Stppc2x V1.0

[ledow]

Ledow has released version 1.0 of STPPC2x!

(Hopefully) The definitive version of my efforts to port Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection to the GP2X. This is now a set of 31 addictive logic and puzzle games (1 new to this release - Mosco). Some are old favourites (like sudoku, sliding puzzles and minesweeper) and others you may not have seen before. An awful lot has changed in this release, so make sure you read this whole thing!

You can download STPPC2x immediately from the main website or from the GP2X archive.

PLEASE NOTE: This release is a bit of a leap in how the collection operates. It is recommended that you create a new folder for this version - the directory structure has changed significantly. INI's and SAV's from previous versions are, of course, still compatible but may need a little renaming (same_game.ini to samegame.ini or rect0.sav to rectangles0.sav, etc.)

So, what's new?

- Mines now works 100%.

- New game - Mosco - written by myself, based on a puzzle I found in an old book I found lying around. There isn't a "proper" solver yet (by Simon Tatham's definition), but it will give a valid answer and determine when you have won.

- Perfect display of all games (no more mismatching lines etc.)

- Save / Load / Delete Savegame with multiple saveslots for each game.

- "Autosave" option to save whenever you come out of a game (so it gives the appearance of persistence - come out of one game, or quit the collection, and when you come back it's exactly how you left it). Off by default to prevent unnecessary writing to your SD card (hold L or R when starting a game to ignore any autosave).

- Game presets are now fully working - you can play the "difficulty levels" of games that have them, as well as create your own defaults for each individual game. (Hold L or R when starting a game from the main menu to skip your defaults, or hold L + R on the main menu to delete the config file for that game entirely).

- Music by Mr Lou is available in a (optional and seperate) "music pack" from http://www.ledow.org.uk/gp2x/ (Turned off by default - check the tracks you want to play in the Music Tracks menu and it will loop through them. Press to the left of a track name to sample it. Make sure Play Music is on and save the config on the relevant pages to get music all the time). Many thanks to Mr Lou for allowing me to use the track.

- Integrated game menu.

- Map now has an option to show "unmoveable" colours.

- New SVN version of Loopy which is much more complex and configurable. Old savegames may not be compatible (not my fault!).

- Fixed display of Solo to show up better on the GP2X.

- Screenshot feature on stick-click.

- Cursor key emulation mode (so that the D-pad/joystick) to let you play games like Sokoban easily - joystick will act like a joystick when this is turned on (indicated by a keyboard icon in the menu). Net, Light-up, Maze3D and Sokoban also support this option.

- Fix to Blackbox to allow the player to set minimum and maximum number of balls on the GP2X.

- Use the Y button in more games to support additional functions (hints, clearing digits etc.)

- A million and one other features and fixes.

Feedback is appreciated (especially from F-200 and USB mouse users) and full source code is available from:

http://www.ledow.org.uk/gp2x/

Note that this is an unofficial port - so please don't bother Simon Tatham with any problems, although he is aware of the project's existence.

 

[Mr 2X]

Great Work B)

I hope there'll be a Wiz port

 

[MK2k]

Nice release Ledow! I just wanted to let you know that the Music Pack link on your website is broken.

 

[gruso]

This is my first foray into STPPC2X, even though I've seen it around. It's a great package, clearly a lot of effort has gone into both the original version and the port. Excellent work and thanks for sharing.

It does need a Gmenu icon though Here's the one I'm using:

 

[ledow]

It does need a Gmenu icon though Here's the one I'm using:

If someone would like to tell me the technical requirements for a GMenu icon, I'll rustle one up. I assume it's just a PNG but what size, colour depth, etc?

Nice release Ledow! I just wanted to let you know that the Music Pack link on your website is broken.

Thanks. The upload broke mid-way (it's about 40Mb). I'm trying it again now. If you download in the meantime and get a "broken" or incomplete ZIP file, don't be surprised - it takes ages to upload.

Great Work B)

I hope there'll be a Wiz port

Well, from everything I've read, it would just be a matter of recompiling for the Wiz - assuming all the buttons stay the same, the screen size is identical etc... STPPC2x doesn't do any "tricks" - there's no ASM, no hardware hard-coding, etc - it's all plain SDL and some generic libraries. The only thing it does is it tries to open the first joystick and check it has the right number of buttons. It'll carry on regardless but if it doesn't find 16 (?), it prints a "This is not a GP2X" message and sets a variable so that the program knows. I don't think anything actually *acts* on that information any more.

If it is that simple I'd rustle up a Wiz port or, if I'm not around, the source code would just need recompiling and maybe a tiny tweak or two. A Pandora port is another matter and will probably never happen because 1) too many things have changed and all the button assignments, screen sizes, etc. would probably be very different and 2) people would probably just use the original games under X-Windows.

