popot.org

[mk1995]

Originality: I can't quite tell what you mean with that. Some enlightment beforehand?

Well, I was thinking about mods like Repetition of Time, that have some very original things in them.

In that case... I don't think a lot of mods (if any besides RoT) can show some very interesting things like the huge poison potion in Level 12. Maybe you should do this as a scale of how interesting the levels overall are, though. Then it could work out for me.

[poirot]

I'm really glad that someone is interested in keeping this community alive.

Sorry about not answering this on time, I've been very busy.
Norbert, I like the critics you made about princed.org, I didn't have time to work on that, we also started a wiki project but didn't have success. I also agree that the information architecture in the site is really wrong, and cuspop, and cusasm shoudn't be so visible in the site. Wordpress+phpbb seemed to be a good solution a few years ago when I didn't have time to do all the hard work.

I get nostalgic, sorry, but I'll talk a bit about history so you understand why we reach to this point.

By the year 2002 (more or less) I went to my home (I was living far away studying at the university) and saw my old computer with the game, I've always tried (unsuccessfully) to crack the dat files, but now with my university new acquired knowledge, that was a good opportunity to do it. That's how princed.exe was made, I needed to name the file so I named it princed like a combination of prince and editor. I started a local home page to start publishing my cracking results. With the time lots of people contacted me, including the world record holder, Tammo Jan, RS creator Brendon James and PV4 GUI creator Kim Yangmook (btw, Moogi if you are reading this, I'll be in Daejon next month, so if you want to catch up with a beer, I'll be glad). Brendon's research was independent than mine, but then we started to work together creating PLV, a new format/standard to save editor-compatible levels. Then we started figuring out POP2. The produced document is available on the web.

By that time princed.org had become not a single pop editor but a community with projects. To help it grow I added links to Brendon's software, but officially I never talked to him about if they were included as part of the project. All his software is free (gratis, as in no cost) but not free (libre, as in closed source).

By this time jalal started his own pop community in popuw.com, he worked a lot to create a critical mass of users and then the community started growing up. At this point I abandoned the idea we have with TJ to create a forum and forwarded the people to popuw.com in order to make the community stronger and avoid forum division. By the time popuw was down the community was lost. The problem wasn't a forum or a wordpress, the problem was that we needed a person who drives critical mass to the site, a person like jalal, a person capable to keep nagging people until they answer a certain thread. And I believe this is the reason this forum is not what popuw had become.

Once I finished university and started working full time I became so busy that I could only maintain the site. I love POP, and when I say POP a mean POP1. I want the community to grow, and I'd be glad to give over the domains and whatever to people with time to take over the project; because I can't run it alone, I'm not what jalal was once.

Since the original idea of princed.org was in the same spirit as popot.org, why not use princed? and merge all the project in one. We may write some guidelines about free software, mission, objectives, and who knows, define roles. Let's make things right.

I'm proposing a re-foundation of the princed project, with real objectives and with defined roles and people.

What do you think?

[Norbert]

[...] I'll talk a bit about history so you understand why we reach to this point.

I'm familiar with some of it, because at the end of 2007 I started digging through all websites, files, forums and documentation (especially the "Prince of Persia File Formats Specifications") in order to be able to write my own software. However, your post reminds me: it would be useful/nice to add an accurate timeline with the key events and releases to the website. (Your name/nick will probably show up everywhere. ) If new visitors can learn about the history of the community, they'll understand that this is not a new or temporary fad, but that the first steps were taken about a decade ago. Also, it'll give them a better perspective of what the future could bring and how they might be able to contribute.

In my opinion it makes the most sense to use the domain princed.org for the projects with "princed" in their name. If you prefer to have ownership of popot.org; I don't mind transferring it to you. What I'm aiming for is a website about a "community". Things like objectives and roles sound like features of a "project". It is true that a major part of a community may be its projects, but it's useful to have some 'neutral' place that has no other mission than to make the modding community grow. If you prefer princed.org to be used, it should no longer be the "Princed Project" and would (thus) require a new/modified logo. Reason: to make sure visitors understand the modding community is a community and not a project. For the same reason, it would probably be best to not make this 'neutral' place the official/main website of any project. (e.g. Princed level editor.)

