Little Big Adventure/relentless (twin_e Or Lbawin)

[Hanz™]

Little Big Adventure, would be absolutely brilliant on the GP2X if somebody would put the time in to port it. It is probably my favourite game of all time, and despite being released in 1994 still frequents the PCGamer [UK] list top 100 games.

yaz0r has made an interpretor for the game (and is still making), which can be found here on sourceforge.

It appears to run on linux (as well as mac/windows etc...) and also uses SDL, the difficulties would be resizing the screen output from 640*480 to 320*240, and in writing/porting an openGL library for the GP2X. (miniGL?) edit: scrap that it contains no OpenGL apparently as of yet.

It would have the bonus that the game is for download from "Home of the Underdogs", who only put software up when it has been discontinued, and LBA really has been discontinued - the whole company (Adeline) has collapsed. Obviously the talkie version, for those that have it, is much better. Not that you would want such a cutdown copy of LBA, with no talking or FMV it isn't that interesting. But if we did eventually get this on the GP2X, maybe the people with the smaller SD cards may want to use this copy. Haha I say.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

25Mhz 486 or higher (486DX2-66 or higher recommended).
4 MB RAM (8MB recommended).
11MB hard disk space (36 MB required to store spoken word voice files on your hard disk for faster access during gameplay).
256-colour SVGA VESA-compatible graphics card with 512KB RAM.
MS-DOS 5.0 or higher.
Single-speed CD-ROM drive (Double-speed recommended).
Sound Blaster or compatible recommended sound card.

In game screenshot:

I read somewhere that DJWillis had at one point looked at porting it to the GP32 but had been dissuaded because of the resolution or something...

Eagerly waits.

 

[ravuya]

Unfortunately, this is yet another one of those games that needs an OpenGL implementation, and it's not trivial to build one of those.

I think someone was looking at porting MesaGL, but that expects an XWindows implementation with DRI, which I don't think the GP2X has.

 

[Hanz™]

Unfortunately, this is yet another one of those games that needs an OpenGL implementation, and it's not trivial to build one of those.

I think someone was looking at porting MesaGL, but that expects an XWindows implementation with DRI, which I don't think the GP2X has.

​

I realised that - I am wondering how GL2X is getting along.

 

[grahf]

Awesome games. I still have my original CDs. I never got into LBA (got it later), but Twinsens Odyssey had such a great atmosphere. Really great.

 

[Kayday]

Man I loved this game back then. I had the CD but probably threw it away. I loved to see this on the GP2X if possible.

 

[Sonic-NKT]

the original game didnt need opengl or anything, so you should get this running without on the gp2x also, with some work.

 

[babbagesmachine]

Hi guys -- its always nice to meet people who love lba -- I started work on a port of twin-e as soon as I got my gp2x. I've patched the cvs to enable sound, fix video timeing and some animation timing and varius crashes on linux. I started on some serius refactoring (a lot of the code has come from a disassembler -- and you can tell) but then got bored... sorry. Anyway it should be trivial to port to gp2x now in a playable state.. I might pop into irc and get some help compiling sdl on my toolchain (I cant seem to get the open2x cvs code to work)

p.s. twin-e doesnot use opengl - i dont know where that idea came from -- it uses a very messy implementation of the original software renderer.

 

[Hanz™]

Hi guys -- its always nice to meet people who love lba -- I started work on a port of twin-e as soon as I got my gp2x. I've patched the cvs to enable sound, fix video timeing and some animation timing and varius crashes on linux. I started on some serius refactoring (a lot of the code has come from a disassembler -- and you can tell) but then got bored... sorry. Anyway it should be trivial to port to gp2x now in a playable state.. I might pop into irc and get some help compiling sdl on my toolchain (I cant seem to get the open2x cvs code to work)

p.s. twin-e doesnot use opengl - i dont know where that idea came from -- it uses a very messy implementation of the original software renderer.

​

Seriously that is awesome!
You should pop into irc://irc.efnet.org:6667/#gp2xdev people there are quite friendly.

Edit: Surely there are still screen resolutions issues. I don't know where I got that thing about it using OpenGL I think I read it somewhere and didn't bother to check whether it was true or not in the source.

 

[babbagesmachine]

screen res is still a problem I looked at rescaling everything on load (tiles/bricks and gui) but everything is all over the place would probably take too long but would be the right thing to do ... for now I'll just try to scale it before the flip but it will be slow esp. if it requires writing to a 3rd buffer... Will pop into irc later today -- have to prepair a goose for tomorrow and take my sister to the station.

 

[Hanz™]

haha I thought you typed repair a goose.

I am really glad that you are thinking of doing this port, If you can get something runnable then I will be totally available to do a full bugtest hehe.

I can see what you mean - going through everything that has to be rescaled may be a pain.
Hmmmmm... If you just resized the screen what would you do during the 320*240 truck scenes - it would be silly to resize 320*240 to 320*240.

I don't know whether any of these modifications would be useful to you:
http://el-muerte.student.utwente.nl/lba/fo...read.php?t=7000
http://el-muerte.student.utwente.nl/lba/do...ams/development

*I always wondered if with these tools it would be possible to make something that rescaled everything in the game files and then patched them - so that they did not have to be rescaled everytime you ran the game.
**I believe that some people in #gp2xdev were also trying to work out how to use the hardware scalar - I don't think they are having any luck yet - but it will probably happem eventually.
***I presume you have read the wiki?

Does yaz0r's source code use a lot of floating point maths?

But on another point if you really do get bored or stuck release what source code you have - as I am for anything that makes the possiblility of LBA on the GP2X more likely.

 

[fade]

I have to add my backing to this as well, Little Big Adventure & Twinsens Odyssey were some of my best gaming memories, both an absolute pleasure to play. I couldnt agree more with Hanz desire to see this ported to the gp2x, i really really hope it happens somehow. Fingers crossed!

