Porting DSB

[beowuuf]

Split from here -Sophia

RTC is 'dead' in that it is not being supported going forwards. It can make complex dungeons already, as Adamski proved with Tower of Champions. That's the trouble with dungeon designers, no matter the tools they are given, they will always take that as a baseline and want to push it further!

[b1llygo4t]

i recently got an openpandora and noticed someone here ported csbwin to it so i dled it and am now just as sucked in as i ever was. this game was made to be played with a stylus! i wish rtc could be ported over. i downloaded dsb, haven't really played with it yet though. i wonder if the creator would be willing to port it over (if possible) to the pandora.

I played around pretty extensively with rtc. played dm, csb and dm2 with it. started experimenting, gathering resources and putting together custom mechanics preparing to build my own dungeon. but my pc mobo blew and i never got around to mining my data out of the hard drive. some of the stuff i came up with;

did away with mirror selected champions, instead there would be friendly monster representations of all the champions. you click the monster to open dialog with them and they ask you what you want and give you 3 options; join, conversation, or nevermind. selecting join will add that champion to your party and destroy the monster. all characters have a dismiss attack. selecting this would remove the character from the party and spawn the monster representation. if a champion died the bones would hit triggers that would remove that character. in effect when a champion dies there is no way to revive them and you have to go get a new guy to replace him. if the bones sat around for too long they would turn into a zombie that would pick up the items laying around (his own gear!) and attack the party. if the friendly monster representation dies they don't respawn either and can be killed by other monsters in the area, so you have to be careful where you leave champions wandering about.

completely did away with the standard spell selector, i played around with spell books that you could add spells to by combining a spell scroll with it. you could find spell books and either use that book or split it into individual spell scrolls to be added to other books or sold for cash. a priest icon would work in a similar way. i also played around with giving certain champions built in magic under an empty handed <<more>> command. spells would be added by progressing through the game or by completing certain objectives.

i did alot of playing around with items. alot of items could break, so you had to do weapon repairs, buy new arrows, ect. most higher end weapons and armor could be augmented with jewels you would find as treasure that would add effects. a simple example would be combining a fire jewel with a mail aketon to in effect create a flamebain. a fire jewel would add a fireball option and a stat boost to a weapon, which would revert back when all the charges depleted. some items could take more than one jewel. i had more variations like flame arrows, holy water you could drink or throw, dart box (quiver clone).

i just realized how much i typed and that i derailed the thread haha

i guess i should start learning how to edit with csbwin.

[Sophia]

RTC is 'dead' in that it is not being supported going forwards. It can make complex dungeons already, as Adamski proved with Tower of Champions. That's the trouble with dungeon designers, no matter the tools they are given, they will always take that as a baseline and want to push it further!

RTC's current level of capability is more than enough to make many interesting dungeons. The problem is that there are a few fairly significant bugs that will most likely never be fixed. (If you're interested, you can ask Gambit for the details on those, as I'm not really up on the specifics)

I'd recommend everyone considering creating a new dungeon use DSB.
I admit that seems like shameless self-promotion, but it's really just that if you find a bug in DSB, it's almost certain to get fixed, but if you find a bug in RTC, it's not going to be fixed. Depending on the severity of the bug and how badly it intersects what you were hoping to do, it could derail your whole project, which isn't fun for anyone.

[b1llygo4t]

Sophia your the author of DSB? how to you feel about porting it to arm linux?

[Paul Stevens]

I'd like to insert a word of encouragement.
I have nothing to do with DSB. But....

CSBWin was not written in any way to
be portable. Although written in C++,
much of it was very much like
assembly language.

CSBwin was ported rather easily to
X86 Linux. And it was ported rather
easily to Windows CE on ARM PocketPC.
It was also ported rather easily to Linux
ARM on OpenPadora.

Therefore, I suspect that porting DSB
to an ARM Linux should be relatively easy
if the LUA binaries are available. I do not
see them listed on the LUA site however.

I do see that Lua is available for Android
devices. That would be a nice platform
for DSB.

Hi there, Sophia!!!! What happened to
DSB Conflux? Can we make that work on
Android devices? Wow!

[b1llygo4t]

i personally don't know much about programming. from what i understand compiling between android and pandora is pretty strait forward.i found this thread which has information about Lua being included in the firmware. http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php ... n-pandora/ . there are a few high profile coders and porters that could be solicited for help.

pandora is totally a diy retro gaming thing, the community has coding challenges all the time and we need games (dsb would blow most of what i have seen out of the water btw). this would benefit both communities by giving us more software to play with and more people with dungeon building tools in their hands. they did a really good job setting up a repo and "shop" for software and all the licensing standards are used. things can be commercial, free, open or closed source. all the programs get a decent amount of facetime, everyone pretty much knows what is available.

please consider it =] new age retro gaming on a new age retro console with two communities full of retro gaming fans. makes sense to me!

p.s. paul, my girlfriend hates that i lay in bed all night playing csb. last night i fell down a pit and she woke up freaked out from the scream. thank you.

[Sophia]

Sophia your the author of DSB? how to you feel about porting it to arm linux?

Yes, I wrote DSB.
I don't own a compatible device, unfortunately, so there is very little I can do.

Hi there, Sophia!!!! What happened to DSB Conflux? Can we make that work on Android devices? Wow!

To be honest, I sort of dropped the ball on that one.
At some point, I decided it would be better to get DSB loading a ported DM before I got it loading a ported Conflux, but I never wrote the code needed to do that.

Sorry.

[Paul Stevens]

I don't own a compatible device, unfortunately, so there is very little I can do.

A Raspberry Pi costs but $35. Has enough ooomph to
do C++ compilations/link. Has HDMI inteface...can
show 1080 videos. No VGA....just RCA and HDMI.... But
it has ethernet and USB and SDHC. If you would promise to
give it a shot.....I'd buy one for you.

[Sophia]

That is very nice of you!
But I'd rather not commit to that right now.

Thank you, though.

[Paul Stevens]

Darn.

[Bit]

When I write that the components of MSVC that allow programming for mobiles provide a virtual phone to test with she gonna kills me. She doesn't really like those four letters...

/me puts on helmet and runs...

Hint: Don't talk to her about porting right now - Gambit found things that really will keep her busy at the moment, because there are problems with the library.

[b1llygo4t]

thats unfortunate. in the future if you decide port it over there are plenty of experienced and trustworthy porters and coders in the pandora community, im sure we could find someone that would be happy to do the porting work. it seems really straight forward, alot of software was compiled before we even had the hardware.

i will give it some time and ask you again later. i visit alot even if i don't post. thanks for the consideration.

[Bit]

I can't speak for Sophia, just wanted you to know that she's maybe a bit nervous at the moment.
Usually she fights even harder problems pretty quick, so bump the thread when she's again.