To help it grow I added links to Brendon's software, but officially I never talked to him about if they were included as part of the project.

If you ask me, it's better not to put all projects under one banner. Maybe it's wise if all those who are involved in the "Princed Project" work out a better description of what this project entails and especially what its boundaries are. Currently, it is defined as the "sum of many sub-projects related to Prince of Persia", but that's pretty vague. Listing these sub-projects might help clear up some things. To give two examples: it would be strange to list CusPop as part of the "Princed Project" without Butcher's prior approval - it's like saying "Princedit by Alexandr Larionov is now part of our project." - but obviously PR is part of the "Princed Project". If, on the other hand, the "Princed Project" is meant to be something like popot.org, what I wrote about the domain and project names above applies.

I hope you understand what I mean. Maybe mk1995, programmer and others can also share their thoughts on this. Alrighty then... I have some PHP/MySQL coding to do for a "Custom Levels" page. No matter where it'll be used, someone still has to put some time and effort into this.

[Norbert]

What would be the easiest and best way to create full size images of entire levels?
If I remember correctly there used to be a tool for that, but maybe I'm mistaken.

[Andrew]

Instead of reinventing the wheel, maybe you could take permission and link to this: viewtopic.php?f=68&t=2620 (at least for PoP1).

[Norbert]

Instead of reinventing the wheel, maybe you could take permission and link to this: viewtopic.php?f=68&t=2620 (at least for PoP1).

These look nice, but my plan is to add full size images of all (altered) levels of each mod in the "Custom Levels" section. If no tool for it exists, I'll either write my own or use the 'u/n/h/j keys' to make screenshots of all rooms and subsequently glue these together myself.

[poirot]

Ok, as soon as I have some spare time I'll write a timeline with the events of the community. It would also be great that everyone add missing events there.

The idea "princed as a project" was born when we decided to start figuring out POP1. We did a good job and I-m very proud of it. Then we started making software and stuff. We used an external forum and there was no community. With more and more people interested we started a "support" forum with the idea to attract more modders, users and developers. Parallel to that jalal started popuw.com as a pop related community. As you can see Princed.org was not conceived as a community but it turned into that.

I really don't know what to do. I think we all should decide. What I really want is:

1) Casual users may have easy access to mods and tutorials.
2) A big and unified community.
3) Modders may have easy access to a centralized database with all the resources.
4) It would be great that all coders work together in a single GPL tool.
5) Community democracy, I don't like abusive practices by moderators like "unsticking my release advertisement because my link to the forum is not very visible".

I don't want credit, power, domain ownerships, moderation status and all that stuff; I just want that the stuff we all created with hard work goes to the hands of modders and fans. And I think this is what we all want.

I want to unite things, creating a project, a community and all that stuff could generate confusion to people; that's the reason I think we could use princed.org as a community, taking advantage of its decade of history, page rank and the link from Mechner's blog. On the other hand I'm aware that "princed" is not a nice name, since it stands for "prince editor" and not "community". So I don't know what to do.

What are officially princed project software (GPL):
PopRecorder by Piotrek
PR (I was the main coder but a lot of people worked on that) and its legacy editors (PG and PS).
Princed editor: I coded PV1 & PV2 to help me figure out the format; but never released them. Moogi coded PV3 GUI using a format layer I created for him.
CusPOP & CusASM: I coded both and defined and maintained the .xml file with all the hacks. Most of the hacks were product of the hard work of David and htamas; I used CusASM with their hacks to generalize them finding the location of the bytes to change in each version. I believe butcher made a privative port of CusPOP (not an XML interpreter with most of the hacks hardcoded) for the windows platform using the xml file with the offsets we provide, but I never tried it so I don't know.

