Possible to port GridWars 2

cyperghost

@herb_fargus @BuZz
Well thank you for your comments (and congrats to RetroPie 4 - it's running fine) :)
I did a bit of investigation. Gridwars was written in Blitz Basic, there seems a port for this language available for RPi.

More investigation:
The first link seems to be a port/fork of an older version (4.1), version 5.3 seems to be the latest. The original author is Mark Incitti.
So here some interesting links

The authors page with more games and a contact adress http://www.incitti.com/Blitz/
Description page with latest download (Windows version) http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/grid/wars.htm

Asking doesn't cost anything and maybe the author loves retro-gaming :)

Windows version from World of Stuart contains source code (bmx files)

herb_fargus

@cyperghost dev got back to me said if we can compile blitzmax on the pi we can use the .bmx files from gridwars2 and in theory should work

herb_fargus

Alright so just a quick summary of how far I've gotten:

It seems there are two things that might be able to be used as the "engine" if you will:

https://github.com/blitz-research/blitzmax

https://github.com/bmx-ng/bmk

I used the raspberry pi binary here: http://www.bmx-ng.com/main/downloads/

Then I used the source code of the gridwars game (the version that has the .bmx files in it)

and tried to compile with: ./bmk makeapp -t console -r /home/pi/Gridwars/gridwars.bmx

But alas twas not to be and it gave a few errors (possible api change between the version of the game and the version of blitzmax - similar to the issues we were having with the love2d engine)

compile failed at 80% with Type TImage not found and Identifier 'plot' not found

might need some cajoling to figure out. Might be as simple as compiling a the bmk file to match whatever version gridwars is at and in theory should work but can't quite figure out how to compile a working bmk

post on the blitzbasic forums for reference: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=106797

cyperghost

@herb_fargus
Your effords sounds good. If the compiler is starting, then there is a real chance, that all needed libaries are included. Maybe it's really just an api change. The game is from 2006 (??) and the blitzmax was ported 2013.

Maybe Mr. Incitti used some special or unusual commands in his game.
Please keep up the good work :)

cyperghost

@herb_fargus
Wow I See effords in this project. I am looking to your second thread in blitzbasic forum. Thank you for taking your time to deal with that

herb_fargus

source for the game is here: https://github.com/mmatyas/GridWars and it compiles but has some runtime errors. but the game does start and load.

cyperghost

Wow :) You rock! Thank you so much....
Can you please provide the compiled game?
There is a lot of thing to do for compiling this game :(

Is the gameplay nice and enjoyable on a Pi?

herb_fargus

@cyperghost I don't know. It's still developmental and not in a playable state. Read through the readme and give it a go if you want to try it out and debug. I don't have the time to mess with code all that much so feel free to brush up on your BASIC coding skills.

fluffypillow

I was playing around a bit on a Pi 3, but currently the game is way too broken:

setting are not saved properly on exit (but you can edit them manually)
changing screen resolution ingame produces black screen (you have to manually kill the process)
screen resolution setting doesn't work properly, just makes the "content" bigger of smaller in the upper left corner
windowed mode setting doesn't work and it's always fullscreen
it seems the mouse input also controls the desktop behind the game; if you accidentally bring up a right-click menu or a logout/shutdown dialog, the system may freeze
it seems the game engine uses software rendering, and so even the intro screen can be slow on big resolutions
if you start a new game after playing already, the game freezes
moving the mouse can cause graphical glitches
there's no sound

If you want to try it, here's the binary: https://github.com/mmatyas/GridWars/releases

herb_fargus

Also full disclosure @fluffypillow is the genius that got things sorted. I just bugged him about it and he got it to compile so I take no responsibility for any progress on my account ;)

If you run RetroPie on a pc gridwars works fine that way. The code just isn't super happy wirh opengles on the pi without some more work on the code.

spud11

Sorry to bump a very old thread, but it appears better to do that than start a new one to give some consistency. I was just wondering how you got this to work @fluffypillow. I understand that it definitely won't work perfectly.

Do you just download the binary from https://github.com/mmatyas/GridWars/releases and execute it or did you also need to compile the source code too? If you needed to do the latter, did you place the binary in the same directory/folder as the compiled source code and run it?

I'm on a rpi 3B but still using jessie.

herb_fargus

@spud11 at least in my experience with it it would start to run and then quickly crash. I wouldn't consider it playable on its current state on the pi

fluffypillow

@spud11 If I remember correctly, you have to clone/download the git repo ("Source code" on the releases page is fine too), as that contains the game assets. Then download the binary, place it into this directory and run. Shouldn't need to compile anything, the binary on that page is already compiled for you. But I can take a look tomorrow if it still fails.

spud11

@fluffypillow @herb_fargus Thanks for your replies, guys. Must admit I haven't even been able to get it to run at all. I've copied the gridwars-armhf-rel file into a folder together with all of the source files. The binary is executable. I've run the binary straight from commandline using sudo /bin/bash gridwars-armhf-rel with the result gridwars-armhf-rel: gridwars-armhf-rel: cannot execute binary file.

mitu

@spud11 Which folder have you copied into ? Looks like an error related to the filesystem mount options, usually you get this when the filesystem is mounted with the noexec option.

spud11

@mitu Seems a bit strange because I haven't used noexec option anywhere. All files appear in the /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gridwars2 folder that I have created and I'm just trying to start the file from commandline.

mitu

@spud11 Have you made the file executable (chmod +x gridwards-armhf-rel) ? Note that you should run it via ./gridwars-armhf-rel, not with sudo bash ....

spud11

@mitu said in Possible to port GridWars 2:

./gridwars-armhf-rel

Hi mitu. Happy New Year! Yes, I have given it the correct permissions and for good measure used the command you gave. I have also tried ./gridwars-armhf-rel, but get permission denied.

fluffypillow

Just tried the binary on an up-to-date RetroPie, and it launches fine for me, without sudo or anything. Your errors seem to show filesystem issues as @mitu said; are you trying to run the game from USB or Samba share perhaps? Have you tried a different SD card?

As for the game, due to the GLES lib name changes on Stretch, it hangs on startup with an initialization error, then eventually crashes (patching the binary is not enough). Likely a bug in the engine itself.

mitu

@spud11 I got the same behavior as @fluffypillow - the program starts, but it's not fully compatible and crashes. But it's not the same error as yours, for sure.