CyberBoard Play by EMail System

Prior to this open source release of CyberBoard the software has been closed source code that depended on a commercial set of Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) extensions called the Xtreme Toolkit that was provided by Code Jock. Since the program was always provided to users without cost this approach became a burden on future development of the software since it cost money to keep everything up-to-date.

As a consequence the CyberBoard codebase hasn't been updated in nearly two decades. Despite that, I'm pleased to see the CyberBoard was future proofed enough that the program endured that time span and is still in wide use today.

Now recently retired, I undertook the work of removing use of the CodeJock toolkit and switching the UI elements to use the MFC Feature Pack from the Visual Studio 2008 release. The MFC Feature Pack provided many of the essential features that Xtreme Toolkit provided.

This repository has the results of that work. Note that the history of the repository has been truncated to start at the point where the code cleanup is largely completed and the new MIT license for the source code has been put in force.

In the future I may share the entire history in a read-only fashion just for the capturing the program's history for history's sake. Currently I don't want to wrestle with that problem.

Prebuilt Releases

You can find prebuilt releases available for download here:

https://github.com/CyberBoardPBEM/cbwindows/releases

Fetching the Code

For portability reasons, CyberBoard is transitioning to use wxWidgets instead of MFC. The source code of wxWidgets is accessed using the git submodule mechanism. To properly fetch the code, use git clone https://github.com/CyberBoardPBEM/cbwindows.git --recurse-submodules

Building the Code

The codebase has been updated to work with Microsoft's Visual Studio 2022 Community Edition. That way anyone with a Windows system and some programming chops can build the software using the "free" Microsoft tools. I say "free" because Microsoft requires users of the Community Edition to create an account with them to activate the software for use after 30 days. If you can live with that you should be good to go.

You can get Visual Studio 2022 Community Edition here:

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/

Due to the recent dependency on wxWidgets, building CyberBoard now requires CMake. Therefore, when installing Visual studio, include the MSVS C++ CMake tools for Windows component.

To build the debug configuration at the command line:

Open the command line x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022. This should be installed in the Windows Start menu, in the Visual Studio 2022 folder
cd <root-of-cyberboard-checkout-directory>
cmake -G Ninja -B out/build/x64-Debug
cmake --build out/build/x64-Debug

The output will be in <working copy>\out\build\x64-Debug\runtime

To build the release configuration at the command line:

Open the command line x64 Native Tools Command Prompt for VS 2022. This should be installed in the Windows Start menu, in the Visual Studio 2022 folder
cd <root-of-cyberboard-checkout-directory>
cmake -G Ninja -B out/build/x64-Release -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo
cmake --build out/build/x64-Release

The output will be in <working copy>\out\build\x64-Release\runtime

To build the code in the Visual Studio IDE:

Run Visual Studio
Use menu File | Open | Folder... and choose <working copy>.
Visual Studio will run CMake's Ninja generation process automatically, but it may take a considerable time. (The Output Window | Show output from: | CMake choice will display the CMake output.) Wait for the Build menu to have a Build All item.
Use menu Build | Build All

The output will be in <working copy>\out\build\x64-Debug\runtime

To debug the code in the Visual Studio IDE:

Build the code in the IDE
Use menu View | CMake Targets
In the Solution Explorer - CMake Targets View panel, right click on cbwindows | CyberBoard Project | CBDesign (executable), and select Set as Startup Item
Open GM\Gm.cpp
Set a breakpoint in CGmApp::InitInstance()
Use menu Debug | Start Debugging

Alternatively, after performing one of the builds above, the CyberBoard.sln may be used as usual. (The initial build generates the necessary wxWidgets files on which CyberBoard.sln depends.) Set the Configuration to DebugU and Platform to x64, and the output will be in <working copy>\x64\DebugU.

All-config build
For convenience, the build-all-configs.bat will build the full matrix of x86/x64 and Debug/Release builds. However, it assumes an x64 operating system and the default install location for Visual Studio, so it is not a completely general tool. If necessary, edit the VSROOTDIR variable in build-all-configs.bat to match your system.

Coding Conventions

The code follows the same coding conventions that the MFC code uses. However, no TAB characters are allowed in the code. All indentations must be done with spaces set to 4 spaces per tab stop. That's the extent of the coding rules.

Goals

The first goal is to get a stable version of CyberBoard going that has the same feature set as the existing historical release of version 3.10. That means it needs to be exercised against a variety of gameboxes and games. That's the first place the community can help.

The first open source release version of CyberBoard will start its release numbering at version 3.50.

At that point newer features can be added to evolve the system's capabilities.

In essence first focus on stability, then extend the feature set.

My ultimate hope is that a group of enthusiasts will adopt the program and its future as I'm getting "long in the tooth" and the fewer loose ends the better. ;)

The CyberBoard Web Site

The CyberBoard web site has been relocated to GitHub and can now be found through my norsesoft.com domain here:

http://cyberboard.norsesoft.com/

Dale Larson 6/21/2020