There are some mods released as official princed mods, I don't know, I should ask Piotrek.

With Drkzight, back in 2002, we started to code a subdomain called artwork.princed.com.ar (didn't have the .org at this time) using PHP/MySQL the idea was to make a mod database supporting all kinds of .dat files… never had the time to finish it.

[mk1995]

[...] my plan is to add full size images of all (altered) levels of each mod in the "Custom Levels" section.

Don't you think that'd severely hurt the fun factor of a mod? I mean, the primary reason those altered levels exist is to give the community an all-new challenge. And if they could consult a map that'd take away the challenge.

I don't mind you using any maps for the original PoP games, but for the mods... Don't.

[Veke]

Nobody is forced to use cheats or a walkthrough. Cheats will be easier just as easy, if not easier, to access than maps unless edited in the executable, and besides, I don't think maps just by themselves will reveal how to complete the level. Definitely not if all gate links have not been marked in, to start with.

[poirot]

Btw, why don't you just run a wiki? Easy to edit, mediawiki has plugin capability (for cuspop, cusasm, mod uploading, etc), etc.

[mk1995]

Speaking of CusPoP, poirot, are you gonna fix the one on your site soon? Anytime I try to "get the file", it tells me "Page not found". Thus, I'm actually quite thankful to Norbert for putting it up on his site.

Also, your CusPoP could use some updating. There's some stuff in Butcher's (sadly bugged) offline version that yours doesn't have.

[lignux]

Btw, why don't you just run a wiki? Easy to edit, mediawiki has plugin capability (for cuspop, cusasm, mod uploading, etc), etc.

Or at least a CMS... I think, that's better than always edit the html-code.

[Norbert]

I've worked on popot.org for many hours today. Visitors can now register, login/logout and change their settings. Also, users that are set to be administrators can add authors and mods to the back end, and alter what is already in the database. The mods are not yet visible in the "Custom Levels" section. That's the next thing on my TODO list, I should be able to start with and finish that tomorrow. After I've finished that, I'll start working on allowing visitors to vote (difficulty: easy, medium, hard; enjoyment: x/5 stars) and comment on mods.

Is there anyone who's willing to help me with adding custom levels to the back end? If so, please let me know and I'll make you an administrator. It is without any obligations: you decide whether/how much/when you help. After you login, you'll see an "[ admin ]" link. PoP1 Total Pack v2.06 contains 60+ custom levels that could be added. Adding a level also includes making some screenshots (with Ctrl-F5 in DOSBox) and creating a ZIP file of the mod.

@poirot: As far as I can tell, the only alternative that would make you (truly, fully) content is if I'd use princed.org instead of popot.org. However, my objections to using princed.org and also to centralizing everything remain the same. It's fine if you and others start using a "centralized database" and start working "together in a single GPL tool", but these things are related to (your) projects. What I'm working on is a simple website for newcomers. Something like popuw.com; not a (programming) project. I'm willing to help with improving the look, feel and content of princed.org though, as soon as the code for popot.org is finished.

@mk1995/Veke: Yeah, players have to decide for themselves if they use the full size images. It's their choice. There is also a "Walkthroughs" section on popot.org that might eventually contain many playthroughs of the custom levels, and pages in the "Custom Levels" section will also link to these walkthroughs.

[Norbert]

Okay, the mods (custom levels) are now also visible for the visitors.
So far, I've only added 4D Prince of Persia:
http://www.popot.org/custom_levels.php?mod=0000002

I've also added the possibility to search for specific mods:
http://www.popot.org/custom_levels.php?action=Search
(Obviously, it's currently not possible to get more than 1 match.)

There are some small graphical issues that I'll need to fix first.
After that's done, I'll start working on the code for voting and commenting.

[mk1995]

Regarding the search function, remove "3D" from "PoP Version". There are no level edits for PoP3D and there never will be any in the future. There have been texture edits, though.