Various

Prince of Persia related subjects that do not have their own boards.
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Norbert
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Re: Various

Post by Norbert »

David wrote: August 18th, 2019, 11:48 am[...] PoP was also featured in an earlier comic.
The places of three potions (of the four) are marked with coins.
Right.
An interactive comic, even. :)
You can actually visit the prince, as I did just now (see attached image).

It's not easy to reach the prince.
https://xkcd.com/1608/
You can quickly press the up arrow multiple times to 'fly'.
First go to the right, passed the wall.
Then when you see people who say "wow", hover top-right.
You will find a ship.
The top right of that ship has incoming bombs.
Follow the bombs to find a HUGE Star Destroyer.
This thing really is HUGE.
You need to go to the lower-right of that Star Destroyer.
(Literally keep going until you find its actual lower-right.)
At the bottom there, you will find a vertical entrance with a "boing" coin in it.
Enter there.
Go left to the bulb.
Go up from the bulb, and keep going, ignoring the first left.
Then go left briefly, down briefly, and to your left is the PoP level.
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Norbert
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Re: Various

Post by Norbert »

Apparently skeletons can scream. :)
And when they do, the prince no longer does...
4DPlayer

Re: Various

Post by 4DPlayer »

Norbert wrote: September 13th, 2019, 9:32 pm Apparently skeletons can scream. :)
And when they do, the prince no longer does...
Wow! Big find!
4DPlayer

Re: Various

Post by 4DPlayer »

Lost in Errors level 14 with finishing as a Shadow man.
And so the Prince killed Jaffar(s). But, the Vizier had one trick up his sleeve. A spell that will turn the Prince, his beloved, and his mouse friend into SHADOWS forevermore!.
David
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Re: Various

Post by David »

Norbert wrote: September 13th, 2019, 9:32 pm Apparently skeletons can scream. :)
Wow, I didn't know that!

Here is a test level I made:
skeleton_scream.zip
(8.62 KiB) Downloaded 89 times
Start level 3 and grab onto the ledge.


Using SDLPoP I found out the following:

Apparently the game doesn't check who is falling when it plays the scream sound: https://github.com/NagyD/SDLPoP/blob/ma ... g005.c#L38

But why don't regular guards scream?
I guess they can't reach the necessary speed (*) because falling within a single room is not long enough; and they disappear when falling out of the room.

And why didn't your skeleton disappear?
Because when the prince enters the room below, in in exit_room(), Guard.sword == sword_2_drawn is true for a falling skeleton, but not for a falling regular guard.
Later, Guard.curr_row == 3, so "leave" will not be set to 1; and thus follow_guard() will be called.

And Guard.sword == 2 because of this: https://github.com/NagyD/SDLPoP/blob/ma ... 002.c#L655
The skeleton is always on guard (active), although I don't know what was the original purpose of that.

(*) Actually they can reach it!
If the guard starts falling from the top row, and they are allowed to fall out of the room, then Char.fall_y == 33 right before they disappear (according to a debug printout I added to SDLPoP).
So why don't they scream?
It turns out the scream sound is stopped by the guard's death music: https://github.com/NagyD/SDLPoP/blob/ma ... 06.c#L1755
If you disable the latter then you can actually hear the guard scream!

So it seems that everybody screams in the original PoP as well when they reach the right speed, but you need some special circumstances to hear it. :)
David
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Re: Various

Post by David »

4DPlayer wrote: September 14th, 2019, 2:54 am Lost in Errors level 14 with finishing as a Shadow man.
And so the Prince killed Jaffar(s). But, the Vizier had one trick up his sleeve. A spell that will turn the Prince, his beloved, and his mouse friend into SHADOWS forevermore!.
Another thing I didn't know!

Apparently if the prince is flashing between regular and shadow when you finish the game, he can get stuck as shadow in the ending sequence.
That's because the same code draws the cutscenes and the game itself.
The flashing is implemented here: https://github.com/NagyD/SDLPoP/blob/ma ... 08.c#L1562
And the timer counts down here: https://github.com/NagyD/SDLPoP/blob/ma ... 003.c#L487

As for why does the prince start flashing, I explained it here: viewtopic.php?p=16084#p16084
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Norbert
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Re: Various

Post by Norbert »

David wrote: September 14th, 2019, 12:44 pmSo it seems that everybody screams in the original PoP as well when they reach the right speed, but you need some special circumstances to hear it. :)
:lol:
4DPlayer

Re: Various

Post by 4DPlayer »

Still on the topic of screaming guards, I found this in SDLPoP:
Jaffar Scream.zip
(1.82 MiB) Downloaded 112 times
Jaffar screams when you push him off the cliff while you're at the edge of both rooms.
Haven't tested this with the DOS version.
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Norbert
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Re: Various

Post by Norbert »

Level editor of some sort, written "in QuickBasic 4.50".
4DPlayer

Re: Various

Post by 4DPlayer »

I don't think anyone has seen this before.
GUARD becomes a SHADOW. The thumbnail sort of says it all. This is in the level 5 special event.
David
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Re: Various

Post by David »

Norbert wrote: October 1st, 2019, 8:51 pm Level editor of some sort, written "in QuickBasic 4.50".
Interesting. Too bad there is no download link.
I also see a bug: the exit door plays the opening animation every time the screen is redrawn.

According to the comment seen at 0:06-0:12, this editor loads images from VDUNGEON.DAT.

It also says "Copyright (C) - Salman Farhat 2007"
We have a user with the same name: memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=2374
Could he be the same person?
David
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Re: Various

Post by David »

PoP is briefly mentioned on this page, under Rotoscoping: https://github.com/whoisbma/Game-Aesthe ... 06-sprites
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Norbert
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Re: Various

Post by Norbert »

Did you ever notice that, in the original game, the prince always starts facing the direction he has to go except in the princess level?

And did you ever notice that the PoP1 "Prince of Persia" title text mixes upper (e.g. R, E) and lower (e.g. n, a) case letters?
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Re: Various

Post by David »

Norbert wrote: January 14th, 2020, 12:17 pm Did you ever notice that, in the original game, the prince always starts facing the direction he has to go except in the princess level?
I think I've noticed that before, except for the exception in the princess level.
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Re: Various

Post by David »

A few days ago I found an article about game graphics which were copied from elsewhere.
https://hg101.kontek.net/tracing/tracing.htm

The article contains two examples of such copied images appearing in PoP:

1. The Princess in the crystal ball, in PoP for the Sega Genesis: copied from a painting by Boris Vallejo.
https://hg101.kontek.net/tracing/tracing2.htm (the page contains some artistic nudity)

2. The swordfight on the stairs, on the cover of PoP for DOS, Amiga, etc.: copied from the Robin Hood movie.
https://hg101.kontek.net/tracing/tracing4.htm
(Though as the article says, it's not that surprising, since the in-game swordfight frames were copied from the same movie.)
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