Release Word War vi


Cool! Thanks mcobit for making the video. Would it be alright if I posted this on wordwarvi.sf.net, and on my blog?


Also, how was the porting? What sorts of changes did you have to make? Were you able to get the Pandora's directional control pads (whatever they're called) to work with the joystick code, or, does it just work with the keyboard (I guess the pandora has a usb port, so I guess you can plug an xbox 360 controller in, but that kind of defeats the portability of the machine.)


Anyway, if you want to send me your changes when you feel they're ready, I will try to integrate them into the code on sourceforge. What is the development environment like for pandora? I guess it's just setting up a cross compiler, eh?


Now I *have* to get a Pandora. :)


Torpor: Well, porting word war vi is an excellent start, 'cause now I have to get a pandora, and I probably can't resist trying to program something for it if I have it in my hot little hands, though, games take a long time, and I can't consider myself to really be a game programmer, that's more of a hobby for me, and right now I have a lot of other projects chewing up my free time.


But, I do have one other game which (now that word war vi is already ported) should be a snap to port. It's well, more of a novelty than an actual game, and it is not of the calibre of Word War vi. Also, it really needs "analog" joystick support, as, though it's playable with keyboard, it's just not the same.


It's an audio-only game in which you play the Wumpus, a blind, cave dwelling creature who located his prey, Wumpus hunters, by sound alone and then eats them: It's here: http://bethewumpus.sf.net


-- steve
 
Great! Get this man a Pandora! :) You could buy one of the "Premium" pandoras, or try your luck on E-Bay if you need it quickly ..


Just for your info about the development situation, you can build with the built-in compiler on the Pandora itself - it works just like any other decent Linux workstation in that regard. Although, some people prefer the cross-compiler, I have a Pandora dedicated to providing a build environment for my projects, using another Pandora for user-environment testing. This works extremely well and is quite handy - nothing like having a full-blown C/C++ development workstation in your gaming handheld!


Since I look forward to contributing to the wordwarVI-on-Pandora project, I would hope you'll get the changes from mcobit to merge into your main tree, and I also hope that we get nub support soon - right now only the D-Pad is working, but it shouldn't be terribly difficult to add nub support (they operate in mouse or joystick mode) and imho it would make the game a lot easier to play if the nubs were supported, since they're analog and can provide graduated control over the ship, instead of just 'go forward / stop' as is the case with the digital d-pad.


The nubs, as I said, can provide either mouse events or normal joystick events - this is configurable by the app - so it would seem like its the perfect environment for you to bethewumpus on! Having killed a few wumpus in my time, I am really very eager about what you will bring to the table once you get your hands on a lovely Pandora, indeed! :)


Also, I've been thinking a lot (over the weekend) about wordwarvi and building new levels with it/extending it as a general 2D scrolling/shooter game engine .. it'd be really nice to have a bit of a hack on that, in general, but as usual I have too much going on as it is. Something to think about.


Also, if you want to see some 3D game code for the Pandora that works well, check out my port of wakebreaker - its not, in itself, a fantastic game, but all the pieces of the puzzle are there and it could well be that someone like yourself might be able to extend the platform thats already there in wakebreaker into something bigger/better .. a 3D version of wordwarvi, perhaps? Have a look if you're curious: http://w1xer.at/pandora


:wq
 
I am compiling with sebt3's toolchain There were not many changes necessary to get it to compile for Pandora. I had to compile the portaudiolibs and do some changes to the Makefile. Also I had to alter the buttonmapping to fit Pandora's layout. The rest are commandlinearguments passed at startup. Have a look into the pnd to see, what is done there.


As topor said, the nubs aren't working right now, but it wouldn't be a lot of work to get them to.


Topor: As I don't want to maintain all my pnds, maybe you can take the sources and be the new maintainer of Word War Vi, until smcameron has his Pandora. i don't have the time right now, that this game deserves and you two seem to have good ideas to optimize it.


My workingdirectory is located here: http://maheld.heckel-web.pharmchem.uni-frankfurt.de/wordwarvi-pandora.tar.gz


smcameron. Of course you can put that video whereever you like ;)
 
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mcobit: great, thanks! I'll have a look at those sources this evening when I get some Pandora hacking time, and see what it would take to add a clean patch to the mainline wordwarVI sources asap.
 
Allright, I can also give you updaterights for Word War vi on Milkshake's repo, so you can update the pnd if you have further changes.


Cheers!


Edit: done.
 
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torpor said:
Great! Get this man a Pandora! :) You could buy one of the "Premium" pandoras, or try your luck on E-Bay if you need it quickly ..


