How to start

[john_maal]

Hi everybody, my name is John Maal and i am new in this forum.

I am student of computer science in the university (Faculty of Mathematics), my english is not very good (i speak spanish and italian), so i hope you can understand me and forgive me by my errors

i love Transport Tycoon from 1998 (i was 8 years old in that time ), and i am a C++ programmer (really it is the only programming language that i like... i hate Java, Python, Javascript, etc.), and i would like to do some develop, patch, new items, etc. whatever new in openttd, but i am not sure from where i must to begin. I guess must to begin from a really simple task to learn first of think to do a complicated modification.

So can anyone give me an orientation on how to start please? what should I do first?

Thank you and have a good day everybody.

[planetmaker]

We have a occasionally updated list of more desired tasks with various difficulty in our wiki: https://wiki.openttd.org/Todo_list
Make sure to join us on our IRC channel #openttd on OFTC network. (Most developers are around there in the European evening hours)

Other than that: it's often also a good idea to pick some small itch you might have which you would like to improve.

[john_maal]

Ok, Thank you very much by the information and it is the first time i see that IRC chat, but i'll see it and i'll try to adapt on it.

Thank you by the information of the wiki, i am seeing it and i'll try to practice with thoes simple task in my free time

edited: Maybe do you know if there are some hispanic developers, i'll try to do all my job in english, and it is good, because in this mod i can improve my english, but it would good to know anotherone who speak spanish.

and another questione, there is some problem if i work in Linux or windows? i mean maybe some library for example <conio.h> because it do not work in Linux.

[Alberth]

and another questione, there is some problem if i work in Linux or windows? i mean maybe some library for example <conio.h> because it do not work in Linux.

As long as you don't try to fix a Windows problem while using Linux or vice versa, you'll be fine

Everything is cross-platform, you can use either operating system.

The cost of course is that everything is cross-platform, you cannot add things that do not work on all platforms.

[john_maal]

and another questione, there is some problem if i work in Linux or windows? i mean maybe some library for example <conio.h> because it do not work in Linux.

As long as you don't try to fix a Windows problem while using Linux or vice versa, you'll be fine

Everything is cross-platform, you can use either operating system.

The cost of course is that everything is cross-platform, you cannot add things that do not work on all platforms.

OK thankyou very much, well i did read some minutes ago the system workd with a POSIX, this is the first time that i see it completely new for me), and if i didn't understand bad, this is a portable interface that allow to work without problems of compatibility with the diferent operating systems right?

[Alberth]

OK thankyou very much, well i did read some minutes ago the system workd with a POSIX, this is the first time that i see it completely new for me), and if i didn't understand bad, this is a portable interface that allow to work without problems of compatibility with the diferent operating systems right?

Not exactly. POSIX is the standard describing what a Unix system should provide, that is, most of the kernel calls in section 2 of the man pages.

Many commercial Unix system companies (like Sun) have died, but the free Linux and BSD systems are quite alive


It's portable in the sense that if you write a program using POSIX system calls, it should be compilable and be able to run at any Unix system that is POSIX compliant. Since Windows is not POSIX compliant afaik, there is a little corner in the OpenTTD software that handles Windows interfacing. Similarly, OpenTTD does a little more than the POSIX standard covers (eg sound, music, animation), so there is also a little corner for Linux and Mac, to do the interfacing stuff for them.

[pelya]

Windows compiles with ancient POSIX.1 standard, that's why you can implement web server using use socket(), read(), write(), bing(), listen() calls, and the code will compile on both Linux and MSVC without changes. The only incompatibility is that Windows uses closesocket() instead of close(). OpenGL is also pretty much cross-compatible between all OSes, but you still need some cross-compatibility layer like SDL to create window for OpenGL to draw into, and handle keyboard/mouse input.