Camoto v1.2 (2015-02-21) released

[Malvineous]

Hi all,

Just a quick note to announce that I have just released an updated Windows version of Camoto (v1.2 / 2015-02-21 installer here) for anyone who is interested.

This is going to be the last release for a while, as I am planning to restructure large chunks of the code to take advantage of new features that have come about in C++11/14. I also plan to dump the current wxWidgets GUI and write a new one from scratch using GTK+. I have found that wxWidgets isn't actually that great for cross-platform development, because it works so differently on each platform. I'm hoping that not only will GTK+ will work better in this regard, but that I can use its hardware accelerated Cairo interface to provide much less clunky map and tileset editors. (These are currently hardware accelerated with OpenGL, but cross platform OpenGL is very temperamental.)

There are a few issues with this new release - the music player now plays audio but it seems to be delayed by 1-2 seconds. I don't know if this is because I'm running it under a VM or because it's a bug in PortAudio, because the sync is spot on under Linux. Likewise some tilesets won't display due to an unsupported OpenGL feature, but I don't know whether this is because the VM doesn't support OpenGL that well. Again it works fine under Linux, and it's something I'm hoping the GTK+ switch will eventually fix.

I've started a to-do list to help keep track of everything that still needs to be implemented, so please feel free to add things to it if you find something that's incomplete. (You can use the GitHub bug trackers to report bugs too.)

I hope you find it useful - and apologies if the game you want to edit doesn't work yet - hopefully with a bit of help we'll get there one day!

[spikey]

Thanks Mal- just browsing the site for a long time and found this. What timing I think I owe you an email too.

Anyway, thanks for keeping this amazing utility alive. I'm sure you'll keep working on it and making it even more useful. It is definitely appreciated.

Is there any changes as far as music conversion in this update?

[Malvineous]

Haha no worries. The music conversion is probably the most improved aspect since the last release, but unfortunately it's not quite ready for primetime yet, so to speak. A lot of things were changed, such as rewriting the whole song structure to allow for patterns as found in mod/s3m/etc. files, and supporting PCM instruments from these formats also. This allows for instance Zone 66 songs to be converted to S3M. The playback architecture was also changed, so that it's possible to play songs that contain both OPL, MIDI and PCM instruments at the same time. Apart from a conversion-in-progress by a person changing instruments during playback, I'm only aware of Zone 66 that does this, and it only mixes OPL and PCM instruments in the same song (OPL melody with PCM drum loops.) I had to remove support for external MIDI devices with this though, as it was impossible to correctly synchronise notes between the internal synth and a MIDI device - there is just no cross-platform way of doing this unfortunately.

The big things that aren't yet implemented are a way for the GUI to specify a PCM or OPL patch bank to use for playing MIDI data, and a way of opening standalone songs so e.g. dro files can be live converted to MIDI while they are being played back. All the bits and pieces are in place but I'm finding that I have to fight with wxWidgets so much that getting this functionality added to the GUI is very time consuming.

I plan to start off the GTK+ UI with a standalone music conversion interface so hopefully that will become available before too long.

Of course having said that, you can still convert any song to and from all supported formats, remap instruments, etc. but if it's beyond a simple conversion then you have to do it manually through the command line with the gamemus utility. It's definitely not user-friendly, but if you have an obscure format that is only supported by Camoto (or you add support to Camoto for it) then technically it's possible to get quite good conversions already.

[yellowantphil]

Do you think Camoto will compile on FreeBSD? I’m planning to install that on one of my computers soon. I’ll post here once I get around to trying to install Camoto. Is there a list of dependencies somewhere?

[developertn]

Jesus Christ!hehe

Mel is good like that. He likes to be the king of modding just like I like to be the king of Borland Turbo C 2.01 and Borland Turbo Assembler 4.1 for DOS games hehe

However I studied chess theories when I was like 14 years old. It goes something like this. You have to memorize the basic principles that are sound. Always you can count on it to beat the illogical ones.

However there is ONE exception. God Divine Intervenes for his chosen servants so they are the winner when they die. hehe Arghhhhhhhh So yep that means the classic story of Romeo and Juliette when you are alive you just can't have each other. The sure stinks however be sure that you are together when you pass away. hehe

I hate that story of Romeo and Juliette! Why can't it be like they have each other during their living?

[Malvineous]

Do you think Camoto will compile on FreeBSD? I’m planning to install that on one of my computers soon. I’ll post here once I get around to trying to install Camoto. Is there a list of dependencies somewhere?

Hard to say as I have no experience with FreeBSD, but the Camoto code itself should be pretty platform neutral. If it will compile under Windows and Linux you'd think it would compile anywhere!

I think as long as you can get the dependencies to install then it should work. I've updated the homepage with a list of dependencies. I would think the libraries would compile fine, but the Studio could be problematic depending on whether you can get wxWidgets with OpenGL installed. (Note the latest v1.2 release of the Studio has a dependency on RtMIDI but this is no longer used - I just forgot to remove the RTMIDI line from configure.ac.)

If you can't get the libraries to compile/run then please start a new thread and we'll try to work out how to get them going. If you can't get the Studio working then it might not be worth spending too much time on it, as I'm currently doing a major restructure of the code (for all the libraries) to start taking advantage of C++11 features (and to fix some code design issues while I'm at it.) Once this is done I will be starting a brand new GUI based on GTK+ rather than wxWidgets. This means the current Camoto Studio GUI is no longer having any work done on it, and as it will be replaced soon enough I don't think it's worth trying to fix any cross-platform issues with it (although I will of course accept patches, if you really want to!)

[developertn]

Great work Mel,

I like to see people get better instead of wasting their life away! By the way, the 3D routines are amazing who ever created them.

[andwan0]

How can we fix this so that it works with Alien Carnage v1.2 free version?
When I create project and try to open a level, it says maps.fat file missing (alien carnage doesn't seem to have this file). I tried using the maps.fat file from the shareware version of halloween harry but it doesn't work.


Update: anyway, I just noticed you guys gave Harry 1.1 registered version free download too which is cool, so was able to load up the maps with this version.
I just wanted to see an overview of the level, and find where the exit/elevator is, etc. (however Camoto doesn't display Harry's elevator/switches - why????)