RGB Classic Games Forum

Malvineous, how is the port coming?

Hi Allen, unfortunately I haven't touched it since I last posted, I've been a bit distracted with the game editor I'm working on (which will also allow people to create their own Xargon levels, which is what got me looking into the Xargon source in the first place!)

When I last left it I had to hunt down the reason why the game was scrolling across the level when it was first loaded, and it sounded like there were a few memory issues that caused the Windows version to crash, which will require some more debugging. I fear that neither of these two problems will be quick to solve! But I hope to get it working properly eventually. My original intention was to make a port for the Pandora but alas I'm still waiting for mine to arrive...

Hi all,
I see that you are making some progress on the port, well I also did port the engine but for klloblaster
And have got pretty far, did all the graphics, the sounds and some of the music.
But was stomped by some SDL problems with sound so right now it;s on hiatus.

I've attached all my sources so it maybe of use to you or anybody else.
(It's for Symbian platform)

Hope it helps

Ronen K.

Interesting! Thanks for posting the code. Unfortunately I don't have anything running Symbian so I can't test it. Did you get it far enough to be playable?

You have gone down a slightly different track to what I'm aiming for - e.g. you have replaced the CMF music with MIDI, however as I want to stay true to the original I have written a CMF player so that the music sounds the same as in the original.

I can't immediately see what you have done with the graphics though - are you using the original game data files or did you convert them to .bmp?

The game was playable fully (Except the sound issue), everything using the original data.
Good work on the CMF I was thinking doing it after the final engine was done.

Keep us posted

Ronen.

Just an update - I finally figured out what was causing the weird scrolling thing when each level was loaded (another instance where an integer had to be forced to 16-bit) and now as far as I can tell the game is working entirely normally.

Unfortunately it still crashes moments into the first level under Windows, so I'm trying to figure out how to run a debugger on a Windows machine to work out what the problem is - it works perfectly under Linux.

I'll post a new .exe if I have any luck solving it. Otherwise if anyone is able to narrow down where the crash occurs let me know!

Crashes when you try to scroll the screen upwards, either by jumping high enough for the screen to move, or moving the camera by pressing up.

Any chance you can get me a backtrace? I can't get it to crash under Linux, and I don't have access to a compiler/debugger on any other platform.

Sorry, I don't know how to do that. I'm no programmer :)

What OS are you using? Did you compile it from source? If you used GCC to do so, then you can run it through GDB and then use the "bt" command after it crashes.

I don't see how you can port it, sorry. It says in the license that you can't make a game that resembles Xargon. Of course Xargon resembles Xargon more than ANY other game you could possibly make with it because Xargon IS Xargon. Therefore a port of Xargon is ILLEGAL. You must take the engine and use as many of YOUR OWN GRAPHICS and LEVEL DESIGNS as possible, using AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE of the original material. An ideal game (most compliant with his license) would be one that while made with his game engine, would be using COMPLETELY NEW graphics and level layouts.

Of course you can make a port of Xargon that runs native on Windows (instead of DOS) if you want to for yourself, just that you won't be allowed to distribute the source code for this port. You may ONLY distribute the source code either if it is EXACTLY AS HE RELEASED IT (after all he released it in that form so I can assume it's ok to redistribute in that same form with NO alterations whatsoever) or if you make an altered version it must be VERY DIFFERENT from the game Xargon. Making a "port" of Xargon would count as a game that "resembled" Xargon, and that would be HIGHLY ILLEGAL because it VERY OBVIOUSLY (no gray area here) violates the license he put on it.

Just as well I got special permission from the guy who wrote Xargon then

Malvineous wrote:Just as well I got special permission from the guy who wrote Xargon then

How did you contact him? I checked out the Wikipedia page on Xargon and it lists his name as the maker of the game but no contact info. I can't find his email address anywhere.

Re-read this thread from the start He posts on this forum as the user "kilodude".

As for the question of how I found his email address, I won't give that away, but I certainly didn't find it on Wikipedia!