Magic Pockets remake - work started

[humble worm]

Originally Posted by jotd

@humble worm: you mean in this remake? or in the original game.

I referred to Leffmann's post which referred to what you said about the original game
Have not checked the remake yet.

[jotd]

DS version is on its way. ATM running only on emulators, but as you see it's working.
I have problems with controls & sound and the display is 8-bit but something works and on the DS it's an acheivement.

[Dastardly]

Great work Jotd! Looking forward to this loads

[Chain]

my acekard trembles for beta release

[jotd]

You can download a preview for the NDS here:

http://pagesperso-orange.fr/jotd/mag...ets/index.html

crashes after first level, options crashes, no sound. otherwise ok

Coding for the NDS is not a piece of cake, but it's fun to see the result.

[Chain]

cant get it workin :/

i have acekard and dstt, main file goes in root directory ?
and did i need to keep it in magicpockets subdirectory?


im getting only:

<Cross> NDS console OK
<mainclass> init video complete

*** Error <worldsetset>: Level d
irectory not found

[jotd]

on my M3, directory structure is as follows:

NDS/MagicPockets.nds (NDS is the dir where your NDS roms are stored)
data/MagicPockets where the files are located: levels, tiles, etc... (like Lemmings or Reminiscence DS do)

[Jonathan Drain]

This might be a good candidate for listing on Amiga Development Wiki.

Is there a beginner's guide to porting games? Do you work from a disassembly and try to make it code-accurate, or throw the code away, write the new game from scratch and call it done when it looks close enough?

[jotd]

I never work from disassembly. I'm too lazy for that. I figure out level data by guessing and if I can by modifying data and seeing what it affects. Gave good results with MP & Cadaver.

[CFou!]

great job Jeff like always

[jotd]

thanks Bertrand, I have found a lot of bugs in the game, most annoying of them being tiny memory leaks causing the game to crash (on DS) after a while. I'm currently tracking the little gits down.

[radon_22]

You're right- it is pretty crash prone.

That being said- this is awesome! I love C64/Amiga remakes on my DS, and this is shaping up nicely. Keep it up!

[jotd]

thanks. The DS port helps me to finetune my PC version too, find more bugs, keep memory requirements low and performance high... That's the Amiga spirit.

[Chain]

got it working too. main file must be in nds subdir and data in data subdir
(dstt or acekard dont need .nds files in particular directory, but it helps here)

[jotd]

I have fixed a lot of bugs, but cannot upload a version now because of the connection here only accepting http. grrrr.

EDIT: I have made 2 separate PC + NDS packages for you to download. NDS version is much better, with sound, and less crashes.

[Chain]

Yikes! someone shrinked my display

[jotd]

argh! loads of memory problems on the NDS! I'll upload a new version ASAP.

Edit: released a new version. Still some bugs but most of the nasty crashes are gone & sound is working properly. First level fully playable, despite some little glitches.

[jotd]

Bumping this old thread.

I'd like to resume work on that cool game again. The current state of the code shows a lot of missing features & a lot of bugs. So much to implement explains why I didn't continue with the remake, DS or Windows.

My new approach: write some new levels for the orginal game engine. That would be limited because a lot of stuff is hardcoded: level size, teleport locations, level/file organization, the level title letter animation which is not trivial to tamper with... but I think a new set of levels could be done if one respects those constraints:

- player start doesn't change
- teleport locations & sequences don't change

Apart from that:

- level layout can change a lot (including the exits)
- enemies & bonuses can be peppered out everywhere
- contents of the teleport rooms CAN change

So since I've already created a working editor, I tried to convert back map & object data to original data files. I think I can do that for MS-DOS version (easiest, because it's file-based) but also Amiga version(s) (whdload version, using diskfile & reading extra level files on the side)

Anyone interested in seeing fan-made levels of this cool game running on the original engine ?

(I don't say I'll drop the remake, because gfx would be better, it would run on a NDS, would have full liberty for custom levels ... but that first step would help me for motivation & for debug purposes as well, as I didn't quite figure out some A.I. parameters, despite my reverse engineering efforts & Kroah's)

[Qube]

Hi Jotd,

Sounds like a fun endevour!

Would be neat to get some new levels into the Amiga version, better than the PC version which had poor audio from memory. You'll have to engineer an update to the WHDloader to support the custom level files and pull them into memory and all that, shame there isn't a file version of pockets available for the Amiga, but it may not matter if you get it working via WHDload.

The joys of reverse engineering!

Sounds fun :-)

Q;

[Anakirob]

Originally Posted by jotd

Anyone interested in seeing fan-made levels of this cool game running on the original engine ?

Is the Amiga community interested in a new set of levels for an existing classic Amiga game? Do you even need to ask?

Of course we are interested, do it!