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57 lines
2.7 KiB
57 lines
2.7 KiB
# Frequently Asked Questions
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## How was build 550 chosen?
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A mixture of reasons:
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* The early HD era is my favourite. In particular, I like the 'clean'-looking
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tabs in the game frame, and 550 was the last build with those. I also
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considered 530, but 550 has a better built-in world map viewer (it supports
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dungeons in addition to the main surface).
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* Availability of the original loader, client, game unpacker and jaggl jars.
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* Availability of the complete set of original client data files.
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* Availability of a large proportion of the location file encryption keys.
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## Why do the OpenRS2 Natives use Maven instead of Gradle?
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[nar-maven-plugin][nar-maven-plugin] is, at the time of writing, significantly
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better than Gradle's support for building native code. Gradle's new C++ plugin
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simply doesn't provide enough features.
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## Why rewrite the client's native libraries?
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There are a mixture of reasons:
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* Availability of the original native libraries. I struggled to find the
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original native libraries for 550, except for 32-bit Windows. While Linux and
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macOS natives are available for nearby revisions, they are not compatible
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with the 550 client.
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* The original native libraries were not built for 64-bit Linux and macOS.
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While this was probably not a major problem in 2009, 64-bit architectures are
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now the norm.
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* Non-x86 architectures like ARM and RISC-V are becoming more popular. If we
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start seeing a shift away from x86 on desktop machines, the native libraries
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will need to be built for those architectures.
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* The original macOS jaggl native library is backed by an NSView, which was
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deprecated in Java 6 and removed in Java 7. Java 7 requires surfaces to be
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backed by a CALayer instead.
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* I anticipate that at some point in the future the Linux AWT implementation
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will be ported from X11 to Wayland, which will require porting the jaggl
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native library from GLX to EGL.
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* The switch away from OpenGL to newer graphics APIs like Metal and Vulkan
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might eventually necessitate the inclusion of OpenGL to Metal/Vulkan
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translation layers.
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* I'm concerned about backwards compatibility and bit rot. The original native
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libraries were compiled 10 years ago, and at some point one of their
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dependencies might drop backwards binary compatibility.
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## Why does OpenRS2 run its own development infrastructure?
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Even though OpenRS2 does not distribute Jagex's intellectual property, there is
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a risk that it could be taken down from a service like GitHub by mistake,
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causing disruption. Running our own infrastructure allows us to keep backups of
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data not held in the Git repository, such as issues. If necessary, we can
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switch to a different hosting provider at short notice while retaining such
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data.
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[nar-maven-plugin]: https://maven-nar.github.io/
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