Game Porting

If source code for Duke 3d is available, and its freeware, I may have a go at this once Zork 9210 is done.

I'll have a look for it and see what I find out.

Flipside

Oooo... I want ROTT for Communicator. But, I think is impossible 8(

I want ROTT too, I've been looking round, but the only people who seem to release their source are ID software. hence ports of DOOM, Heretic, Hexen, Quake, appear, but not of their competition.

Flipside

Concerning Duke3D, there is a tool called KEXTRACT which comes on the duke CD (in the goodies folder) which can extract all the media and content from the main game file DUKE3D.GRP. Files extracted from this file include levels (.map files which can be edited with the BUILD level editor), textures (.art files which can be edited with the EDITART utility and pcx files can be inserted into an art file) and game sounds (.voc files which can be edited with any sound editing program). There is also a utility to put all these files together back into one .grp file I think.

For duke to be ported to the communicator, duke3d.grp needs to be seriously downscaled (levels and sounds taken out) as the game is about 30mb.

Hope this information is of use.

That's not so much the problem as they are all standard file formats, the problem is that the .grp file is a compressed file, ok we can extract and use .zip instead say. But the main concern is the rendering engine, I'd love to have a go at coding it but my 3D gfx coding has always been bad, I can do 2D till the cows come home, but something about 3D just doesn't work in my head.

As for the size, anyone who was that keen on games for the 9210 would probably have one 64MB MMC for all the games, and another for serious apps (unless it does take 128MB ones when they become popular/cheaper)

Flipside

Here's some very interesting info

There may be a MSDOS emulator on it's way. Hey, if this comes out, no coding or porting, just plain and simple install. I'm just worried about memory issues?

www.pocketdos.com

Would be useful except for "* Intel 8086/80186 compatible using CGA, HP-LX or text display modes"
Games would be very awkward to use as many use Assembler interrupt calls for changing screen mode, setting up sound, etc. So anything requiring something better than CGA graphics doesn't have a hope of running.
That said it will allow people to use more powerful text editors than Epoc Word, such as Micro$oft Word, or WordPerfect.

I'd be interested to try a demo (although I'm unsure how they would make a demo of DOS), before I considered parting with money for it.

Flipside

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote</font><HR></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-12-13 0159, HotIce wrote
Here's some very interesting info

There may be a MSDOS emulator on it's way. Hey, if this comes out, no coding or porting, just plain and simple install. I'm just worried about memory issues?

http//www.pocketdos.com
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR></TD></TR></TABLE>

Oh as for memory issues, the majority of programs that will work with pocket DOS will only need conventional memory to run, therefore DOS and software will fit inside 512-640KB of RAM.

Flipside