Just for your info about the development situation, you can build with the built-in compiler on the Pandora itself - it works just like any other decent Linux workstation in that regard. Although, some people prefer the cross-compiler, I have a Pandora dedicated to providing a build environment for my projects, using another Pandora for user-environment testing. This works extremely well and is quite handy - nothing like having a full-blown C/C++ development workstation in your gaming handheld!


Since I look forward to contributing to the wordwarVI-on-Pandora project, I would hope you'll get the changes from mcobit to merge into your main tree, and I also hope that we get nub support soon - right now only the D-Pad is working, but it shouldn't be terribly difficult to add nub support (they operate in mouse or joystick mode) and imho it would make the game a lot easier to play if the nubs were supported, since they're analog and can provide graduated control over the ship, instead of just 'go forward / stop' as is the case with the digital d-pad.


The nubs, as I said, can provide either mouse events or normal joystick events - this is configurable by the app - so it would seem like its the perfect environment for you to bethewumpus on! Having killed a few wumpus in my time, I am really very eager about what you will bring to the table once you get your hands on a lovely Pandora, indeed! :)


Also, I've been thinking a lot (over the weekend) about wordwarvi and building new levels with it/extending it as a general 2D scrolling/shooter game engine .. it'd be really nice to have a bit of a hack on that, in general, but as usual I have too much going on as it is. Something to think about.


Also, if you want to see some 3D game code for the Pandora that works well, check out my port of wakebreaker - its not, in itself, a fantastic game, but all the pieces of the puzzle are there and it could well be that someone like yourself might be able to extend the platform thats already there in wakebreaker into something bigger/better .. a 3D version of wordwarvi, perhaps? Have a look if you're curious: http://w1xer.at/pandora


:wq
Click to expand...

It occurs to me that the nub may already work with Word War vi, if the nub behaves like a "normal" linux joystick.


There is a --joystick option to wordwar vi (see man page: http://wordwarvi.sourceforge.net/manpage.txt )


and also see the section in the man page on the ~/.wordwarvi/exrc file, esp. the section about remapping keys and joystick buttons/axes.



Code: 
...

       set joystick=dev

              Use joystick input device dev.

...


       map button n action

              maps joystick button n (where 0 <= n  <=  9)  to  the  specified

              action.  Actions are the same as describe above, with the excep-

              tion of left, right, up and down, which are not yet  implemented

              due to laziness on my part.  In any case, if your joystick has a

              button pad you want to use to control the  motion  of  the  ship

              (left/right/up/down),  most  likely  it  also  has  some sort of

              switch to make this pad active instead of one of the sets of x/y

              joystick  axes.  (e.g.  my  Logitech  Dual Action Rumble is like

              that.)  If that's the case, then you  don't  need  this  feature

              anyway,  as  the joystick will map those button presses onto the

              appropriate axes for you.


       set joystick-[xy]-axis=n.  Allows specifying different axes for

              control of the  players  ship  for  multi  axis  joysticks.   By

              default, the first x and first y axes are used (n = 0 for x, n=1

              for y) A value of -1 disables control of an axis.   See  example

              .exrc  file  below  to  find  out why you might want to do that.

              There are  pictures  at  http://wordwarvi.sourceforge.net  which

              show how the axis numbers and button numbers map to the physical

              controls for the Microsoft XBox 360 controller and the  Logitech

              Dual Action Rumble controller
 
I just want to confirm that I was able to build wordwarvi entirely *on* my Pandora using mcobits sources! ;) Thats very nice, hassle-free .. Compiling onboard rocks! :) Hooray for the death of the cross-compiler!


Joystick mode works!! smcameron, the nubs work as joysticks once you set them in 'joystick' mode using the Pandora settings and boot up wordwarvi with the -joystick option .. they can also be configured to function as 'mice', but the joystick setting would make the most sense.


I had to fiddle around, however - using the Pandora nub configurator, I set both left and right nubs in joystick mode, but was only able to use the left nub (for some reason) as a joystick in wordwarvi when I added "--joystick=/dev/input/js1" to the cmd line .. this is counter-intuitive, because I thought the left nub is js0 and the right is js1, but its weird .. and I can't seem to get right-nub working, either. Ah well.. maybe just something weird with my setup.


However! I've just played wordwarvi for the last 15 minutes using the left nub as a joystick, and this is a very pleasurable game to play with the nub! I got further than ever before .. and actually massacred quite a few more Emacs processes, VIctoriously!


