SDLPoP; David's open-source port of PoP

[Eugene]

Apologies if this sounds dumb, but how about using something like FluidSynth, FMOD Ex, DUMB, BASS/BASSMIDI etc.? Then we can have (with something like BASSMIDI for example) support for MP3, MP2, MP1, OGG, WAV, AIFF, MOD music (XM, IT, S3M, MOD, MTM, UMX), MO3 music (MP3/OGG compressed MODs), MIDI (including SF2 and SFZ SoundFonts)... Of course I have no idea of the amount of effort involved, so it's easy for me to say, but I think MIDI and tracker module support especially would be nice so we can have good music at relatively small sizes.

I think this is non productive idea.
Now 13,5Mb size (ogg-files) are not so great.
And it size can even reduce, if you change the sample rate or bitrate.
And without much damage to the quality of the sound.

[Andrew]

I think this is non productive idea.

Let's leave that to the actual guy working on it, shall we? I admit it might not at all be easy to implement, but for someone else to dismiss it outright makes no sense. Plus I'm not demanding it should be worked on now. There's no problem with placing it on the back-burner to be looked at once everything else is stable.

[Humble_Prince]

I don't know if this helps, but for anyone interested I am linking to to an OGG version of the Prince of Persia music that is only 2 MB in size. I have tested with the latest version of SDLPOP and works without issue. Thank you to the author of this great release. If it is useful perhaps you could release a version of your software with the music included? A zipped version of POP with music is now around 3.5 MB in size.


Kind regards,

http://www.filedropper.com/primceofpersiamusicoggvorbis

http://speedy.sh/54r2c/Primce-of-Persia ... Vorbis.zip

[Falcury]

For fun and learning, I have started an attempt to modify the code so that it will work with SDL2. So far I've got the loading message displaying correctly (but not much more). Don't expect too much!

[kees]

This is a great bit of code! I'd love to help contribute -- what's the best way to send patches? I have a few cleanups and some doc improvements. David, can you start a github branch? I'd really like to see Falcury's SDL2 work too.

[kees]

I've been cleaning up fread/seek/etc stuff and other compiler warnings, and when I instrumented some of the silent errors, I encountered my newly added warnings at load time, and tracked down something I don't understand in load_pal_from_dat:
load_from_opendats_to_area(resource, area, 0, "pal");
The "0" there is "length", and load_from_opendats_to_area ends up loading 0 bytes from "pal" resources, like KID.DAT/res400.pal, which is 100 bytes but doesn't get loaded. It seems like "0" should actually be "sizeof(area)" instead?

[David]

* In the original game, load_from_opendats_to_area uses the size of the resource if length=0. This is a bad idea, because it can cause buffer overflow.
* You're right about sizeof(area).
* In the original game, load_pal_from_dat makes an "xlat table", something used for mapping color indexes from images to the screen.
This is not needed in SDLPoP, so you could remove it as well.
I already removed many references to these "xlat"s, but it seems I forgot this one.

[David]

David, can you start a github branch?

I uploaded SDLPoP to GitHub: https://github.com/NagyD/SDLPoP

[Falcury]

I have the SDL2 port mostly functional now, so here is my current state of work. I have also created a pull request for the GitHub repository.

Music, sounds and gameplay seem to be fully functional. I have changed the SDL window to display at 640x400 pixels by default. ALT+ENTER smoothly toggles fullscreen.

I have had to use some inefficient workarounds to get SDL2 to behave: images are now quite frequently temporarily converted to the onscreen surface format. This might cause the game to run slower. However, I think this can be fixed at some point.

One nagging issue is the guard HP drawing - moving to a room without a guard does not black out the guard hitpoints. I have a feeling it has to do with my changes to method_3_blit_mono(); I can get the guard hp to work correctly by disabling the SDL color key but it has side effects (black sections in the room tiles).

[David]

Thank you!
I will take a look at your changes.

moving to a room without a guard does not black out the guard hitpoints

It also occurs when I hurt the guard.

[David]

I think I fixed the hitpoint bug:
* In set_chtab_palette: (used for coloring the guards)

Code: Select all

- scolors[i].a = 0;
+ scolors[i].a = SDL_ALPHA_OPAQUE;

* In method_6_blit_img_to_scr:

Code: Select all

(in the else branch)
-        //SDL_SetSurfaceAlphaMod(colored_image, 0);
+        SDL_SetSurfaceAlphaMod(colored_image, 255);

Some more bugs that I found:
* shift,ctrl,alt,num,caps,scroll,... un-pause the game.
* If the game is paused, the screen is not redrawn (for example when I drag the window off-screen and back).
* Name entry does not work correctly. (hall of fame)

[salvadorc17]

David, can you start a github branch?

I uploaded SDLPoP to GitHub: https://github.com/NagyD/SDLPoP

Wow this is so hard, code is native c??

[kees]

I uploaded SDLPoP to GitHub: https://github.com/NagyD/SDLPoP

Awesome!! I've forked and created a pull request for some Linux build updates.

[kees]

Wow this is so hard, code is native c??

Better than assembler!

[salvadorc17]

Yes i know is better, but also some hard, i only manage to programming in c# like you can see in other post prince made in c#