25 years PoP; what to do?

[Norbert]

Coming October 3rd, PoP will be 25 years old.
That is, the original Apple ][ game was released on 3 October 1989.

Should we mark this occasion in any way?
Use it to make people outside of our community aware of PoP modding creations and possibilities?
A press release? An event?
Should we ask Mechner is he's willing to be interviewed; if he is collectively come up with questions and send those to him?
David's topic about his conversion says "pre-release" (latest version number is 1.07), maybe focus should be on his port?
Just threat it like any other day and do nothing special?

[Andrew]

I'm guessing some game mag or site will interview him anyway, or at least re-run old stuff if he's unwilling or has nothing new to say.

Should we widely advertise David's conversion in its pre-release state? Perhaps, or maybe we should wait another year for the DOS port's 25th anniversary (by which time hopefully David would have released a stable version)? BTW, does anyone know the DOS port's precise launch date in 1990?

[David]

Should we widely advertise David's conversion in its pre-release state?

It is more close to completion than when I started the topic.
The only two things that are really missing are sounds and stretching the image.

BTW, does anyone know the DOS port's precise launch date in 1990?

I looked at Mechner's old journals:
http://jordanmechner.com/old-journals/1990/03/ (Page 2 says "No Results Found", is this a bug?)
http://jordanmechner.com/old-journals/1 ... h-30-1990/ (This should be on page 2.)
http://jordanmechner.com/old-journals/1990/04/

March 27, 1990: "IBM POP signoff looks imminent."
March 29, 1990: "All versions of IBM POP have signed out. Hooray!"
April 3, 1990: "IBM POP has already outsold the Apple version 2:1"

So it was some time between these dates.

[Norbert]

- here (and, on the same host, here and here) the files are dated 28 March 1990.
- http://www.classicdosgames.com/game/Pri ... ersia.html says 29 March 1990, which matches the file dates inside the demo package.
- In the PoP1_10/ directory of The Ultimate Collection (link), all files are dated 29 March 1990.

[zethholyblade]

I'd personally love to know any details he may have thought about the sequel to PoP2. I once read on his journal website that he mentioned PoP3D's story doesn't really count as PoP3 for him.

I'm sure I'm no the only one who wants to see the Prince exact vengance on the evil Witch who killed his parents and trained Jaffar

[Norbert]

or maybe we should wait another year for the DOS port's 25th anniversary

I think that day won't get nearly as much attention from (video game) magazines and websites. One of the reasons is that a 25 year anniversary, a Silver Jubilee, only really happens once, and for the PoP video game franchise this day is coming October 3rd. If there will ever be any mainstream media coverage of PoP's past, it will happen on that day. It will be one of the few occasions where we may be able to make people outside of our community aware of PoP modding creations and possibilities.

This is why I believe that, as a community, we may want to plan an event or software release on October 3rd. An event doesn't need to be a contest, it could simply be a commemorative gathering (on IRC, Mumble, wherever). This will give journalists the (better) opportunity to mention our community, maybe even a link to this forum. To give those distributing news time to look into our community and its history, to allow them time to consider whether we could be mentioned, we should send out a press release advisory a week ahead of October 3rd ("Next week, on October 3rd, ..."). Such a press release should point to one or more related web pages.

Creating a web page, press release, searching for contact information of (video game) magazines and websites, creating an on-topic heading image, contacting Jalal (popuw.com) to see if he wants to partake/team up with princed.org and popot.org, all those things take time. If we want to send out a press release advisory a week ahead of time, we have only five (5!) days left until D-Day. In other words, if we want to do anything, we need to start taking action soon. Do we want to though; is it worth the investment of time and energy to mark the occasion in any way? David, what is, roughly, the current (off-line) status of your conversion?

[David]

David, what is, roughly, the current (off-line) status of your conversion?

Two small changes from the last release (v1.07):
1. Fixed the skeleton problem: viewtopic.php?p=15346#p15346
2. Added "return 0;" after the "*Table Overflow" messages.

[Norbert]

Given the work ahead (music, image scaling, bug fixes), it may not be worth the stress to complete all the work by October 3rd, if that's even possible?
IMO the version numbering is a little weird; the forum thread's subject indicates it is a "pre-release", but numbering started at 1.00.
(Still, very nice to have numbering, and I definitely wouldn't renumber the releases.)
Maybe the conversion should be mentioned in a more general statement about how we look at the 25th anniversary and that PoP1 is still very much alive, or something.

[David]

Given the work ahead (music, image scaling, bug fixes), it may not be worth the stress to complete all the work by October 3rd, if that's even possible?

You're probably right.

