Alternate Reality SDL Demo

[Trilog]

Hi there,

 

I've been working on an SDL Alternate Reality "demo" that tries to emulate the combat part of The Dungeon. This is part of a planned SDL port that I'm working on that would hopefully allow players to move between the City and Dungeon scenarios. I'm using the original Atari 8-bit graphics and music for now, though in the longer term I'd hope to offer updated versions as an option.

 

So far with this SDL program I've only done the basics of a Dungeon-like combat system - there's no exploring yet, no treasure and no experience levels but I thought it might be of some interest to people here. There's only a Windows download currently though I had an earlier version working fine under Fedora.

 

I know that there are lots of things missing even in this little bit (I've a long list of changes and additions that I'll add soon.) but before I go much further I thought I would ask if anybody could help me out with some information.

 

I've been setting up game mechanics based on what I know but I'd prefer to use mechanics similar to the original game. For example when is Skill and Strength tested when attacking and what is it being compared to? Any information anybody could provide would be great.

 

I'd also like to use the original monster data if anybody can provide it. I am using the original weapon data although there are some values that I'm guessing at and may not be using correctly.

 

You can download the Windows version from:

 

http://members.fortunecity.com/ghdesousa/AR_Demo01.zip

 

You'll also need some SDL DLLs unless you already have them on your system. These are SDL.dll, SDL_mixer and smpeg.dll. These are available at:

 

http://members.fortunecity.com/ghdesousa/AR_Demo_DLLs.zip

 

Just copy them into the ARDemo folder. I left out the Death theme because it was currently a 700K .OGG file and file size on the Fortune City site is limited to 1Mb. I'll sort out something better soon.

 

My email address is : g _ hds@yahoo.co.uk (without the spaces).

 

Thanks,

 

Guilherme

[hicksman]

Ironic. I had the same idea a few weeks ago and started asking the same questions. Oddly enough, everyone disappeared and i havent seen a response in a few weeks...

Edited August 24, 2005 by hicksman

[Chunder]

@Trilog

 

Sounds great - I had a similar idea of reimplementing it all in a more modern environment... SDL looks cool as it's available on Windows, Linux, Mac OSX and Amiga OS4, but the engine which caught my eye was called "Dimension 3". I think that it's mostly Mac-centric, but should be portable - and seems quite straightforward to string things together (an easy map/path editor, and javascript-style controls and actions).

 

I've only seen bits of snippets of information about what happens behind the scenes, but perhaps XD or Wrathchild would have more information, as it seems that they're familiar with poking around at the workings of AR...

 

I've got ample webspace/bandwidth if you'd like me to host a mirror, or a larger archive... just drop me a line!

 

@hicksman

 

Yeah, I noticed it seemed to have gone quiet... unfortunately I couldn't answer most of the questions you posted, so perhaps everyone else was in the same boat...

[Trilog]

Ironic. I had the same idea a few weeks ago and started asking the same questions. Oddly enough, everyone disappeared and i havent seen a response in a few weeks...

917959[/snapback]

 

I was a bit surprised there weren't at least a couple of responses given the length of some of the recent AR City threads!

 

There have been a number of potential port / update projects in the past which haven't really materialised so people might be sceptical. I've also posted in the past about a port so people might be wary of me talking about a port. There's not much content to comment on yet. I did get a couple of responses from the AR list - thanks for those.

 

If you're still interested send me an email at the address above and I'll send you some information that I do have - map data formats for the City and Dungeon, some Dungeon object format info.

 

Thanks,

 

Guilherme

[Wrathchild]

Personally I've been snowed under this month with work and

so not made any headway into either starting with the Dungeon

to cart re-work or continuing on the City work so far. Worst thing

is that I don't see much of a let up work-wise until October!

 

Sorry to all!

 

Mark

[hicksman]

Ahh, so this endeavor has been taken up before? That explains why this thread doesn't have a flurry of activity. I've followed a number of fan-mades for other games that have never made it past the first test release. Best of luck with yours, Trilog.

 

My vision was to recreate the "character" first and build the city around him/her. After the City was built, it would hopefully be straightforward to add the rest of the scenarios. I only had the PC version as a kid, so i am partial to the 16 bit version, best shown on the Amiga. I was hoping to reproduce a verion of the game that was authentic to the original Atari but with some of the extras the 16 bit versions allowed. I want to add some simple improvements like more frames of animation for the encounters, the ability to buy a house, and juuuust maybe visible encounters instead of random.

