My first contribution

[Edglex]

Well, it took me forever to build it just because I couldn't get a toolchain set up properly... tried compiling on the pandora etc, battling with autotools, eventually ended up using sebt3's toolchain and a bit of makefile editing.


Can't really take a lot of credit because someone else did the GLES conversion.


The controls don't work too well yet... I'm currently trying to package it into a pnd and hopefully sort the controls out too... may require some work to get that properly sorted out... there should be _something_ for people to play with in a few hours from now.


Sorry for the crappy image quality, I only had my milestone (phone) camera... it's actually a lot prettier than it looks! And also for not keeping the camera aimed at the screen all the time, it's more difficult than you'd think!


Anyway... watch and enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/embed/HirCgSGM-xw?feature=oembed

 

[TrashyMG]

I'm excited for this!

 

[Blue Protoman]

Looks promising, will check out!

 

[sebt3]

The controls don't work too well yet...

Here are the key code for the game buttons.


And as the cursor is hidden, you'll probably get desynchro between the screen and the nub, here is a simple fix.

I'm currently trying to package it into a pnd and hopefully sort the controls out too...

Using my toolchain, it should goes this way :


setprj homeworld


pndconfigure


make all install # to go into /mnt/utmp/homeworld


genpxml


# edit a bit /mnt/utmp/homeworld/PXML.xml


pndmakeauto


EDIT: and congrats on this too

 

[Edglex]

The controls don't work too well yet...

Here are the key code for the game buttons.


And as the cursor is hidden, you'll probably get desynchro between the screen and the nub, here is a simple fix.

I'm currently trying to package it into a pnd and hopefully sort the controls out too...

Using my toolchain, it should goes this way :


setprj homeworld


pndconfigure


make all install # to go into /mnt/utmp/homeworld


genpxml


# edit a bit /mnt/utmp/homeworld/PXML.xml


pndmakeauto


EDIT: and congrats on this too

Thanks! And thanks for a great toolchain!


I'm struggling a little...


The cursor fix doesn't work for this. I think the problem is that the game uses SDL_ShowCursor in several different places so it isn't possible to do a fix in just one place. It is showing and hiding the cursor a lot. I don't know the mechanics of how the nubs and digitizer stay synchronised, but it occurs to me there might be another way around this than forcing the game to always 'show' a cursor? (Maybe that is the easiest way though)


And keys... all that is really needed is to map the mouse buttons to something more useful (ideally shoulder buttons), as it's unplayable as it is, especially as some movements require you to press both left and right click at the same time (emulate 3 buttons basically) while moving the mouse (nub). However, following this guide http://pandorawiki.org/Keyboard_remapping doesn't work. Presumably SDL is reading the keyboard at a lower level somewhere, and doesn't pick up this mapping, I'm not sure.


So I tried some hackery with the source code, in a couple of different ways, to get the o and p keys interpreted as left and right click respectively... this works, but I'm obviously missing something because it causes the game to stutter when moving the camera, and makes menus unresponsive.


I'm not really concerned about packing into a PND at the moment, I want to sort controls out first. Having said that, if I can't sort it out tomorrow I will package it up as it is anyway for testing while I keep stabbing at the problem. Time to sleep now though!


One other thing that might be of interest... it works perfectly at 800x480 (the video was at 640x480). It even seems happy with all the graphics settings turned up full.

 

[gotwake424]

This looks awesome can't wait to give it a spin


Here's some gameplay for those that had to look it up (myself included)

https://www.youtube.com/embed/EgUP3cQMvtg?feature=oembed

 

[ChaosWarmech]

^I couldn't really tell what the hell was going on in that video, but those spaceships look a lot like the ones you make in Kingdom Hearts.

 

[darfgarf]

schaweet! shame it's a bit laggy, but homeworld is a classic (though homeworld 2 is considered better, even though it's just a remake).


think i might just play through it again now XD

 

[DavidBowman]

Very nice, thank you!

 

[Edglex]

So I managed to hack it to use the left and right shoulder pads for left and right click.... it's about a million times easier to play now! I also tried it with 'o' and 'p' keys ... TBH I'm not sure which is better, because I quite liked that, but the benefit of using the shoulder pads is that you have a free thumb to press keys with.


For anyone that might want to know, left and right click are SDLK_RSHIFT and SDLK_RCTRL.


I haven't managed to fix the touchscreen yet, but TBH it's really not necessary or useful... you don't want to take your hands off the controls to play with the touchscreen anyway.

shame it's a bit laggy

I also found a tiny bug in the GLES code which has made it a lot smoother... rendering to display instead of gfxdisplay makes a huge difference! I think there might be a couple of other things that can be tweaked with this too.


I have to leave the house now, but later today I will try to (i) Take a better quality video and (ii) upload a PND

 

[Nintendo]

Good stuff, mate. Cheers.

 

[darfgarf]

I also found a tiny bug in the GLES code which has made it a lot smoother... rendering to display instead of gfxdisplay makes a huge difference! I think there might be a couple of other things that can be tweaked with this too.

every speed improvement is good, no doubt there's lots that can be done, if it was completely unplayable then there'd probably be some ugly hacks that can be done


though it's fast enough to play, just not the buttery smoothness that it is on a gaming pc

 

[TrashyMG]

I know I already commented on my excitement, but man last week we got Grim Fandango and now this.. Man it gets better and better... Thanks Edglex

 

[mcobit]

Thanks for this. Homeworld was one of my favorite games in 1999. Hope that you can get it running smooth!


You know how to fix the touchscreen bug?


Could be enough to just set the SDL_ShowCursor to 1. Then the mousecursor might be visible, but it will work.


Or go for the full fix:http://blogs.distant-earth.com/wp/?p=293

 

[Edglex]

Am at pub, so pnd will have to wait! Have had a try at fixing touchscreen problem, but it makes the whole program unstable. Will have another poke at it, but first I want to release the first PND. You really don't need the touchscreen anyway (I've been playing without... it's fun!)

 

[Farox]

What a big surprise !!! THANKS

 

[ibisum]

This is fantastic, and I for one cannot wait until the PND is released! NICE!!

 

[NoeleyC]

Will the actual data files required for playing the game be included or do we need to source them somewhere ourselves? Oh and do USB mice currently work on the Pandora version? (from what I remember about reading about Homeworld back in the day, as I never played nor owned it, that it was pretty much all controlled by mouse alone?)

 

[Edglex]

Houston, we have a problem.


For some reason the game seg faults 90% of the time while trying to start if I set it's config directory to any folder under /mnt/utmp/homeworld


This is a problem, because normally the config directory is on the NAND (~/.homeworld)


Anyone got any pointer as to how to fix this?

 

[Caine]

Houston, we have a problem.


For some reason the game seg faults 90% of the time while trying to start if I set it's config directory to any folder under /mnt/utmp/homeworld


This is a problem, because normally the config directory is on the NAND (~/.homeworld)


Anyone got any pointer as to how to fix this?

Point your config to a subdirectory inside the PND. Whenever a PND file is mounted, a union is created with the PND mounted as read-only filesystem below an override directory (the appdata folder of the PND). Any file inside the PND that gets modified is written to the appdata folder instead. Don't mess around with the union mountpoint directly (i.e. /mnt/utmp).