Blake Stone - BStone source port

tpo1990

Thanks to Bibendovsky's source port of Blake Stone it is possible to build and install Blake Stone Aliens of Gold and Planet Strike on Raspberry Pi and RetroPie. I have created a working scriptmodule for RetroPie.

This port uses SDL2 dependencies

Raspberry Pi 4B and Raspbian Buster: The port has not been tested with the latest RPI 4 and Raspbian Buster release. It is only guaranteed to work on the latest official release of RetroPie as the one that can be found on the RetroPie download page. Therefore users who has this might not be able to install the port and play the game. Users may need to wait for official release and support for Raspberry Pi 4B and Buster.

Download scriptmodule for RetroPie:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tpo1990/BlakeStone-RPI/master/bstone.sh -P $HOME/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/ports/

After downloading scriptmodule, go to the experimental section in RetroPie Setup to install.

Install time: It takes about 10 minutes to install.

Registered/Full version:
For Aliens of Gold registered version, replace the shareware files in $romdir/ports/bstone/aog/ to play. These files for the registered version are required: AUDIOHED.BS6, AUDIOT.BS6, EANIM.BS6, GANIM.BS6, IANIM.BS6, MAPHEAD.BS6, MAPTEMP.BS6, SANIM.BS6, VGADICT.BS6, VGAGRAPH.BS6, VGAHEAD.BS6, VSWAP.BS6.

Planet Strike:
Planet Strike has not been tested yet but the source port should be able to run it. Here is a way to get it up and running:

Go to /opt/retropie/configs/ports/bstone and copy the emulator.cfg file into a new folder called bstone_ps and replace the line: "--data_dir /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ports/bstone/aog" with "--data_dir /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ports/bstone/ps" in the emulator.cfg file.
Create a folder in "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ports/bstone" and call it "ps" and copy your Planet Strike files into that folder.
Copy the Blake Stone - Aliens of Gold.sh runcommand file and call it Blake Stone - Planet Strike.sh. Edit the file and replace the line "/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh" 0 PORT "bstone" "" with "/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh" 0 PORT "bstone_ps" ""

Notes: The source port downloads and can be installed from the Experimental section in RetroPie-Setup but is considered experimental since it might has some bugs. Keyboard typing locks in Command Line Interface/Terminal, so make sure you restart the system first before exiting to CLI/Terminal. There can be other bugs as well.

For more info visit the developers site:
https://bibendovsky.github.io/bstone/

Disclaimer: This installation script is provided as is and has been tested to work with RetroPie. You should always have a backup ready incase anything happens with your Raspberry Pi.

Screenshots:

tpo1990

Reserved for future use:

tpo1990

Changelog:
05-03-2020: Added Raspberry Pi 4B and Raspbian Buster section.
27-05-2019: Changed path in wget command to variable: -P $HOME/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/ports/
30-04-2019: Finished scriptmodule and uploaded to github repository. Created thread on RetroPie Forum.

cyperghost

@tpo1990 Haha ;) These WCD-3rd-PS* games are so funny

*WCD-3rd-PS
Wheelchair-Driven third person shooter ;)

simpleethat

@tpo1990 this brings me back! I had the shareware version of Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold growing up and really might need to check this out.

tpo1990

@cyperghost Yes i remember them being something different back in the day than your typical first person shooter. :-)

@simpleethat I can only say the same for my experience as well. ;-)

cyperghost

@tpo1990 No not because these shooters are so old. It's the movement itself you may think you are driving through with a wheelchair ;)

tpo1990

@cyperghost said in Blake Stone - BStone source port:

@tpo1990 No not because these shooters are so old. It's the movement itself you may think you are driving through with a wheelchair ;)

Ah i see. Yes you are right. I never thought of it in that way. I think a lot of the movement changed after Doom was introduced. Blake Stone is actually using the Wolfenstein 3D engine which has the same "wheelchair" movement, but it is considered to be a standalone game. I know in fact that Wolf4SDL and the other source port ECWolf does not support Blake Stone.

hhromic

@tpo1990 great work you are doing with all these scriptmodules!
I hope soon we can manage to merge them into RetroPie. I think your scriptmodules are nice contributions to the project.

tpo1990

@hhromic Thank you. I think so too. Until the pull request for Hexen 2 and Jazz Jackrabbit has been merged into RetroPie, i have decided to wait with creating other pull requests. I will still share my work for the RetroPie community though.

ExarKunIv

this is very cool, cant wait to try it.

now if we can have a port of corridor 7. i will be all set. but im happy with dos box for that one. as i know it is not that well known

tpo1990

@ExarKunIv said in Blake Stone - BStone source port:

this is very cool, cant wait to try it.

now if we can have a port of corridor 7. i will be all set. but im happy with dos box for that one. as i know it is not that well known

Now that is one game that im not familiar with. If a source port exists that can be built and compiled on our Raspberry PI then we will have a chance, but unfortunately if it is not very well known then it might not be an option.

ExarKunIv

@tpo1990 yea....it came out right before doom, and was build on the a highly modified Wolf engine. but it was over looked, due to timing

it was very well made for want it was using. i would recommend it. if you like playing the old games.

tpo1990

@ExarKunIv It sounds just like Rise of the Triad. That game was supposed to be the sequel to Wolfenstein 3D but was over looked due to hype of Doom. :-)

I might try it some time. I visited ECWolf's git repository and they say that ECWolf aims to support all games which use the Wolfenstein 3D engine including Blake Stone (coming in ECWolf 3.0), Corridor 7, Operation Body Count, Rise of the Triad, and Super 3D Noah's Ark. This is another Wolfenstein 3D source port that we can build on our RPI.

cyperghost

@tpo1990 ECWolf is in my opinion the best enviroment for this games. AFAIK Super 3D Noah's Ark is supported already.

tpo1990

@cyperghost You are probably right about that. I have only tried ECWolf with Wolfenstein 3D and from what i remember it worked great on my Raspberry Pi, but that was in 4.3/Jessie. ECWolf could be an alternative to the primary Wolf4SDL in RetroPie bringing more Wolfenstein 3D styled games to work. ECWolf would seem like the perfect candidate for this.

cyperghost

@tpo1990 I tried ECWolf on a Windows Mashine and there Wolf3d, SoD and Noah are running.

ExarKunIv

@tpo1990 if there is a way to get corridor 7 working, im all for it.

not that i would have a clue on how to get ECWolf to work. so ill wait till someone with way more knowlage then I to take a stab. :)

tpo1990

@cyperghost said in Blake Stone - BStone source port:

@tpo1990 I tried ECWolf on a Windows Mashine and there Wolf3d, SoD and Noah are running.

Then it should also work on Raspberry Pi if building from source still works.

tpo1990

@ExarKunIv Yes ECWolf will eventually at some time support Corridor 7 just like Super 3D Noah's Ark.