Details: Z-Net (stand alone client) (2004)

Sunday, August 21, 2011

This was being made shortly after development of the Z-Net 1.x project series stopped at 1.41. Due in part to enough users finding the combo of Z-Net + mIRC confusing, and part from someone actually stealing my work on the Z-Net mIRC script by just blatantly making a copy of it and renaming every reference to me or "Z-Net" inside of it to one of their own choosing, then posting it online as their own project making me realize how bad the forced open source nature of mIRC scripting really is. I decided if I wanted to continue with this type of project, I'd need to do it in something like C++ to code a binary package that's obviously more secure from theft, and I'll have greater control over making it much easier to install and use.

At the time I had tinkered with C++ some for the Z-Band project, but undertaking a project like this was significantly more challenging for my experience. I took as many shortcuts as I could by starting with an open source IRC client (I don't remember which one. It wasn't a popular one). I customized the source around my vision for Z-Net as much as I could, and got some real bare-bones code implemented for launching ZSNES netplay. But soon got stuck on some issues using Win API to create a game list window. At the time, I didn't even know the term "Win API". It was all C++ to me. So finding help was hard, and I clearly saw my inexperience wasn't going to let me progress anymore on it.

My dead end due to lack of skill, and my eventual reasoning that taking the source of what was probably a licensed IRC client and not planning to release the source with my changes, would be no different then the same type of theft that helped cause me to start the project in the first place, brought this project to a halt. I never even shared a binary with a tester/friend. I only released a couple screen shots.

Screenshots: