I'm portinng this baby to FB

[relsoft]

http://rel.betterwebber.com/junk.php?id=36

I don't know if SDL would be fast enough though.

[aetherfox]

Angelo's lib

[Jocke The Beast]

Cool. It will be a pleasure to play. Good luck with the "converting" (not that u need any luck to make cool stuff Eric) 8)

[Adigun A. Polack]

To Richard Eric M. Lope:

Right off the top, I must say that you have got out another very awesome shmup-based demo ( =b ), and it would be so amazing indeed to convert Frantic Journey (FJ) to FreeBasic, even if all goes well on it.

Speaking of which, on one hand, I am definitely sticking with QB on the continuing developments of FJ, since it originally got started there in 2001 and *many* custom maps by me, all designed for the Honeycomb Cave, Organic, Crystal, Hyperspeed Passageway, Desert, Volcanic Mountain, Alien Innards, Flaming Prominence, and Rain Forest stages have already been set up with the enemy placements set for some of the stages so far. But, on the other hand now, porting the entire FJ project from QB to FB would mean having to convert the old FJ Map Editor (in which PP256 sprites were used entirely) to make it all work out in FB, plus an apparent possible reworking of the entire program from scratch, too. Fortunately though, it would breathe in more of a shot at a ton of free memory for us to use in Windows out of that, as well as a possible shot at me transferring all of my original music, the timing of the digitized voices, and the sound effects and all of that FJ stuff over into FB in case this does get converted there. Not only that, it also brings open a clear shot of the game *actually* working on MS Windows XP (along with Win 9x/ME!), too!! !

And all of that brings me now to this dilemma and a question here that I ask you now, Eric: when you do get a chance to code again, will you be able to recreate the entire FJ Map Editor in FB, keeping the workings and compatibility of the original PP256 files and its many features totally intact? I just want to make sure of that and make sure of that well, because, I do not want to risk porting the whole project to FB prematurely at this point, you know what I mean?

Look, if FJ is to get ported at all to FreeBasic, I’d best wait for RelLib for FB and/or the new FB port of the famous Allegro game library to arrive so that I get warmed up and stuff, you know? In the meantime, I would best stick to doing FJ in QB for now until then, ok?

Please think it over very carefully, Eric, and I will talk to you later. By the way, very awesome demo indeed (let us not forget that! )!!



GIVING YOU SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO THINK ABOUT,


Adigun Azikiwe Polack
One of the Founders of “Aura Flow”
Continuing Developer of “Frantic Journey”
Current Developer of “Star Angelic Slugger”
Webmaster of the “AAP Official Projects Squad”

[adosorken]

AAP: Porting tools wouldn't be necessary, just port the game engine. Players don't play development tools, they play games. Bring the game itself to FB and you'll have a pretty good userbase, but you can leave your development tools in QB.

And if you need sprites which are more compatible with FB's various libraries (namely, BMP files), you've already used Advance.Put so you know how well it works.

[Adigun A. Polack]

To Adosorken:

Yo, while it is technically a really good idea of sorts for me to port the game to Windows format through FB, I think that if I were to do so while leaving the development tools in QB (which is a good thing in a way!), then transferring the Frantic Journey (FJ) gameplay program code — which will most likely require me to translate the “InitImageData” and “MakeImageIndex” commands to such a point that FB can really understand how to place the PP256 sprites up clearly — will not be as hard as I think in a number of cases.

However, the *real* problem with porting here is that since the whole project in QuickBASIC has some actual sprite scaling/rotation/lighting/translucency effects that are fresh from both Cosmo-X and RelLib for QB (from the gameplay portions and other material itself), and since I have not actually used FB very much myself ( ), it is just too great a risk for me to port it, man. Unless, the Allegro library starts kicking in for a full-tilt launch release to FB. Then we are really gonna rock with either a Windows-based port of FJ or even an ENTIRELY new FJ game/sequel in a Windows format!! ! Only time will tell the tale here, Ado.

For now, I am sticking with doing the original FJ game in QB. Period.

And yes, I know very well how your Advance.PUT works, so it would definitely help me a great if not tremendous deal in doing some new FJ-based work for either a port of the game or a new FJ game/sequel, as I may have just now told you, Ado.

Anyway, thanks a rather lot, man, and you have yourself an awesome new week!!! :king:=b




- Adigun Azikiwe Polack
One of the Founders of “Aura Flow”
Continuing Developer of “Frantic Journey”
Current Developer of “Star Angelic Slugger”
Webmaster of the “AAP Official Projects Squad”

[relsoft]

AAP: I think the MapED could stay with QB. All it does is save maps anyways. WE could me a lil loader in FB and that's it.

As for porting FJ/Rellib. I could almost smell victory if I use TinyPTC, the only problem I have with it is a multikey handler. I tried SDL keys but since PTC handles messages itself, I have no idea how to go around it.

Nek: How did you handle input in PTC?

[Adigun A. Polack]

To Richard Eric M. Lope (Relsoft) once more now:

AAP: I think the MapED could stay with QB. All it does is save maps anyways. WE could me a lil loader in FB and that's it.

In the first place, I will DEFINITELY agree up front with you *and* Adosorken both that ‘ye olde FJ MapED is gonna no doubt stay in QB right where it is. And in the second place, if we can indeed create an FJ-based shmup example program in FB that faithfully and even flawlessly lets the user load and play any map that is fresh from the FJ Map Editor, we are gonna get much closer towards hitting paydirt already, you know what I am saying now? !

Also, if you can, I want the graphics screen of the program to be at 320x200 resolution, both windowed and fullscreen.

As for porting FJ/Rellib. I could almost smell victory if I use TinyPTC, the only problem I have with it is a multikey handler. I tried SDL keys but since PTC handles messages itself, I have no idea how to go around it.

Oh man, getting the multikey-based keyboard handler thing to work for the new FB FJ/RelLib is turning out to be a challenge in itself. However, since the whole FJ project no doubt involves:

• • “Mode-7”-based maps and stuff (including PP256-compatible ones, too!)
  • *Individual* sprite rotozooming (or sprite scaling/rotation) — even for MUCH LARGER sprites!!! =b
  • Sprite/font lighting and gamma effects (at least PP256-based!)
  • Sprite/font translucency (normal and PP256-based!)
  • Custom Font Spacing (just like at the start of the FJ Test Mode! )
  • Individual Font “Typing” effects
  • Other potential special effects that were used for the following games:
  • º Thunder Force III (Genesis/Mega Drive) / Thunder Force AC (Arcade)
    º Super Aleste / Space Megaforce (SNES/Super Famicom)
    º Final Fantasy III (SNES/Super Famicom)
    º Bahamut Lagoon (SNES/Super Famicom)
    º Hyper Duel (Arcade/Sega Saturn)
    

..........I hope that your new RelLib for FreeBasic has them all or as close to all of them as ever, because, I can sure use them in FB myself, when I do program in FB for sure! !!

See you, and I wish you *excellently* well on getting them all up!!! ^_-=b !



WITH ENCOURAGEMENT TO YOU RIGHT HERE AND NOW,


Adigun Azikiwe Polack
One of the Founders of “Aura Flow”
Continuing Developer of “Frantic Journey”
Current Developer of “Star Angelic Slugger”
Webmaster of the “AAP Official Projects Squad”



P.S. If FJ does get ported successfully to Windows through FB, just think of technically how much wider an audience this would draw in (since apparently so many people these days are largely Windows users! :lol: ! )! That’ll be pretty interesting.