of older forum members are not well informed, how should things to do with this engine (for example me).
Unfortunately, the documentation is unprecise, deficient, and doesn't point out many many relationships and dependencies between the functions, objects, and so on.
Or, if it does this, the examples are so simple, and the are so scant comments, the reader can not use that (if there is example).

pls, pls, pls...
Add a meaningful prefix to all files and functions, maybe "tust".
A bunch of procedural bmap functions would be nice. I got no time at all for the next 3 months, but maybe you can get inspired by "bmap.c" in
http://www.indiegamedeveloper.org/downloads/256kS.zip

The functions are not pretty, not stable, stupid like hell, quick & dirty, but they are a starting point.

@lemming:
If i remember right, in this forum there was always TUSC, a "mystic" program which made every game project to a "5 minute task". TUST is "The ultimate script template", so an approach toward TUSC.

@Aku_Aku:
You're right, it won't bring the newbiews back. But It's something. And could it be you meant Acknex Unlimited instead of Awesomium (A WebKit2 Framework)=

@fogman:
every API needs it's prefix, some examples: dmdl_create_mesh, list_clone, ...

great idea and contribution, especially because the wiki is outdated and off.

imo it is not really for newbies, rather for a bit more experienced users, or serious hobbyists, exactly what I missed so far! AUMs are mostly okay for beginners, except some of the contributions...

a totally new deferred rendering shader pack is a brave plan

I'm very happy to see the RTS template (atm I can't imagine a template for it, but I've never made or used templates), it is a hard thing - I'm a great fan of this difficult genre. maybe I could help it by a simple grid/tile based pathfinder that can work for a limited agent quantity, which indeed requires an integrated map decomposition, movement, behaviour and AI system, but it can be kept simple. I think I can extract a simple but working package from my in development complex system as a refreshment.

a tiny terrain, vegetation, texture, and sky pack would be also not a huge work for me...

nice idea, indeed!

can anybody tell me the reason y the wiki is off? It may be a better idea to improve the wiki rather than startin a completely new project

@fogman: The idea of procedurally generated content (BMAPs, models, sounds, music, ...) has been in my head for years. When I finished the inventory system for TUST I'll start to implement some libraries.

nice idea!

some annotations:
1.) i don´t like the name. ok it´s an insider, but for a powerful libary i prefer powerful names like "ACKrage" or something ironic like "jcl" (the "jocular coding libary", or recursively acronymed: the "jcl coding libary")

2.) till now the project looks like opensource crap (sources you can freely download from a repository and don´t work or are buggy like hell). dont get me wrong, i like opensource, but there´re 2 things which almost all opensource-projects do wrong: presentation and usability (getting started). just a github site is functional, yes, but not very attractive. in future i wish to see a simple page with screenshots of effects using the libary, some information about it, and a downloadbutton that links to the repo (not now, it´s too early). at least a neat logo would be cool. and usability-needs:
* a howto-video getting the libary included with applying a sample effect (or run a sample). it´s easier for beginners
* an grafical overview over the whole libary dividing the modules into categories (not only the doxygen page). i would advise to create a mindmap (with xmind) to do so. Its easy to manage and we have all modules visually at a glance
* runnable samples

3.) use the branch-concept to tag stable versions. it should be not only a common libary, but a useable common libary.

4.) add a license (MIT, Public Domain or something else) explicitly for clarity

Though I do not really use Acknex at all anymore, I would highly recommend using a standard prefix in front of each function, even if they got their own prefixes.