News roundup

[Falcury]

2 January 2017 - To mark the beginning of a new year, Norbert has released the PoP Modding Community 2016 Highlights (forum thread, PDF). It provides a great overview of the events and efforts made within our community from the past year!

To catch up on the new releases since July 2016, here is a short roundup:

• 12 July 2016 - Fred started work on a new Prince of Persia 1 levelset, called Fred's Palace, and released the first level (forum thread).
  27 July 2016 - Grapelli1988 released a new mod for Prince of Persia 1, called Dark Shadows (forum thread, popot link).
• 30 July 2016 - Norbert released snes2dosxml, a tool which converts Prince of Persia SNES ROMs to the DOS XML format (forum thread). The newest release is version 0.2 (released 8 August 2016)
• 5 August 2016 - lvcabral released his PoP Sprites Converter tool (forum thread).
• 8 August 2016 - salvadorc17 released a new mod for Prince of Persia 1 (converted from SNES to DOS using snes2dosxml), called Prince of Persia - Castle Evolution (forum thread)
• 8 August 2016 - Brendon released RoomShaker 1.80 (forum post, popot page).
• 12 August 2016 - ArmFly released a new mod for Prince of Persia 1, called During Sleep 3 (forum thread, popot link).
• 6 September 2016 - Marcelo (lvcabral) released version 0.12 of his Prince of Persia for Roku port, which is now feature complete and also has support for mods. (forum post, GitHub, changelog)
• 25 September 2016 - Prince of Persia 2 for Mac has been made available on popot.org (link).
• 19 October 2016 - SuavePrince released a new mod for Prince of Persia 1, called The Amazing Prince of Persia (forum thread, popot link).
• 2 November 2016 - Norbert released a new mod for Prince of Persia (Game Boy Color), called First One (forum thread).
• 7 November 2016 - Norbert released legbop, a level editor for the Game Boy Color (forum thread, website, popot page).
• 8 December 2016 - cipriano200 started work on a new Prince of Persia 1 levelset and released the first level (forum thread).
• 15 December 2016 - Norbert released lemdop, a level editor for the Mega Drive and Sega Genesis (forum thread, website, popot page).
• 22 December 2016 - talpa released a new mod for Prince of Persia 1, called Twisted Ideas (forum thread, popot link).
• 25 December 2016 - Falcury released version 1.2 of Secrets of the Citadel, an SDLPoP-based Prince of Persia 1 mod
  (forum post, popot link).
• 26 December 2016 - oitofelix has updated MININIM with numerous new features, and MININIM now has a rolling release cycle
  (forum thread, homepage).

Let me know if there is anything that I missed, that should be added to the above list.

[lvcabral]

I think my Roku port/remake worth mention, it was months of development, and I have the full game implemented even with support for mods created by the community.

[Norbert]

Falcury's overview is most likely based on the PDF I created.
He probably looked at the July and newer sections, then looked up dates and links.
This means he missed that it says under June (emphasis mine):

lvcabral releases (version 0.9 of) his Roku PoP1 port. He releases additional versions, including a "feature complete" version 0.12 in November.

Anyway, it should be easy for Falcury to update his post and the overview on the website.

In the PDF I prefer to keep certain things together. Other examples:
­

Norbert releases snes2dosxml 0.1. In August he releases version 0.2.

"mYse|f" and Norbert look into emulating PoP1 for Mac on GNU/Linux. In
September, Norbert publishes a document with detailed instructions.­

[Norbert]

By the way, we could still use someone for the Princed Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Maybe something for you, lvcabral?
Or you, oitofelix?
You know, that if there's a new mod or program or something, that you Tweet/Facebook about it.

Both Twitter and Facebook stopped July 10/11.
(On November 7, the Facebook page mentioned my Game Boy Color level editor, but that's only because I contacted poirot about it.)
Falcury's news roundup shows that people who only check Twitter/Facebook don't know about a bunch of things.

Personally, I'd be happy to see a tweet about my Mega Drive/Sega Genesis level editor.

[Falcury]

I think my Roku port/remake worth mention, it was months of development, and I have the full game implemented even with support for mods created by the community.

Thank you for pointing it out! I updated the posts.
I indeed based the overview on Norbert's PDF and looked less systematically at everything before July, which caused the Roku port's 0.12 release to slip under my radar.
It's quite hard to keep track of everything, and not forget things... (I envy your organizational skills, Norbert!)

By the way, we could still use someone for the Princed Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Maybe something for you, lvcabral?
Or you, oitofelix?
You know, that if there's a new mod or program or something, that you Tweet/Facebook about it.

Yes! If people want to help out, please feel free to contact me, and/or poirot.

Also:
If anyone wants to contribute a blog post for princed.org, please don't hesitate to send me your text (including hyperlinks and images, if applicable), so that I can edit it and put it online.

Maybe we could eventually do a sort of "community blogging" system for princed.org?
More specifically, maybe something along the lines of Jazz2Online's RabbitJournal. The idea being that community members could submit their own posts, which then get promoted to the front page if other people upvote it and if an admin approves it.

[Falcury]

Sent out a tweet. (A bit late, but hey...)

[Norbert]

Now that www.princed.org, Twitter and Facebook are up-to-date again (because of the roundup), maybe announce:

- replay upload feature popot.org (January 9)
- Sunshine Remix (January 12)
- MININIM (January 5, 12)
- SDLPoP 1.17 (February 5)

Maybe two posts, one about the mod, and one that combines the other items (SDLPoP, MININIM, replays)?

[Falcury]

Now that http://www.princed.org, Twitter and Facebook are up-to-date again (because of the roundup), maybe announce:

- replay upload feature popot.org (January 9)
- Sunshine Remix (January 12)
- MININIM (January 5, 12)
- SDLPoP 1.17 (February 5)

Maybe two posts, one about the mod, and one that combines the other items (SDLPoP, MININIM, replays)?

Thanks for pointing out the items and the dates! I'm busy doing the posts now.

[Norbert]

Maybe we could eventually do a sort of "community blogging" system for princed.org?

While polished and complement worthy, we may want to move away from these detailed news posts. I'm getting emotionally exhausted just from imagining how much work you've put into these recent posts. Maybe allow whoever created something new, or updated something, to write up a max. 140 character (inc. the link) line of text, and then just paste that at Twitter, Facebook and at the top of http://www.princed.org? Then if you also post these lines of text on the Announcement board with above or under them a text that explains how we deal with news - that is, submit 140 chars to you, etc - then we should be set. Takes a load off your mind, and allows people to market their own stuff in their own words via official Princed channels. Then all you have to do is remove excessive exclamation marks and capitals, or whatever (else) seems unacceptable to you. This is just a suggestion.

[Norbert]

Then again, maybe I should stop posting suggestions and just let you do your thing.

[Falcury]

While polished and complement worthy, we may want to move away from these detailed news posts. I'm getting emotionally exhausted just from imagining how much work you've put into these recent posts.

Yeah, you know how much work it is of course I am definitely noticing how difficult it actually is to put a good blog post together, it takes a lot of time to do. (Not to mention the proofreading/correction cycles...)

Perhaps at the moment I don't mind spending so much effort on the posts, because I'm still 'trying things out' (experimenting what works and what doesn't, maybe). But as you say, keeping something like this up might be a bit... difficult.

Maybe allow whoever created something new, or updated something, to write up a max. 140 character (inc. the link) line of text, and then just paste that at Twitter, Facebook and at the top of http://www.princed.org? Then if you also post these lines of text on the Announcement board with above or under them a text that explains how we deal with news - that is, submit 140 chars to you, etc - then we should be set.

This sounds like a good idea to me!