SDLPoP; David's open-source port of PoP

[Falcury]

Integer scaling works for me on Windows, but only if 4:3 aspect ratio is turned off.
Which SDL version are you using?
Remember, this feature requires SDL 2.0.5 or newer.

Maybe the option in the menu should be disabled/grayed out (or hidden?) if the SDL version is too old.

[Norbert]

Maybe the option in the menu should be disabled/grayed out (or hidden?) if the SDL version is too old.

Might be a good idea.
Probably not hide it, but disable/gray out, and maybe change the tooltip to mention the SDL version?
By not hiding it, users will at least know the option exists and could theoretically be used.
The SDL version I used was too old, by the way, as David guessed.

[David]

Maybe the option in the menu should be disabled/grayed out (or hidden?) if the SDL version is too old.

Might be a good idea.
Probably not hide it, but disable/gray out, and maybe change the tooltip to mention the SDL version?
By not hiding it, users will at least know the option exists and could theoretically be used.
The SDL version I used was too old, by the way, as David guessed.

Done: https://github.com/NagyD/SDLPoP/commit/ ... e012569a7c

[Falcury]

Idea/suggestion:
Maybe it would be useful if SDLPoP could remember a 'stack' of savestates in RAM, instead of replacing the previous savestate when you quicksave.
Then, if you press F9 multiple times in succession, you could traverse up the history of recent savestates, and go back further into the past.
And maybe you could then press Shift-F9 or something to jump back to the top of the stack. Or, F6 to break off into a new fork of history, removing the most recent savestates.

[FUD]

I hope you don't mind me asking but do you have some kind of road map for the future development of SDLPoP?

[Falcury]

I hope you don't mind me asking but do you have some kind of road map for the future development of SDLPoP?

I do not think there is a fixed road map. But, there have been some feature requests for SDLPoP:
* A setting to increase or decrease the game speed
* A setting to turn level color palettes on or off
* Support for translations
* Support for the AdLib sound effects
* Support for MT32 sounds
* Synthesizing the speaker sounds
* Re-adding support for Vsync
(I am probably forgetting some)

Also, I could think of some things for a possible "wish list" of features:
* Displaying a list of replays, so you can pick the one you want to play back.
* Online leaderboard of fastest times, with maybe an option to view replays of the fastest playthroughs.
* Being able to switch mods without restarting the game. And maybe having multiple mods active at the same time (for example, a level set in combination with a separate graphics mod).
* Maybe adding support for levels with a higher room count, or level sets with more than 16 levels (somehow without breaking compatibility).
* Integrating poirot's level editor.
* Support for higher resolution graphics from the Mac version, and maybe the Mac music and sound effects.
* Exploring the possibility of supporting Prince of Persia 2 resources (e.g., sounds and music)

[Norbert]

Also, for the wish list, multiplayer (maybe with SDL_net?) and more stuff added to the menu.

[Norbert]

In doc/Readme.txt, the "LICENSE" section, maybe either end the sentence with "[...] and src/GPLv3.h." or after "terms" add ", version 3 or later". The reason I'm suggesting this is that gpl-3.0.txt itself does not specify whether the code is GPL3 or GPL3+ licensed.

This was tackled here.
Something else that might be worth considering is adding a SPDX line to each code file.
This is something that I'll also be doing with all future releases of my own software.
The first line of each .c and .h file would need to become:

Code: Select all

// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0-or-later

That's it. So, not that much work. (Details on their website, in case you're curious.)
If you'd want to go all out, you could also add this (but with # ...) to the 2nd line of install.sh and uninstall.sh, and the first line of the Makefile.

[Falcury]

It might be advisable to distribute SDLPoP with DAT files instead of PNG files, because loading many individual small files from disk can kill loading times. I remember testing this a while ago, by running SDLPoP from a USB drive and measuring how long it took to go from the title screen to the first level (i.e. loading all the necessary assets from disk). It was nearly instantaneous with the DAT files, but much longer with the PNG files (>100 ms, I don't remember exactly how long). Ideally it should be <10 ms or so.
I have also been noticing slow loading times on the Raspberry Pi (multiple second freezes on the loading screen, and when loading the first level), which I suspect is due to the same bottleneck. And even on Windows 10 running from an SSD I sometimes notice slow load times (very strange actually).

[Norbert]

It might be advisable to distribute SDLPoP with DAT files instead of PNG files, because loading many individual small files from disk can kill loading times.

Potentially related are sprite sheets:
viewtopic.php?t=4181

[Norbert]

Someone in the comments here mentioned SDLPoP.

[Norbert]

Someone in the comments here mentioned SDLPoP.

Same here.

[Norbert]

Another SDLPoP in the wild here.
Version 1.16, recording is from about 2 years ago or so.
Russian player is commenting on the game while playing.

[David]

Another SDLPoP in the wild here.

For me, in Firefox that video lags so much that it takes a few seconds to show another frame. VLC is much better but the lag is still noticeable.
I suppose that's because the video is in full HD, even though the game would run just as well in whatever smaller resolution.
And because, as VLC's log says, "(computer too slow ?)".

By the way, the cover under the video is wrong: It shows Sands of Time.
I noted a similar mistake here: viewtopic.php?p=23000#p23000


Do you think I should move the last few posts about SDLPoP "in the wild" to a new topic?

[Norbert]

Do you think I should move the last few posts about SDLPoP "in the wild" to a new topic?

Meh. Maybe if I find more in the future?