 

[gruso]

As long as it's a .png named the same as the .gpe, it'll work. The correct size is 32x32. I've never worried about colour depth or any other factors, they've always just worked.

 

[ledow]

As long as it's a .png named the same as the .gpe, it'll work. The correct size is 32x32. I've never worried about colour depth or any other factors, they've always just worked.

Yeah, it's a bit rubbish, but this is the one I used in previous releases. Don't know how I managed to miss it out this time:



If you have an F-100, you can press stick-click at any time to get a full screen screenshot saved into the screenshots folder of the game, or you can press L and stick-click to get a "puzzle area" screenshot (i.e. the size of the puzzle, not the size of the screen). Then you can just resize/convert in your favourite application. If anyone has any good ones, post them here and I'll upload them to my website too.

 

[juanvvc]

I know that you didn't like it, Ledow, but someone may find it interesting. This was my icon for the game collection:

EDIT: D'oh! I've a strong headache, so I published the image in my machine and five minutes later I forgot and switched off the server. You have to wait until tomorrow

As I always said, thanks for your work on these wonderful games. I'll upgrade my version as soon as I get home.

Thanks!

 

[Tag5]

Can't wait to try this! I had installed it last night and fired it up then my batteries died. Hope it is equally good if not better than the initial STPPC2X 30MB versions.

 

[ledow]

Can't wait to try this! I had installed it last night and fired it up then my batteries died. Hope it is equally good if not better than the initial STPPC2X 30MB versions.

For those missing the nostalgia of those days, there is a 40Mb music pack that can be added to bump up the disk space somewhat.

It helped immensely when I was testing, though, to be able to have a static executable of just the program I was working on (and the compile times on my PC were so much better, even if the transfer times to the GP2X weren't!). When I started, I worked on one game at a time, getting the features that each game used working one at a time and then moving on to the next game. It was only when the menu started being included (thanks to juanvvc) that I was able to look at the corner cases and unused bits in order to complete the collection and join it into one massive (2Mb) program. What's more astounding to me is the low memory usage - I've measured usage at around 5Mb for a typical session.

I hope everybody enjoys it - I certainly have enjoyed making it and now that the main infrastructure is complete (and I can use any unfinished/new/updated games directly with a high level of confidence that they will just compile and work in the collection), I'm trying to add in extra games of my own creation ("mosco" is hopefully only the first of these). It was weird working "the other way" and putting a game in that calls all the functions I've spent months getting just right but it took only a matter of two or three hours of coding to get Mosco working from seeing the idea in a book to getting it working as a complete puzzle in the collection (although I spotted a bug in it on the train into work this morning!). Although "mosco" would probably pass into the main collection if I sort it's solver out properly, I'm not intending to limit myself to Simon Tatham's strict definition of what he'll allow into his collection - he wants puzzles to be mathematically perfect, require no guesswork, have complete solvers and random generators etc. and although I can see that, I'm quite happy to include much more basic and common games into STPPC2x. I'm looking at some 2D maze games at the moment and I have a couple of logic puzzles that might convert well.

 

[Tag5]

Can't wait to try this! I had installed it last night and fired it up then my batteries died. Hope it is equally good if not better than the initial STPPC2X 30MB versions.

For those missing the nostalgia of those days, there is a 40Mb music pack that can be added to bump up the disk space somewhat. Finally got my batteries charged (No pun intended) and wow! What an awesome multi-game program!

A must have for all F200 owners!!!!!

I think I'm going blind but I cannot find the Music Pack on Ledow's website. Any pointers..... :unsure:

 

[ledow]

A must have for all F200 owners!!!!!

I think I'm going blind but I cannot find the Music Pack on Ledow's website. Any pointers..... :unsure:



On the main page, click "version 1.0" for STPPC2x. This takes you to http://www.ledow.org.uk/gp2x/v1.0/ which has a link to http://www.ledow.org.uk/gp2x/v1.0/stppc2x-...-music-pack.zip along with the rest of the program and its source code.

Admittedly, it's not on the front page. I am glad you enjoyed the games, though. I've been told the dragging on games like untangle is a little suboptimal on F-200's by some of my beta-testers. I tried to fix this by linking against different versions of the SDL libraries but they either did nothing or introduced even more problems. Think of this as a "compatibility compromise" release.

 

[Tag5]

On the main page, click "version 1.0" for STPPC2x. This takes you to http://www.ledow.org.uk/gp2x/v1.0/ which has a link to http://www.ledow.org.uk/gp2x/v1.0/stppc2x-...-music-pack.zip along with the rest of the program and its source code.
Yay! Got the Music Pack now, I did say I was blind! B) Has anyone seen my white cane anywhere?