Port Wish... Awesome Game With Source...

[___]

Okay, I am quite excited that there is the source to a game that I have been playing for ages. Now, if you haven`t played that game before, there is no chance that you can understand my excitement. Clonk is a very unique shareware game made by a German software company. The gameplay is amazingly simple but at the same time you can do a lot with the engines of the clonk games. It`s a 2D Jump and run but also a strategy game, simulation, rpg, action game and so much more. You are in control of little characters called clonks in a dynamic particle world. Your clonk can make use of it`s environment in different ways. You can dig tunnels into the ground and build complex mine systems to mine minerals like gold or ore which are contained in the ground. You can swim and dive in the water which is also filling up as you play through rain. You can build pahouses and buildings to make your production lines easier or to assist you in doing certain chores. There is hazards in the world that you play in like wild animals that you can hunt but also get eaten by, snow, rain, thunderstorms, volcanos, earthquakes, meteor showers... Your clonk is not the only one you will ever have. Your profile gets assigned to a certain team of clonks that will always be controlled by you and that can level up to learn new skills (like climbing on walls and ceilings) or improve other skills. Please take a look at the game even if you don`t think a port is possible. The newest clonk version called "clonk endeavor" has OpenGL and Direct3d support for surface effects, and there is a complex scripting engine integrated. Clonk planet which is the version before clonk endeavor already has a really elaborated scripting engine but no 3d crap, it`s now freeware but a full scaled game, but still requires directx so a port is probably impossible. Now Clonk 3 is also freeware, has the source opened and is made to run in DOS mode. I think it might be possible to port this.

Clonk Website

EDIT: The source codes can be found in the development section of the page.


YES! I have found somebody who has apparently ported the Clonk planet engine to linux. The game doesn`t have an interface yet but is apparently pretty much fully functional. I hope there is not a lot of float point math to do. I remember playing clonk with low scale display settings (320x400, 8bit) with a computer that had 180 mhz only. check this out: Clonk for linux
The guy who made this, used SDL and apparently isn`t working on the port anymore. I gues he will gladly give out the source code to this if it`s not already somewhere on his page.

 

[Daid]

Clock 4 (as ported by that guy to linux) is probly a bit heavy for the GP2x (I could grind my P1.2Ghz to a halt with it)

Clock 3 runs in dosbox with 6000 cycles, so I think that would run pretty well. The ingame controll screme would be easy to manipulate to GP2x controlls. I'll have a look at that source.

 

[___]

Sweet! I, too thought that the controls might be easy to assign to gp2x keys, since the whole game is controllable with only 8 keys. 2 action keys, 4 directional keys and 3 keys to change team members. It`s too bad that the gp2x won`t be able to handle clonk planet... oh well.

 

[Daid]

Sweet! I, too thought that the controls might be easy to assign to gp2x keys, since the whole game is controllable with only 8 keys. 2 action keys, 4 directional keys and 3 keys to change team members. It`s too bad that the gp2x won`t be able to handle clonk planet... oh well.

And 1 menu key. In Clonk3 it's vital, because you can buy new stuff with that key. (clonk planet has a few more keys that are rarely used)

I'm not sure that the gp2x won't be able to handle clonk planet, but Clonk 3 is alot friendlier on resources I think.


Did some messing around with the source of Clonk 3. I think it's portable, but would need quite some work as they directly acces hardware (as you did in the dos days) any VGA specialists out there?
Anyhow, the VGA stuff looks not that hard to convert to SDL (or direct framebuffer) not sure about the input yet, and haven't looked at the sound at all.

Currently updating parts so they work in gcc, and fixing up headers.

 

[___]

You know, I think if you believe that clonk planet might be doable, it would be a better shot than clonk 3 because of several reasons:
1. It has already been done for linux with SDL but is probably not optimized
2. It has support for scripting which makes the game expandable to infinity (there is soooo many mods out there)
3. Clonk 3 was mainly made for multiplayer (splitscreen action!) and only has limited possibilites for single player mode while clonk planet has so many mods and scenarios out there, the single player fun never stops.

If you think that it will not be feasable, I guess we could be glad to have clonk 3 if anything. But still it would be important to consider these things before porting a game to sdl and linux, when there is a newer source with sdl and linux support.

BTW: Thanks a lot for looking into it. I was afraid at first that noone would even consider taking a look at this.

 

[Draco]

I love Clonk... that is all.

 

[___]

Seriously, seeing this ported would make my day. Infact, I believe I would ditch most of the other games just for playing clonk on a handheld. The gp2x could profit greatly from this game since it provides longtime entertainment without any constraints such as complicated storylines or high difficulty. You can just sit there and play clonk to relax and kill time or you can have all the action that fits into a game and play fast paced and challenging levels that will make you bite your lip. I think clonk is one of the greatest 2d games ever made.

 

[___]

*bump*

 

[Daid]

You want a progress update you mean?

Well gota disappoint you, Clock3 was harder then expected. Uses some crazy dos day tricks that are hard to come around. Maybe clock planet, I'll have a look at that.

 

[___]

Sweet. Thanks again for looking into it at all. Well, if it doesn`t work out, I will still have to play it on my computer but that`s allright. I am pretty much satisfied with all the stuff the gp2x can do already ;-)

 

[Daid]

Sweet. Thanks again for looking into it at all. Well, if it doesn`t work out, I will still have to play it on my computer but that`s allright. I am pretty much satisfied with all the stuff the gp2x can do already ;-)

I've been addicted to clonk a few months
(There is NO satisfaction like flooding the other players mine with water in multiplayer, well, exept for blowing the granite from under his base while he unloads a few tera flints from it)

 

[Daid]

RedWolf Design Clonk Planet Engine
Version: 4.65
Scenario: Worlds.c4f/Desert.c4s
Loading graphics...
Loading object definitions:
Objects.c4d...
   269 definitions loaded.
Desert.c4s...
   0 definitions loaded.
Texture table holds 40 entries.
16 textures loaded.
21 materials loaded.
Creating landscape...
Placing environment objects...
Player join: Daid.c4p
Game started.

That shows up in the log right now. At least something.

But nothing shows up yet, and there is no frontend, this is just the engine. And if I try to load a random generated map it crashes somewhere. But atleast it's something.

EDIT: Mother of all bugs! I get segfailts. Even while I have some sort of GFX working. The GP2x compile always segfailts, while windows (mingw) is less picky about memory corruption and runs and only segfailts when you quit. Got GFX, but no ground to dig in (map is empty for some reason). I'm guessing the segfailt is related.

 

[Daid]

I'll just say... Click:
http://daid.mine.nu/pub/Clonk2X.rar

 

[PeterW]

Hey everybody. I'm one of the developers of Clonk, we're pretty interested in all sorts of ports. We have already ported the current version (Clonk Endeavour) to Linux, so in case someone is interested in porting this, shoot an E-Mail to PeterW [at] clonk.de.

Well, in case it's doable, of course. Our version so far uses OpenGL and supports the full (16 or 32 bit) color space for everything from object graphics to landscape. No idea wether the GP2X can still perform under that load

 

[Yono]

Hey everybody. I'm one of the developers of Clonk, we're pretty interested in all sorts of ports. We have already ported the current version (Clonk Endeavour) to Linux, so in case someone is interested in porting this, shoot an E-Mail to PeterW [at] clonk.de.

Well, in case it's doable, of course. Our version so far uses OpenGL and supports the full (16 or 32 bit) color space for everything from object graphics to landscape. No idea wether the GP2X can still perform under that load

Hi Peter,

The GP2X does not support OpenGL at this time, so the port does not seem possible right now. However quite a bit of progress has been made on clonk planet here. The source is available if you would like to check it out.

-Yono

 

[DaveN]

I don't think the gp2x can handle this. Even if it would be done wihtout opengl, it would be too much I think.. If you're just trying to do a fast port, if it would get optimized A LOT it could work.

I'd rather suggest a mac port of clonk endeavour, since I first read about Clonk Planet, I've been checking the page about a mac version.. Virtual PC is too expensive and the Mac port of wine has got it's problems as well.

 

[Daid]

Hey everybody. I'm one of the developers of Clonk, we're pretty interested in all sorts of ports. We have already ported the current version (Clonk Endeavour) to Linux, so in case someone is interested in porting this, shoot an E-Mail to PeterW [at] clonk.de.

Well, in case it's doable, of course. Our version so far uses OpenGL and supports the full (16 or 32 bit) color space for everything from object graphics to landscape. No idea wether the GP2X can still perform under that load

I'm currently porting Clonk Planet to the GP2x and not Endeavour, for the following reasons:
-Full version free downloadable
-The GP2x screen is only 320x240, by the looks of it Endeavour uses larger pictures then Planet, we want to use optimal amount of screenspace.
-No FPU unit, anything that uses doubles of floats will be very slow.
-Very limited amount of memory. Only about 25MB are normaly accessable (trough new/malloc), and Planet shoots to 30~40 with ease. So I'm already resorting to special tricks there.
-Nothing to accelerate AA drawing.

Would it be possible to use the GFX engine from planet on the rest of the engine from Endeavour? (because the new scripting engine is so much cleaner)

 

[Pickle]

I don't think the gp2x can handle this. Even if it would be done wihtout opengl, it would be too much I think.. If you're just trying to do a fast port, if it would get optimized A LOT it could work.

I'd rather suggest a mac port of clonk endeavour, since I first read about Clonk Planet, I've been checking the page about a mac version.. Virtual PC is too expensive and the Mac port of wine has got it's problems as well.

Im glad to tell you Virt pc is free now, you could even use vmware player with a little work.
Oh and FreeDOS 1.0 is out.

 

[___]

Hehe even the redwolf people seem to follow our news ;-)
Hey PeterW! Wie haste über den Port rausgefunden? Ich bin ein riesen Fan und seit Clonk Planet dabei. Ich und mein Bruder zocken Endeavor bis wir grün werden...

One thing that keeps me thinking is that there was sooooo many custon objects, scenarios and stuff for clonk planet that is not available anymore. They used to be downloadable from CCAN but now that endeavor is out, they are gone... maybe the devs could help, to get some of that data back, at least this official packs like the contest stuff and so on. Would be great for the clonk community, too. I bet a lot of folks will want to register a copy of endeavor and start clonking online, since multiplayer makes the game even more addictive.