 

My profession is software and procedural design. So, I have been spending the last few weeks amassing as much information about the City as possible and organizing it into a design document. What i hope to do is finish with design soon and shift to technical. The technical document should start talking in numbers and will be organized in such a way that i could then form psuedo code from it and eventually real code.

 

Unfortunately, there are large gaps, the biggest being how all the "math" works behind the scenes. (How skills compute in combat, what stats a weapon has, etc) This has what has kept me from moving to the technical documents because i have no idea how anything really works. Trilog, this seems to be where you're stuck.

 

I decided to stop working on the documents and persue other avenues, such as posting on this board. THAT didn't work, so i used a disassembler to crack open the executable of the PC version. This process is taking a while, as the pc version aparently is not very well coded AND i dont have experience with assembly, so i'm learning as i go. As i mentioned in another post, i see mention of an "AR Debugger" in the code which i was making my goal to enable to see if it would shed light on how all the numbers worked.

 

 

This is where i am now. Going through the disassembled PC version in search of the math. I will let you know what i find, when i find it

Edited August 25, 2005 by hicksman

[Trilog]

Sounds great - I had a similar idea of reimplementing it all in a more modern environment... SDL looks cool as it's available on Windows, Linux, Mac OSX and Amiga OS4, but the engine which caught my eye was called "Dimension 3". I think that it's mostly Mac-centric, but should be portable - and seems quite straightforward to string things together (an easy map/path editor, and javascript-style controls and actions).

I'm looking to make a fairly modest port that's fairly faithful to the original. I'd also like it to be as portable as possible. I'm not looking to create a really up to date 3D game engine - I'll leave that to others or to Philip Price's official remake. I do intend to offer an "enhanced graphics" option in addition to the original ones though.

I've got ample webspace/bandwidth if you'd like me to host a mirror, or a larger archive... just drop me a line!

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind. Should I just contact you through the mail system on this forum?

 

Guilherme

[Trilog]

My vision was to recreate the "character" first and build the city around him/her. After the City was built, it would hopefully be straightforward to add the rest of the scenarios. I only had the PC version as a kid, so i am partial to the 16 bit version, best shown on the Amiga. I was hoping to reproduce a verion of the game that was authentic to the original Atari but with some of the extras the 16 bit versions allowed. I want to add some simple improvements like more frames of animation for the encounters, the ability to buy a house, and juuuust maybe visible encounters instead of random.

I plan to add the 16bit improvements to my own port. I'd encourage you to keep going with your plan and look forward to seeing something in the future.

My profession is software and procedural design. So, I have been spending the last few weeks amassing as much information about the City as possible and organizing it into a design document. What i hope to do is finish with design soon and shift to technical. The technical document should start talking in numbers and will be organized in such a way that i could then form psuedo code from it and eventually real code.

Interesting - I would be quite interested in seeing those sometime if you were willing. I have various notes and useful bits of technical info but I've yet to put them together into a single document or webpage.

Unfortunately, there are large gaps, the biggest being how all the "math" works behind the scenes. (How skills compute in combat, what stats a weapon has, etc) This has what has kept me from moving to the technical documents because i have no idea how anything really works. Trilog, this seems to be where you're stuck.

I've still got a lot of stuff to work on so I'm not too concerned but I would rather use the real mechanics. I've played around with the disassembler in Atari 800 Win but not made a real effort yet.

I decided to stop working on the documents and persue other avenues, such as posting on this board. THAT didn't work, so i used a disassembler to crack open the executable of the PC version. This process is taking a while, as the pc version aparently is not very well coded AND i dont have experience with assembly, so i'm learning as i go. As i mentioned in another post, i see mention of an "AR Debugger" in the code which i was making my goal to enable to see if it would shed light on how all the numbers worked.

The problem with the PC version is that part of it is running an emulation of some of the Atari ST code - I think it's just the 3D graphics bit but I might be wrong. Some of the 16 bit code seems a bit odd though compared to the original. For example when playing the Atari ST version I was able to charm a character while still at level 0 and get a Flamesword and Chainmail armour! I lost interst in the ST version after that. Having said that I've found the Amiga version to be fairly good (and pretty tough!).

