Jazz Jackrabbit - OpenJazz source port on RetroPie/Raspbian

Brigane

Nice work. I'm a little curious though. I see many great ports for RetroPie. We got Jazz, Commander Keen, Rick Dangerous, Hexen etc. What's the advantage when using Ports over Dosbox?

tpo1990

@Brigane Thank you.

It can be difficult to tell what the advantage can be instead of just using dosbox, but i think it can be that the source ports has some advantages over its dos counterparts as in being able to support higher screen resolution, multiplayer, additional maps, mods, better performance.

Jazz Jackrabbit does not originally have multiplayer but thanks to OpenJazz source port it is now possible.

I know for an instance that the old Doom runs better in source ports than in the good old dos version. ex. Zdoom source port.

Brigane

@tpo1990 Great, thank you for clearing that up, also it's nice to see another contributing Dane at the forum ;)

cyperghost

@tpo1990 Upvote from me ;)
You should try to include this as a scriptmodule. Then the script will be more flexible and makes use of runcommand. It is a better practise ;)

This is a simple scriptmodule that shows you how to add a port call SUPERTUX
This is a advanced one with own apt-call scripts OPENBOR

Just explained

function configure_supertux() {
    addPort "$md_id" "supertux" "SuperTux" "supertux2"
}

addPort means
$md_id is install directory, it is setted up as rp_module_id="supertux"
supertux is name of "emulator"
SuperTux is name of bash script ... you will see a SuperTux.sh in PORTS section
supertux2 is binary

tpo1990

@Brigane Your welcome. Yes always glad to help out. Let me know if you have some problems with getting the port to work. Feedback is always welcome. :-)

tpo1990

@cyperghost Thank you for the explanation and help. I will try to implement this into the script and test it. Once i have it working i will release an update to the install script. :-)

This will help on improving the install script and integrate it more in RetroPie.

Spiky

will this eventually become part of RetroPie package? (like some other ports)

tpo1990

@Spiky Yes it will. Thats my plan, to integrate Jazz Jackrabbit source port into a scriptmodule that makes it available as a package in RetroPie setup.

Im already in the middle of experimenting with this, but with Hexen 2 which is my other project. Once i have gotten Hexen 2 to work as a part of RetroPie package i will do the same to Jazz Jackrabbit and other following source port that i can get working on RPI/RetroPie. :-)

Spiky

@tpo1990 cool, thanks!

tpo1990

@Spiky Your welcome. Im nearly there with Hexen 2. It just need some small adjustments and then i will be working with getting Jazz Jackrabbit to work as a scriptmodule as well.

tpo1990

Good news. I have managed to create a working scriptmodule for Jazz Jackrabbit and created a pull request from my fork of the RetroPie project. Now the reviewing process can begin of the PR. :-)

Edit: The pull request has to wait for now until merge of hexen2 scriptmodule is complete.

You can get the OpenJazz - Jazz Jackrabbit scriptmodule by this command:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tpo1990/JazzJackrabbit-RPI/master/openjazz.sh -P /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/ports/

This will download the scriptmodule from my fork of RetroPie and place it into the /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/scriptmodules/ports/
Once downloaded, go into RetroPie-Setup as usual and into the Experimental section to find "openjazz" and then install.

Once the game has been installed, it will have been installed with this file hierachy:

Game data location: /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ports/jazz
Runcommand file: /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ports/Jazz Jackrabbit.sh
Config location: /opt/retropie/configs/ports/openjazz
Port installation location: /opt/retropie/ports/openjazz

For registered version, replace the shareware files in the Game data location: /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ports/jazz

tpo1990

I have now created a pull request for OpenJazz/Jazz Jackrabbit for the RetroPie project. Now the review can begin :-)
You can still get the same scriptmodule from my separate git repo for Jazz Jackrabbit.

shavecat

@tpo1990
i love Jazz jackrabbit,
thanks!
Works great !!! TX !

tpo1990

@shavecat Me too. If you want to use your controller/gamepad, then i suggest using xboxdrv and configure it for Jazz Jackrabbit.

This will make it even better. ;-)

Darksavior

So it's complete? There's some graphic bugs. A line of some sort can be seen on the top of the screen when playing. The menu transitions and level select have missing animations. Maybe more stuff in-game but haven't tested it extensively. Maybe my altered compile settings have something to do with it. I'm using a pi3b+ with retropie 4.4.9.

tpo1990

@Darksavior The port has some issues that needs to be sorted out, but the game is fully playable.

There are some small graphics issues. It might be caused by vsync or bpp settings. You could try changing the screen resolution in game to see if it fixes it. I have set mine to 320 x 240 to eliminate white bars and to fill out the screen in 4:3.

Savestates does not appear to be working as far as my testing goes.

When i first tested the source port, there was no sound/music in game. That has been fixed in the scriptmodule. As for now OpenJazz / Jazz Jackrabbit is considered experimental.

shavecat

everything thing works great for me the sound/music and all.
but u right
Darksavior
i do have
"A line of some sort can be seen on the top of the screen when playing"

snock

Fantastic ... would there be any way to configure ESC on the joystick? Modifying some file.

Could you install the 2?

Thank you for your work.

tpo1990

@snock I use Xboxdrv driver to make my PS4 generic USB gamepad work as a keyboard. For this i use a runcommand file with configuration for openjazz and other source ports. It works great.

Maybe there is some manual setting in the openjazz config file. That would probably be your best bet to look for the ESC setting.

I'm not sure about what you mean with "Could you install the 2?"

Your welcome.

shavecat

@tpo1990
Any fix's for the jazz 1 ports ?
The stage's when he run full of bugs...
And a chance to get jazz 2 also on ports ?
thanks