 

[Hanz™]

Did you manage to get SDL compiled on your toolchain?

 

[babbagesmachine]

Did you manage to get SDL compiled on your toolchain?

​

I havent tryed yet - I dont think I will have to much of a problem with that.

I'll fill you in on the current state of the project:

DUGS
Sounds are not stopable
Sounds can dont vary pitch (discrete noises dont work properly etc)
Movies arent scalled to fullscreen.
Movies do not play sound track (most of the format info is there just not implemented)
Movies play without a timer
Inaccurate and inconsistent game timer
No midi support
Cd track support doesnt work on linux
Model renderer is inefficent and corrupts causing the screen to mess up
Model renderer depth test fails in many circustances
Some animations charater not playing
Animation and fire effects have no timer (play too fast)
AI fov, reaction distance etc. seem different from original game
Inconsistent wall hit behaviour
AI will try to talk to you over and over again and wont leave you alone when your near
No vox support (for voices)
All text in french (easy to fix but needs propper config file)
No config file reader
No holomap

CODE PROBLEMS
magic numbers
code relys heavily on global variables declared in lba.h and var,h
most operations - such as drawing to the screen - have no interface - just using the back buffer directly
lots of code which doesnt actualy do anything usful (streamreader etc.)
millions of ifndefs in the code which seem almost totaly unnessicery
lots of unimplemented features (opengl support etc)
code heavily relys on SDL and global variables for rendering
very few comments
lots of code assumes 640x480 or 320x240 resolution (640*480 is everywhere in render.c to get number of pixels why a define wasnt used I dont know)
code doesnt implent clear interfaces between behavours (backbuffer, renderingtable etc is accessed directly too often)

PLANS
currently:
fix critical dugs
rewriting fla player to play fla fulscreen with sound at varius res and colour depth
removing dependency on custom code such as streamplayer where a stadard library function would work better.
implement 320x240, 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768 at 8, 16 and 32 bbp
future:
get rid of global variables (apart from config struct and maybe game struct)
write interfaces around screen, audio, rendering (brick, model)
implement config file
implement mp3 ogg midi support for music
move data preloads out of code into text file (moding )
write moding tools for all game content
implement halomap
add features - support for animated tiles - zipped resources and resources of different types and release the engine for creating new games.

So I have a lot to do probably a month to get a first release 3 months to a good release and a year to compleation of future plans.
If some others had the skill to help it would go a lot faster but I have a real job aswell

p.s. I think the 2x could do lba2 when weve got the hardware really locked down

 

[Hanz™]

Wow, that looks like alot of work. I presume those are not all GP2X specific bugs, and that alot of them are bugs with twin-e in general.

If I could help I would, unfortunately my level of programming is such that so far I can't really do anymore than very simple C++ and SDL programs (certainly not reverse engineering!). I also haven't got a GP2X yet.
My main problem with projects like twin-e, is that I don't understand how the code is linked together, or where the main function is and stuff like that, and then as you said most of it is uncommented. :lol:

Hm. I was looking in the GP2X dev forums and saw this thread: It looks like an updated SDL is being made for the GP2X.
I don't know if you had already seen that, but if the guy adds support in SDL for scaling - then it will be useful, not to mention the other optimisations he has already added.

p.s. I think the 2x could do lba2 when weve got the hardware really locked down

Maybe it could, but since the engine is mostly incomplete right now, I think you should forget about it at the moment considering the ammount of bugs above. haha.

 

[fade]

p.s. I think the 2x could do lba2 when weve got the hardware really locked down

​

Wow, thats fantastic. I hope more devs offer to help you out over time babbagesmachine

 

[Eolair]

I'd really like to see LBA on the gp2x. I've spent so many hours on that game :lol:

 

[babbagesmachine]

I've just ported my standalone lba video player to the gp2x just to see how hard crosscompiling is -- went well after I found out that a char is not aways signed anyway no sound yet im still working out the file format for that from yaz0rs original twin-e source - maybe a week to get the sound system done... anyway if anyone want to try it out ill post the app otherwise just ignore this -- its very cool to be able to play all the movies from the command line

 

[Hanz™]

I've just ported my standalone lba video player to the gp2x just to see how hard crosscompiling is -- went well after I found out that a char is not aways signed anyway no sound yet im still working out the file format for that from yaz0rs original twin-e source - maybe a week to get the sound system done... anyway if anyone want to try it out ill post the app otherwise just ignore this -- its very cool to be able to play all the movies from the command line

​

I would, but right now I don't have a GP2X. I am waiting until I get to University (next week) and can get my GP32 box (which I left there), as then I can sell my GP32 on ebay with the box/manual/cables, for funds.

Edit: I bet the movies look awesome displayed on a small screen. mMm.

 

[Muncher666]

I've just ported my standalone lba video player to the gp2x just to see how hard crosscompiling is -- went well after I found out that a char is not aways signed anyway no sound yet im still working out the file format for that from yaz0rs original twin-e source - maybe a week to get the sound system done... anyway if anyone want to try it out ill post the app otherwise just ignore this -- its very cool to be able to play all the movies from the command line

​

I'll be getting my 2x next week. I'm in, I love LBA.

Allan.

 

[ThorC]

Just wanted to add to the thread that I too would love to see this on the GP2X.

LBA has, is and probably always will be one of my favourite games to play - it was so well put together and the execution shows that. The whole atmosphere, the music, the plot, everything, was incredibly applaudable for the game. Even today, it stands up as a great game - few, if any, games can match it in all the areas it so excels in.

Furthermore, LBA2 would be simply amazing - but for that, is there any source available or will be available? So far, all I have found is the LBA stuff.