Dink Smallwood

[WizardStan]

I killed a few hours today by building Dink Smallwood for my BeagleBoard.
Sound works, but not music. This could just be because of problems with the sound mixer.
The mouse doesn't work, but the only time it's used is on the main menu screen (to select Start, Continue, or Quit) but you can move the cursor around with the arrow keys as well, so no major loss there.
It can't load the default font for some reason. Probably something to do with it expecting SDL_ttf version 2.0.9 and only having 2.0.3 built for ARM. Not sure which version will be available on the Pandora, but I got around it by just grabbing a basically random font (FreeMono.ttf) and using that instead. It's not a very pretty font, it's a little hard to read. If I can't get the default font to work, I'll experiment with some others until I find one that looks nice.
Other than that, it works pretty good. My only concern is that I'm running at 800x600, and I don't know how it will look on an 800x480 screen.

 

[GuyMontag]

Very cool! I would love to play Dink Smallwood on my Pandora. I just started to play FreeDink one week ago.

 

[LastPucho]

Thanks a lot WizardStan! I played a few years ago, and though I didn't beat it, I loved it!

 

[WizardStan]

WHEEEE! I asked Skeezix to give it a try on his Pandora, and it worked beautifully. He even snapped a picture for me. It's magic!
So thanks to him I'm now even more giddy to get my Pandora than I was before, assuming that's even possible.

 

[DaMummy]

i cant hear any sound in that picture, will this be fixed soon, at least by the time pandora ships?

 

[Mr.Confuzed]

i cant hear any sound in that picture, will this be fixed soon, at least by the time pandora ships?

I'm sorry, but I'm afraid Dink's dysfunction is incurable.

 

[zevdawg]

i cant hear any sound in that picture, will this be fixed soon, at least by the time pandora ships?

I'm sorry, but I'm afraid Dink's dysfunction is incurable.

Here, try this paper. It will make you hear colours!

 

[rabidpoobear]

Awesome news, WizardStan! I love Dink Smallwood. Played it when I was a kid, look forward to doing it again, but mobile! Hope the music can be sorted.

 

[litphoenix]

You just made my day. I would have never imagined this being playable. One of the many gems I never played enough back in the day.

 

[Ferram]

I looooved that game! Thanks so much!

How about the level editor and such, will that be part of the project?

 

[BaDToaD]

That looks like a nice little game. More reasons to look forward to the Pandora

 

[verm71]

It's funny how many of us (myself included) are waiting for our Pandoras to play certain games and go back down memory lane, while we could play those games right now on existing emulators, etc... I have an Amiga and C64 emulator sitting right here, not to mention MAME and a kick-ass X-Arcade Tank Stick. Yet, I'm still waiting for my Pandora to be able to play said Amiga, C64 and MAME games. I wonder what that tells us about how much value the Pandora experience itself adds to the whole experience!

 

[SiegfriedCroes]

Oh Dink Smallwood, also played it when I was a kid I hope it will work with music in the end, would it have anything to do with the music being .mid files?

 

[WizardStan]

How about the level editor and such, will that be part of the project?

Yes, it also runs. I'm trying to get libpnd running on my beagleboard as well so I can test things out. It should be pretty cool.

Oh Dink Smallwood, also played it when I was a kid I hope it will work with music in the end, would it have anything to do with the music being .mid files?

Yeah, that occurred to me as well, eventually. In theory, if a midi synth is installed, it should start working. Angstrom has FluidSynth, so I may have to mess around with that a bit.

 

[Viral18]

It's funny how many of us (myself included) are waiting for our Pandoras to play certain games and go back down memory lane, while we could play those games right now on existing emulators, etc...

Haha, I know that feeling. I've been holding off replaying so many games on my desktop computer because I think that replaying them on the Pandora would make the experience that much better. Plus time is precious and limited, so the portable form factor means i'd feel less guilty gaming on train journeys than at home when I should be working

 

[Tensuke]

Dink Smallwood, this brings back memories...Ducks!
haha this is going to be great, thanks Wizardstan and Skeezix!

 

[Pleng]

Isn't Dink Smallwood written using the Novashell Game Creation system? Does that mean Novashell works on BB too?

 

[WizardStan]

I actually built the FreeDink engine, not the Novashell engine. The FreeDink engine is a rewrite of the original Dink Smallwood engine released under GPL. I wasn't actually aware of this Novashell engine until just now, so I'm not certain what the difference is. At a glance, it looks like Novashell has added a lot more features over the original Dink Smallwood engine.
I'm pretty sure FreeDink supports only the features used in Dink, and games based on it. Dink Smallwood did have its own editor after all.
I'll give the Novashell code a try as well, if I get a chance. According to the rtsoft forum, Seth first started working on it in 2006, so to say Dink (from 1997) was written in it would definitely be wrong. It's possible Dink Smallwood was ported to Novashell later.

 

[Pleng]

aha. The apparent problem with Novashell is that it relies on Clanlib, which uses OpenGL.

Seth appeared moderately keen to see Novashell on Pandora. Not so sure he was up for porting Clanlib to OpenGLES though!

 

[WizardStan]

hmmm
I've been quite lazy getting 3D to work on my BeagleBoard, so even if I were up to the task of porting it I'd have no way of testing it.