NullpoMino port? (follow-up to Texmaster port discussion)

felleg

(for the original discussion about Texmaster, go here: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/8745/texmaster-port)

The implementation of Texmaster as a RetroPie port has been a relative success, as seen in the topic linked above. I recently learned about the existence of another well accepted Tetris clone called NullpoMino, which is a nice companion piece to Texmaster. While Texmaster emulates games from the TGM series more closely, NullpoMino could be a great addition to the RetroPie line-up due to the fact it includes an impressive list of modes like TGM, Tetris Friends, Puyo Puyo, Versus (even includes an AI you can customize), NES Tetris, Dr. Mario, Super Puzzle Fighter, etc. (full list here). In total, 30 modes are available, and each mode have optional rules that can be customized to one's liking. In short, this is the most flexible version of Tetris I've ever stumbled upon. Much better than Openblok (sorry!)

Obviously, just about everything in the game can also be customized (e.g. images, piece graphics, font, music, sound effects, ...).

Good news: The game's source code is available (written in java) and it is located on github here

Bad news: I tried to install it myself on RetroPie following something similar to post #9 of the Texmaster thread and it did not seem to work. I haven't tried debugging and this might be as simple as installing java on my pi, or maybe because it was trying to open the game in windowed mode, but so far I don't know what needs to be added to make this work.

Question: The author(s) of the game is/are hard to reach and they are mostly Japanese, which does not help. Would we need their permission to add the installer of the game to RetroPie's script (knowing their project is open source and public, form what I can understand)?

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felleg

bump
@mediamogul , just wondering if you had an idea about this (I wanted to PM you without bumping but couldn't figure out how on this forum)

mediamogul

@felleg

I've never installed a java app on RetroPie, so I'm afraid I wouldn't be any help on this one.

A Former User

This game is, in my opinion, the best tetris game ever made across all systems, official or unofficial. I would love to see it running and be easy to set up on retropie.

I've managed to sort of make it run.

Grab and extract the latest source, install dependencies

sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-jdk xorg
wget https://web.archive.org/web/20160810173437/https://nullpomino.googlecode.com/files/NullpoMino7.5.0_linux.tar.gz
tar -xvf NullpoMino7.5.0_linux.tar.gz

Then, in different terminals, you'll need to:

Start X sudo startx
Start Nullpomino with sudo ./play_swing

It's not optimal though, swing is probably the worst of the three clients (sdl, swing, slick) and it requires X, but it's the only one which seems to work on ARM (at least which is bundled in that download.)

I think it could be possible to eliminate the X dependency and make a really nice version for the pi.

felleg

@shwishblade I'll definitely check it out!!

felleg

@shwishblade Well your method works! I just had to install the pixel desktop for retropie from the retropie_setup.sh script (I didn't even know we could install the pixel desktop... neat!). It's a shame indeed that there is no way to run the game outside of play_swing. I also noticed that the game has trouble playing some sounds.

A step in the right direction, let's hope it will be possible in the future!