This post is only a theoretical contemplation.
I wonder is it possible to move Open Arena on such platform like UWP (Universal Windows Platform, former WinRT)? I know that only a client could be adjust because UWP doesn't support Windows Services - a technology dedicated to write server side applications. Regardless of that, we have some other problems to resolve.
1. Microsoft excluded OpenGL form a set of legal technologies used to create Windows Store Applications. So, such game/client will need a renderer based on DirectX. I think so.
2. We shouldn't use ASCII strings because it could be highly inefficient. New releases of Windows use UTF-16 internally to represent strings of characters and every call of function similar to "print()" will require such code page. Other formats are translated to UTF-16 by Windows every time when we need to print something on the screen.
3. I'm not sure how GUI in Open Arena/Quake 3 was implemented (because I don't know the whole source code yet
), but it could be another big problem. Universal Windows Platform require GUI written in XAML, so it's probably that this part of the game should also be rewritten.
I've written this post only for educational purposes. If anyone known something about the source code of Open Arena (or Quake 3), I would be very grateful for any advice, notice etc.