Music: Pcspeaker sounds should be simpler to implement than MIDI, but most people don't like that.
For MIDI, I have to figure out where and how is the instrument data stored. (If I open the MIDIs extracted by PR, they sound strange.)
It's probably the "midi info 1.bin" in prince.dat.
Mickey96 posted something about that, but it's incomplete.
And of course I need a MIDI player. SDL_mixer 1.2 (and 2.0) has one, but it needs instruments in wavetable format.

Scaling: Once you wrote that SDL2 has better fullscreen support.
And that migrating to SDL2 takes some effort.

[Norbert]

Maybe get the music to .ogg and play those files with Mix_LoadMUS()+Mix_PlayMusic.
(Maybe ask in #SDL@Freenode if this ^ is indeed the SDL(2) way to play music. Maybe use another, dedicated library.)
Using .ogg files instead of .mid files (with the limited instrument set) would give modders more freedom.
If you want I can extract the music as .wav from DOSBox recordings, cut those to the correct sizes, and convert them to .ogg with oggenc -q 10 <.wav> or whatever.
If I remember correctly sound effects do not play during music, but even if they do I could use PR to NULLify sound effects.

[David]

If you want I can extract the music as .wav from DOSBox recordings, cut those to the correct sizes, and convert them to .ogg with oggenc -q 10 <.wav> or whatever.

A good way of doing this would be to modify the exe so that it played the needed music instead of an easily accessible music.
For example, instead of the slow-fall (shift-W).
Though, if I know right, some music are loaded only while the intro is playing.

[Norbert]

I've created a ZIP archive that contains all of the music of PoP1 for DOS:
http://www.popot.org/get_the_games/vari ... _music.zip (38MB)

It contains all songs in three formats, namely MP3s, FLACs and OGGs:
- MP3 has licensing and patent issues, but has small file sizes.
- FLAC is lossless and an open format, but has large file sizes.
- OGG (Ogg data, Vorbis audio) is free and open, but has fairly large file sizes.

Including the music will obviously increase the package file size.
One solution would be to use the (relatively small) MP3 files. In practice, MP3's issues mentioned above aren't a problem. It would be similar to how you already include the PoP1 (abandonware) resources.
Another solution is to ship with an empty music/ directory, detect the files' availability; if they are available use them, if they are not give a download link on the console.
Or, do the latter for some releases and the former for certain milestones. This would be inconsistent though, so maybe not a good choice.
[Edit: Or, transcode to a lower bitrate and single channel to decrease file sizes.]

[Norbert]

This is a first draft.
Feedback is welcome.

Reminder!

Next week (October 3rd) is the 25th anniversary of "Prince of Persia".

Created by Jordan Mechner and initially released for the Apple ][, the game has been ported to more than 20 platforms, including DOS and SNES.

Is this first game in the series still being played?

You bet!

We are the Prince of Persia modding community. Not only do we still play the game, but for more than a decade we have made all kinds of alterations to the DOS and SNES versions of game and we discuss those on our forum: http://forum.princed.org/

We are currently converting the game to Windows and Linux:
- viewtopic.php?f=69&t=3512
- viewtopic.php?f=69&t=3180

We have created our own level editors. Examples:
- (To edit DOS levels.) http://www.popot.org/level_editors.php?editor=apoplexy
- (To edit SNES levels.) http://www.popot.org/level_editors.php? ... 1SnesLevEd

We have created over 150 mods with new levels:
http://www.popot.org/custom_levels.php

Some mods have their own trailers. Examples:
- (SNES mod) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoCA2St0q88
- (DOS mod) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b8-ISkMExM
- (DOS mod) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Yj8xm8siaw

We create walkthrough videos and collect tricks:
- Videos: viewforum.php?f=118
- Tricks: http://www.popot.org/documentation.php?doc=Tricks

A video about the history of our community:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtZiAb180ds

We, the Prince of Persia modding community, ask you: don't forget about the 25th anniversary of this great game. It's still very much alive and well!

Thanks!

Some of our websites:
http://www.princed.org/ | http://www.popot.org/ | http://www.popuw.com/

[David]

Speaking of trailers...
Repetition of Time had a trailer, but I can't find it anywhere on the internet.
I still have it. (introRoT.rar, ~10 MB)

[Norbert]

You can upload it somewhere.

http://www.speedyshare.com/
https://www.sendspace.com/
http://www.zippyshare.com/
http://www.filedropper.com/
http://www.megafileupload.com/
http://en.file-upload.net/
http://www.4shared.com/
https://www.wetransfer.com/

Then I can add it to the popmodding YouTube account, and Khushal64n6 could do the same, then we have two live mirrors.