This is where i am now. Going through the disassembled PC version in search of the math. I will let you know what i find, when i find it 

918430[/snapback]

Thanks. I'd appreciate that and will likewise be happy to let you know anything I discover.

 

Guilherme

[hicksman]

To answer your question: If you do get any of the math worked out, please just post it on the forum, that way everyone can benefit from the knowledge. Otherwise, if its a more private matter, just send me a private message.

 

I'll keep in touch. Good luck

[Trilog]

Hi there,

 

Just to let you know that I've done some further work on my AR SDL port. As I've been kindly provided with some webspace you can now download version 0.2 from:

 

http://wateraxe.demon.nl/alternatereality

 

This version includes my first attempt at a 3D view for moving around the 1st level of the Dungeon. It's basic but was all I was trying to achieve for this version. This should improve dramatically with future versions.

 

Please note that if you tried the previous version you'll still need to get the AR_Demo_DLLs.zip file as it contains an additional DLL that wasn't in the previous zip file.

 

There's a start up screen, character creation and I've added the death theme back in. There's also now a webpage and some screenshots.

 

Comments and criticism welcomed.

[Canute]

Many greetings!

 

I am a 1980s Commodore 64 AR: The Dungeon player! What a fantastic game this was, and still is! I completed it again 2 weeks ago using winVICE C64 emulator. If only I could have entered the other planned (although sadly cancelled) scenarios....... Sad

 

I have been spreading the good news about The Dungeon to my fellow C64 junkies since December, 2004. Suprisingly, not many avid C64 RPG fans have experienced this masterpiece. You can read some of my justified propaganda for this game in the "Games Forum" at http://www.lemon64.com. Someone has even started an AR: The Dungeon completion club thread. You first need to register to read the forums.

 

Trilog! I am extremely impressed with your progress on firstly creating The Dungeon demo! I would kill for someone remake this for the PC. Hicksman and Trilog, my greatest wish in life is to have seamless transfer between City and The Dungeon. Also, to have the Arena, Wilderness, etc released!!!!! Can you help us here?

 

Regards

[Trilog]

Many greetings!

 

I am a 1980s Commodore 64 AR: The Dungeon player! What a fantastic game this was, and still is! I completed it again 2 weeks ago using winVICE C64 emulator. If only I could have entered the other planned (although sadly cancelled) scenarios....... Sad

I'm also a 1980s C64 Dungeon player. I've been replaying it on Atari800Win and WinVice - I'm a fan of both versions. I don't suppose you've been able to get the Dungeon working with the Vice C128 emulator have you - I was reading that the C64/C128 Dungeon takes advantage of the additional memory to save on disk swapping in the same way the Atari version does.

I have been spreading the good news about The Dungeon to my fellow C64 junkies since December, 2004. Suprisingly, not many avid C64 RPG fans have experienced this masterpiece. You can read some of my justified propaganda for this game in the "Games Forum" at http://www.lemon64.com. Someone has even started an AR: The Dungeon completion club thread. You first need to register to read the forums.

I'll register and check them out. It's still my all time favorite game and sadly not as well known as it deserves to be.

Trilog! I am extremely impressed with your progress on firstly creating The Dungeon demo! I would kill for someone remake this for the PC. Hicksman and Trilog, my greatest wish in life is to have seamless transfer between City and The Dungeon. Also, to have the Arena, Wilderness, etc released!!!!! Can you help us here? 

 

Thanks for your comments.

 

You will certainly be able to move easily between the City and the Dungeon (the doorway to the City entrance is behind you in the demo from my previous port attempt

 

My plan is to offer a number of options for how the 2 scenarios will be presented - in their original forms certainly but also in other ways so that you can play the 2 scenarios in a consistent style and interface if you want to. I would look to add some additional content to make use of the new combined scenarios but this would be optional.

 

I don't have any plans to attempt to create additional scenarios. I would feel that I might be taking something away from any official remake that Philip Price might still make. Details and ideas for the later scenarios are also very thin on the ground. It would be impossible for me to guess what was originally planned by Philip Price.

 

I've been ill for a week so I've not done much work on the demo for the last 2 weeks. Just now I'm working on objects and I've built up an object queue not unlike the original game. Hopefully you'll be able to pick up weapons and items after combat very soon as well as make use of some of the special one of a kind items.

 

Thanks.