Microprose adventure information request

md5 · Post by **md5** » Tue Apr 15, 2008 12:40 pm

I am not under the influence of any drug, that's for sure

timofonic · Post by **timofonic** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 7:39 am

md5 wrote:I am not under the influence of any drug, that's for sure

So it's just a mental disorder? Hehe.

Can you provide a few more details or just say me "two more weeks"?

Post by **sev** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 8:19 am

The Madventurer wrote:
md5 wrote:I am not under the influence of any drug, that's for sure
So it's just a mental disorder? Hehe.

Can you provide a few more details or just say me "two more weeks"?

Less than a week.

Eugene

kosuan · Post by **kosuan** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 2:11 pm

Ripley too ??? Is going to come on my Mac ???

hgnnnnngghh - this is martyring

I bet if Ripley's going to come, the prices on the bay will rise
instantly. It was the same with 'touche' .....

Longcat · Post by **Longcat** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 3:05 pm

good thing I already have a copy then:P

timofonic · Post by **timofonic** » Sun Apr 20, 2008 2:55 pm

Code: Select all

static const PlainGameDescriptor m4Games&#91;&#93; = &#123;
	&#123;"m4", "MADS/M4 engine game"&#125;,
	&#123;"riddle", "Riddle of Master Lu&#58; Believe it or Not!"&#125;,
	&#123;"burger", "Orion Burger"&#125;,
	&#123;"rex", "Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender"&#125;,
	&#123;"dragon", "DragonSphere"&#125;,
	&#123;"dragoncd", "DragonSphere CD"&#125;,
	&#123;"phantom", "Return of the Phantom"&#125;,
	&#123;"phantomcd", "Return of the Phantom CD"&#125;,
	&#123;0, 0&#125;
&#125;;

Thanks a lot!

And I see MADE, and engine used by "Return to Zork" too

[/code]

Anotherguest · Post by **Anotherguest** » Sun Apr 20, 2008 5:06 pm

Ahhh...And there I found my Return to Zork cd. Ripping (the audio tracks) and building at the same time.. I just wonder.. a) How much is implemented.. b) How well will it run on my mobile! Anyways.. Great wooork guys!

Mirko · Post by **Mirko** » Sun Apr 20, 2008 5:14 pm

Did you get the source code for the engine?

Anotherguest · Post by **Anotherguest** » Sun Apr 20, 2008 6:51 pm

I just updated my daily SVN source tree, and there it was.

Weaver1497 · Post by **Weaver1497** » Tue May 13, 2008 9:51 pm

Can someone let me in on a little info... I have never compiled or used a SVN build so I could test the games that aren't "officially" made compatible. I absolutely loved Rex Nebular, and really want to play Return of the Phantom and Dragonsphere.

Can someone tell me are the games playable with the current SVN build? Do they go in game? Also is work still being done on the m4/MADS engine, so the games will hopefully one day be "officially" compatible. Thank you guys for all the hard work!

Mirko · Post by **Mirko** » Tue May 13, 2008 10:44 pm

I don't think any Games using the M4/MADS Engine do work at all. I Tried it the first day with "Riddle of Master Lu", but it did not start and since then there were only small changes to the code in SVN (or at least only a few files got changed... I don't really know how much work was done). Perhaps "Orion Burger" would do a bit more, but I didn't try that, yet. The developers seem to concentrate on the MADE engine, that got added at the same time.

md5 · Post by **md5** » Wed May 14, 2008 6:33 am

Mirko gave a pretty much accurate description of the current situation.

All of the game logic in M4/MADS games is pretty much hardcoded in the game's executable, which makes work on them a pain.

Things are a bit easier with Orion Burger, hence it is the game we're currently focusing on. All the MADS games used a code overlay manager, called RTLink, which moved parts of the code to overlays, so that the game's executable would need less RAM. This makes work on it even harder, cause IDA doesn't read those code parts correctly. Currently, there has been work done on that part, but there are still loads of things to be done.

At the moment, it's possible to do things using debug commands. It's possible to do actions in certain rooms in Orion Burger. The engine is also able to load pretty much all of the game's resources using debug commands. But the main showstopper/problem is the game logic itself.

MADE on the other hand is the exact opposite: all of the game's logic is in its data files, and the executable is used to parse it. Hence, it's a very simple game engine, which means that results will be shown much much faster than work done on M4/MADS

Freddo · Post by **Freddo** » Sun May 25, 2008 3:22 am

Hmmm, I always belived that Bloodnet used the M4/MADS engine too, but I guess that wasn't the case.

md5 · Post by **md5** » Sun May 25, 2008 9:34 pm

No, Bloodnet was not created using the M4/MADS engine

dreammaster · Post by **dreammaster** » Mon May 26, 2008 9:39 am

This may be an oppurtune time to plug my new blog at dm-notes.blogspot.com, where I'll be discoursing on assembly language in general, and my progress disassembling the Rex Nebular executable for MADS support in particular.

As MD5 said, don't expect rapid progress on the MADS engine games.. it's not going to be as easy as the MADE engine. But at least you can keep abreast of how it's going if you're interested.