Albion

[senquack]

Albion is abandonware now, and I downloaded a copy of 1.38 full off of abandonia.com to see if I could play this game on my GP2X.

What should I do? I don't have the CD and I run Linux so the instructions don't work with this kind of situation.

Download the game off abandonia, and use DOSBOX. Follow the detailed example instructions he gives in the README and it should work. There's a good chance you'll make a mistake along the way, just keep double checking everything and eventually it will work. I know because it is exactly what I did (linux/DOSBOX/abandonia)

 

[M-HT]

I think I found a bug in the 3D mapping, though I'm not sure if it's present in the original (I never noticed it before).

In Jirinaar, due south of the eastern entrance of the Dji-Fadh (Formers) guild, there's a wall missing - it still registers as a wall, it's just a visual bug. There is a small line at the top of the panel, however.

You didn't notice it before, because it's not present in the original and it wasn't present in the alpha 1 release.
The missing wall is a semi-transparent window. I made a small mistake when optimalizing drawing this kind of walls. It will be fixed in next release.

Also, is the white mouse cursor intentional? I'm assuming it's just a debug thing.

It began as a kind of debug thing, but I had some problem wihout it. Since it didn't bother me and I was lazy to fix it, I left it as it is.

<wishful thinking>
I wonder if the recompilation process'll work on Amulets and Armor. That game was severely stunted by it's lack of exposure (it sold less than a 100 copies) - it was fantastic, though, and the GP2x could benefit from it's transposition (though, I wouldn't port it until Albion is done. It's a FPS/RPG hybrid, though). It uses the DOS extender, and it ran perfectly fine on my 486 (before it exploded ) so it probably will run fine on the GP2x. Though, this one kinda requires both keyboard and mouse at the same time (for picking up that scroll while you frantically run by ) - so touchscreen is probably needed :\ Or creative controls .
</wishful thinking>

Since it's difficult (or impossible) to control with GP2X controls, isn't it kind of pointless to recompile it ?
I don't own the game, so I can't tell if it's possible to recompile it using my approach. Also, I couldn't find minimal requirements for the game, so I don't know if it could be fast enough (after recompilation) to play it.

I just looked at XCOM and it actually does use a dos memory extender.

I looked again and you're right. Before, I looked only at the install cd and couldn't find any dos extender - it's present after installing the game. I'm sorry for misguiding you before.
It probably is possible to recompile it using my approach. I'm not sure about playing it using GP2X controls - it's been a long time since I played it.

 

[Khatoblepas]

You didn't notice it before, because it's not present in the original and it wasn't present in the alpha 1 release.
The missing wall is a semi-transparent window. I made a small mistake when optimalizing drawing this kind of walls. It will be fixed in next release.

Ah, thankyou. I thought something was awry.

QUOTE

It began as a kind of debug thing, but I had some problem wihout it. Since it didn't bother me and I was lazy to fix it, I left it as it is.


Could you add an option to turn it off (like, as a command line thing)? I don't really like it... but it's not really that much of a problem


QUOTE
Since it's difficult (or impossible) to control with GP2X controls, isn't it kind of pointless to recompile it ?
I don't own the game, so I can't tell if it's possible to recompile it using my approach. Also, I couldn't find minimal requirements for the game, so I don't know if it could be fast enough (after recompilation) to play it.


Well, it's not difficult in the way that you can't play the game without it (enemies don't respawn, so you can still have that switch between mouse/keyboard controls), but it's harder to control than Albion. Come to think of it, when I was playing it, I only ever used the mouse when I had killed everyone anyway, and was in no danger. I think perhaps I was exaggerating. I'll have to look for my copy of the game for the minimal requirements.

Oh yes, and I looked up on the touchscreen, and it seems it's just a USB mouse to the GP2x, with one button. At least, that's what I got from reading discussion about it.

Thanks again

 

[pupnik]

Wow. This is amazing.

Naive question: the Udis86 spits out x86 assembly instructions. How did you translate that to the ARM instruction set? Can this be (partly) automated?

Maybe other people could try this with tiny x86 demos, and slowly work their way up to more complicated things.
(edit: and then join forces for the GREAT DOSBOX DYNREC JIHAAD!!!)

Congratiulations on this achievement. It's incredible.

 

[M-HT]

Naive question: the Udis86 spits out x86 assembly instructions. How did you translate that to the ARM instruction set? Can this be (partly) automated?

Udis86 dissambles an instruction into:
1) string describing the instruciton
2) structure filled with information about the instruction - this is what I use to recompile X86 instructions to ARM instructions

The translation is simple (in theory): for every X86 instruction (that is used in original executable) I wrote a sequence of ARM instructions which does the same as the original instruction.

The process is about 99% automated - in the sense that if you translate one instruction then all occurences of the instruction are translated.

Maybe other people could try this with tiny x86 demos, and slowly work their way up to more complicated things.

Not really. Because tiny demos are written almost 100% in assembler, use non standard constructions and often rely on specific / undocumented (officialy) features of the hardware / software they run on. (Quite different from programs written in C)

(edit: and then join forces for the GREAT DOSBOX DYNREC JIHAAD!!!)

DOSBox is quite resource (memory) hungry and even more so with dynarec. In my opinion it's not practical to run dosbox with dynarec on GP2X.

Congratiulations on this achievement. It's incredible.

Thank you.

 

[trainchaser]

Wow. This gives me hope for X-COM...Betrayal at Krondor (I know about xBaK, but it does not seem to active ).