OpenBOR
----------------------
OpenBOR is a continuation of the Beats Of Rage 2D game engine, which was originally
created by the wonderful folks over at http://www.senileteam.com.


History and Future
----------------------
In 2004, Senile Team released Beats of Rage, a free beat-'em-up for DOS inspired 
by SEGA's Streets of Rage series and using sprites from SNK Playmore's King of 
Fighters series.  The game spread only by word of mouth, but it nonetheless 
amassed popularity very quickly.  Senile Team soon released an edit pack allowing 
anyone interested to create a mod for the BOR engine.

In 2005, Kirby2000 asked Senile Team to open the source code to BOR.  They 
agreed, and OpenBOR was born.  Development on the engine was continued by the 
community, and still is to this day.

This led to some achievements such as a port to SDL, 
but also to tons of half-baked features.

Some really untalented coders started shitting all over the source code.
copy and paste all over, and tons of clueless code.

despite that, the community created some really nice mods, which partially 
depend on those new features.

in 2011, rofl0r aka anallyst joined the OpenBOR crew and started cleaning up the
code (~ SVN rev 2900+).
together with an efficient re-implementation of the previously used single-
linked list to a hash-backed double-linked list, this resulted in major speed gains.
waiting times for loading a level have been reduced around 100 times through this
effort (if you dont believe it, compare how long it takes to load 
"contra - locked and loaded" on the official build ~2800 vs ~3300). 
after a while one of the "OpenBOR team" members got jealous on anallyst's 
skills and started vandalizing his code.
also one of the forum admins started to become a "coder" and implemented random
features for his WIP mod (which is not released up to this day...a year later) in
a kamikaze style. i can't remember a single commit he made which properly encapsulated
one logical change instead of dozens, and didnt introduce a number of bugs.
needless to say that cooperating in such a hostile environment gets tiring soon.

this is when this fork was created.

shortly after anallyst left the OpenBOR crew (~ SVN rev 3320), utunnels, the god of 
copypasta came back and continued his unholy and untalented code rape. 
you can be sure that the current OpenBOR SVN trunk is totally borked and full of bugs.


the main repo was checked in 2012, and the only notable change (screenshot engine
changed from PCX to PNG backend) was merged back into this fork.
all other changes in the official repo are new features for two not yet released 
mods which the authors of those changes intend to create...

in the beginning of 2012, anallyst started another major cleanup effort.
he ripped off all platform-specific code and code duplication,
decreasing the size of the executable from 1.2MB to 750KB as of 09 Feb 2012.
(-Os -flto -fwhole-program)

the goal of this fork is to cleanup the code to a sane level, and then start
implementation of a LUA script engine, which should replace the current 
Pseudo-C script engine, which is incredibly slow, ugly and badly designed.
Once that's done it should be straightforward to translate the notable Mods which use
the scripting system to lua.

Available Platforms
----------------------
OpenBOR has a very modular and portable design inherited from Beats of Rage. Ports 
to the following platforms are currently supported:

* Linux
* POSIX compliant systems with an SDL port.
* Windows using MINGW ?

i don't see much sense in adding all kinds of hacks for hacked consoles.
why hacking consoles at all ? you shouldn't give your money to big evil corporations
like SONY which create proprietary devices, and then try to run your own code
on them. 
this is how you support proprietary, black-boxed systems and evil companies.
instead you should give your money to projects aimed at homebrew development.
examples: dingoo, gp2x, and anything that runs linux on it and gives you full
access to the underlying hardware as well as a SDK.

In addition to the above, the original Beats of Rage engine (downloadable from 
the Senile Team website) is available for the following platforms:

* DOS
* Playstation 2
* Xbox
* GP32
* Palmtop



OpenBOR Hall of Shame
----------------------

SumolX (2006-2011)
Project Manager, Lead Programmer, Known for porting PSP, PS3, Linux, Wii, GP2X and 
maintaining all other platforms and code base.

uTunnels (2007-2010)
Developed the scripting engine for OpenBOR and also added many exciting features.

KBbandressen (2007-2011)
New developer that is feature rich!

Plombo (2009-2011)
A developer who prefers to work on OpenBOR's supporting libraries and 
platform-specific backends.  Known for maintaining the Wii port, writing the 
GPU-accelerated video code for Wii and OpenGL, and a few engine features.

Damon Caskey (2007-2011)
Scripter, Tester and Developer.  What else can I say.

CGRemakes (2005-2006)
Main developer after Kirby2K.  Introduced many exicting features to engine.

LordBall (2006)
Developed offshoot engine based on OpenBOR.  Shared features with both engines.

Tails (2006)
Developed offshoot engine based on OpenBOR.  Shared features with both engines.

Fugue (2006)
Developed offshoot engine based on OpenBOR.  Shared features with both engines.

Kirby2K (2004-2005)
The original developer of OpenBOR who asked Senile Team for permission to open 
up Beats Of Rage.



Senile Team Members
----------------------
Roel (credited as "Opla" in BoR)
The team's chieftain. Does most of the game design, programming and artwork.
http://www.roelvanmastbergen.nl

Jeroen (credited as "Leila" in BoR)
Does all the things no one else does.

Sander (credited as "Albatross" in BoR)
3D artist and animation sequence editor.

Ben
Senile Team's composer, who is currently working on the soundtrack for Age of the Beast.

Neill
Neill was the first to port Beats of Rage to other systems, namely Playstation 2 
and Dreamcast. He now supports Senile Team with advice regarding console hardware 
and code compatibility, and has agreed to port Age of the Beast when it's ready.
http://www.neillcorlett.com



Websites
----------------------
LavaLit (home of OpenBOR development) - http://www.lavalit.com
Senile Team (original authors of Beats of Rage) - http://www.senileteam.com



OpenBOR File Layout
----------------------


-> OpenBOR/
      |
      -> OpenBOR
      |
      -> Paks/
      -> ScreenShots/
      -> Logs/
      -> Saves/