Anyone Up To A Port Of Jjffe?

[Tobriand]

And of course, it's open source. Its also in SDL, which ought to make life a tad easier for people. Or at least, has an SDL version. And I'm fairly sure the GFX mode is innately 320x240 or 320x200. Oh - and its cursor driven rather than shortcut driven.

What more could we ask for from an elite type port?

http://www.jaj22.demon.co.uk/download.html - Source
http://www.jaj22.demon.co.uk/ - Homepage

Only thing is that the music isn't there in the SDL one aparrently - you'd need to have a look in the allegro version if you want to fiddle with that. But since music is in midi by default anyway, it might be an idea to forget that and just use a few mods snitched from the net or some such - its not like it'd be hard to find mods of the tunes it used, anyway...


Without a decent Elite: TNK port (the current one is just... not really fun), this is a clear next place to turn to. Especially since the data files are now available as shareware (or rather, freeware with a notice on the front saying its shareware) in their entirety...

 

[Tobriand]

For those of you who haven't got a clue what FFE is, btw, screenies can be found here

(aka: bump!)

 

[Enslaved]

That looks pretty cool.So is it a space-combat/strategy game? I remmember hearing something about trading in the elite games or something.

Why doesnt anybody post at this time?

 

[Tobriand]

Well, FFE was basically Elite 3 - Elite 2 being "Frontier Elite 2". It never sold well, due to being somewhat incomplete (quite a few of the quests are written but not included if you examine the datafiles in a hex editor) which means the story in it - unlike in the second - is pretty much non-existant. Or at least, limited. So after a few patches and a reasonable fan base starting up, the makers released the datafiles as shareware.

Problem is, they wouldn't work on Windows except with a lot of tweaking.

So JJFFE is written to get around that - a nice interpreter that *lets* it run on both windows and Linux. But of particular note since its open source, and compilably in SDL at that

Anyway, back to what the game is. Basically, its a free-roaming space simulator with lots of emphasis on trading - buy stuff at one world, sell at another, blow up pirates who try to stop you. Of course, since its open-ended, you can easily become a pirate. Or a miner. Or work for the military - which is where what storyline there is comes into it.

If you want to play the second one, it does work on CaSTaway, but too slowly to be playable imho - still, considering FFE has MUCH nicer textures, modelling, etc, its worth a look just to see what it'd look like ported .



I think no-one's posting here primarily since the Cool Ideas forum posts don't go on the front anymore, and so many of them are just "Port this game without the source code" that a lot of people just don't pay attention, I suppose. The people who do post often do it in specific threads, and ignore the rest I suspect - I know I do most of the time - so probably to be noticed there have to be a fair few replies to get started lol - Catch 22. Or is it just that people aren't interested in Elitey games?

 

[Enslaved]

From your description Elite sounds like a really cool game series! BTW, do you think that my FAQ topic should be Pinned?

 

[Tobriand]

The series is brilliant - and in my opinion, FFE is where it peaks (ever played a modern game that lets you do low-flying missions over every planet in the game - and has many hundreds of planets in it? In real time? Thought not lol. Although to be honest, I never do that anyway - too easy to misjudge distances/speeds etc.). Its one of the very few games I come back to every few months and play solidly for a week or so.

BTW: Which FAQ topic?

 

[WhizzBang]

I love Elite but have never really put much time into the Frontier games as I tried it once and get fed up very quickkly with the flight control which, as I remember, was more realistic but less fun.

 

[Tobriand]

Hmm... the flight controls never bothered me after I read a couple of the faqs. Though admittedly they are a wossname to fight with.

In fact, the more realistic physics model is pretty useful once you get used to it, though less so in this game. But it never really annoyed me much - if you want to dogfight, you just have to manage your engines manually rather than using the set/actual system (which is great for planetary transit). Since dogfights occur at *relative* speed, once your engines are in manual mode its fairly comfortable to carry them out. Its a shame there aren't any slow-moving battle-cruisers in FFE as there are in games like Freelancer or Edge of Chaos; the realsitic style physics engine is brilliant for firing engines in a direction, cutting them, then spinning round and shooting.