I will look into the nub/joystick mapping problem on my 'factory Pandora' and see if its a quick fix, and then I would just suggest that we set this mode as default (with some way to go back to the d-pad if needed) as it is a far nicer way, to play the game with the nubs!
 
torpor said:
I just want to confirm that I was able to build wordwarvi entirely *on* my Pandora using mcobits sources! ;) Thats very nice, hassle-free .. Compiling onboard rocks! :) Hooray for the death of the cross-compiler!


Joystick mode works!! smcameron, the nubs work as joysticks once you set them in 'joystick' mode using the Pandora settings and boot up wordwarvi with the -joystick option .. they can also be configured to function as 'mice', but the joystick setting would make the most sense.


I had to fiddle around, however - using the Pandora nub configurator, I set both left and right nubs in joystick mode, but was only able to use the left nub (for some reason) as a joystick in wordwarvi when I added "--joystick=/dev/input/js1" to the cmd line .. this is counter-intuitive, because I thought the left nub is js0 and the right is js1, but its weird .. and I can't seem to get right-nub working, either. Ah well.. maybe just something weird with my setup.


However! I've just played wordwarvi for the last 15 minutes using the left nub as a joystick, and this is a very pleasurable game to play with the nub! I got further than ever before .. and actually massacred quite a few more Emacs processes, VIctoriously!


I will look into the nub/joystick mapping problem on my 'factory Pandora' and see if its a quick fix, and then I would just suggest that we set this mode as default (with some way to go back to the d-pad if needed) as it is a far nicer way, to play the game with the nubs!
Click to expand...

Cool. Note that whatever the Pandora's configuration is for the joysticks, you should be able to adapt word war vi to it via the ~/.wordwarvi/.exrc file. You can set the joystick device, and map the buttons and axes however you want that way. (Probably you already knew that.)


Also mcobit sent me his changes, and they look to be very minor, so integrating them into my source on sourceforge should be no problem, I'll probably do it later tonight.


BTW, I went ahead and ordered a pandora.


-- steve
 
smcameron said:
BTW, I went ahead and ordered a pandora.
Click to expand...

Good man, welcome to the wonderful world of Pandora.


Many thanks for Word War by the way, it's one of my favourite homebrew games on Pandora, really enjoyable retro feel with some modern sensibilities thrown in for good measure. Just my sort of thing.


Just a thought for torpor : It would be a great addition to be able to easily launch Word War with the different start up options, perhaps something like pickle launcher could be used for such a thing. Looking forward to trying it with nubs too.
 
Updated to 1.0 (see first post)


Seems to run a bit faster (have added some more compileflags).


Also now supports the left nub as joystick by default.


Have fun!
 
hi


left nub did not seem to work, also when i exited game my nubs frozeup? note i have nubs switched from default - right mouse movement left mouse button
 
Just updated again, please try again.


The nubmode you have set should not matter. Try to set back to defaults before trying again.


Edit: The joystick it uses is js1. If you changed nubsettings to something else not using the nubtool in settings, it could not work.
 
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hmm now nubs not responding at all on restart; they went back to normal after one restart, then tried wordwarvi again (not the recent recent update) and exited, now can't use nubs; guess need to reflash hf6a4 onto my sdcard again!


ah just checked nub configurator both nubs are set to joystick
 
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apparently joystick is not found when i have mouse movement as right nub and mousebutton as left nub.


left nub works as joystick if nubs are in default configuration though.
 
torpor said:
I had to fiddle around, however - using the Pandora nub configurator, I set both left and right nubs in joystick mode, but was only able to use the left nub (for some reason) as a joystick in wordwarvi when I added "--joystick=/dev/input/js1" to the cmd line .. this is counter-intuitive, because I thought the left nub is js0 and the right is js1, but its weird .. and I can't seem to get right-nub working, either. Ah well.. maybe just something weird with my setup.
Click to expand...
It isn't like that. js0 is always bound to some unknown device. The first nub to be switched to joystick mode becomes /dev/input/js1 and the second one becomes /dev/input/js2. If external joysticks are connected this becomes even more unpredictable.


I added an option to override the default joystick mode in my latest nub configuration tool which points /dev/input/js0 to one of the other joystick devices (specifically to fix games like this one). I'm still looking for a cleaner way to detect which nub is assigned to which joystick character device (I should probably look into udev) as I'm currently using a VERY ugly hack (I disable the joystick and detect which device disappears :p ).


[edit]Whoops, overlooked the quote date. Still valid though.[/edit]
 
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I used the same method to set the nubmode in the startupscript as mupen does. So you could have problems there too.


It sets nub1 (left) to joystickmode and uses this as /dev/js1. So this might be the problem, that js1 is assigned to your right nub by default and the left one has another number. But when you set it to standart configuration it should work.
 
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