Freedroid port

[Kamjin]

[quote author=Eric link=board=Dev;num=1093844591;start=15#18 date=09/10/04 at 09:10:36]Yeah i would also suggest to any coders i know some games arent portable and i am not really smart in the coding area but as soon as i looked at digger i knew it was portable. *Some coders have different things to make games able to be ported as some coders dont. *I dont want to put people down but i dont really like hearing that this game isnt portable. *Unless after i have heard it from 5 people and after someone has said it looks like its possibly portable. *But when i put a post about a game that i think is portable i really need the reason why and this would help out other coders cause they might have ways of porting that game. *Kamjin is just one example for the Digger port. *I do have to say he is quite good at porting games and many others are aswell cause he might not be able to port games that some coders do.
[/quote]

That's exactly it..
Everyone has their own talents.. What one person see's as portable the other might not.. I find stuff that's riddled with x86 assembly, and pc specific stuff easy, while most consider that to be unportable.. by the same token, I find C++, Allegro, and SDL stuff to be annoying to work with..

[quzar]

Well its running... sortah. It crashes in trying to display all the rules information. It seems its just too much text for it to be fprinting or something... Ill keep on working on debugging.

[Kamjin]

Do you even see the instruction text scrolling?
or does it crash at about 1-2 seconds in ?

[quzar]

Well, since printf prints to the console on the DC, i get console output of the freedroid.ruleset file until the line "// this is the disruptor, the 742 and 711 use
** Start of new bullet specification subsection **
Time is takes to recharge this bullet/weapon in seconds : 1.0
Flying speed of this bullet type : 8.0
Da"

Then it just hangs, as if it cant display any more. Ive tried it 3-4 times and had no success getting it past this. The function that handles the console output of this file seems to elude me, and i cant track down where it is. Oddly enough, this last time i tried to run it, i got a kernal panic: double fault.

[Eric]

Is there anybody who can help with this game?

[Kamjin]

Your SDL might *have caught the same virus that mine got.. it all started with a double fault.. :P

I've walked through the code (while typing the message), and I do see one problem below.. *

InitFreedroid (int argc, char *const argv[])

calls

Init_Game_Data("freedroid.ruleset");

here the mem for the file is allocated by

Data = ReadAndMallocAndTerminateFile( fpath , END_OF_GAME_DAT_STRING ) ;

then it calls this where the data you're hanging on is loading.

Get_Bullet_Data ( Data );

okay then they find the start and end of that section

BulletPointer = LocateStringInData ( DataPointer , BULLET_SECTION_BEGIN_STRING );
 EndOfBulletData = LocateStringInData ( DataPointer , BULLET_SECTION_END_STRING );

You should printout the results in

LocateStringInData ( char* SearchBeginPointer, char* SearchTextPointer )

to see if the start/end are valid.

The it checks to see how many entires, also print to make sure it's right.

CountStringOccurences ( char* SearchString , char* TargetString )

this part is the finds each instance to start the data read, it should loop as many times as the above

 while ( (BulletPointer = strstr ( BulletPointer, NEW_BULLET_TYPE_BEGIN_STRING )) != NULL)

Here is where the faulty data is supposed to be read in..
yup.. got it.. Ask Ian for his readvaluefromstring..

 BulletPointer ++; // to avoid doubly taking this entry

 * * *// Now we read in the recharging time for this bullettype(=weapontype)
 * * *ReadValueFromString( BulletPointer , *BULLET_RECHARGE_TIME_BEGIN_STRING , "%f" , 
 * * * * * * * * * * &Bulletmap[BulletIndex].recharging_time);

 * * *// Now we read in the maximal speed this type of bullet can go.
 * * *ReadValueFromString( BulletPointer , *BULLET_SPEED_BEGIN_STRING , "%f" , 
 * * * * * * * * * * &Bulletmap[BulletIndex].speed);

 * * *// Now we read in the damage this bullet can do
 * * *ReadValueFromString( BulletPointer , *BULLET_DAMAGE_BEGIN_STRING , "%d" , 
 * * * * * * * * * * &Bulletmap[BulletIndex].damage);

 * * *// Now we read in the number of phases that are designed for this bullet type
 * * *// THIS IS NOW SPECIFIED IN THE THEME CONFIG FILE
 * * *// ReadValueFromString( BulletPointer , *BULLET_NUMBER_OF_PHASES_BEGIN_STRING , "%d" , 
 * * *// &Bulletmap[BulletIndex].phases , EndOfBulletData );

 * * *// Now we read in the type of blast this bullet will cause when crashing e.g. against the wall
 * * *ReadValueFromString( BulletPointer , *BULLET_BLAST_TYPE_CAUSED_BEGIN_STRING , "%d" , 
 * * * * * * * * * * &Bulletmap[BulletIndex].blast);
 
 * * *BulletIndex++;
 * *}

[Eric]

so does this mean that this game is possibly portable?

[Kamjin]

If that actually turns out to be the problem... maybe.. there's still a few more surprises that will probably happen.

[Eric]

bad surprises or good surprises?

[quzar]

ok, ill look closer into that, and printout the results from those different routines.

Right now im trying to squeeze a bit more speed out of my Dodgin Diamonds port, which I feel has been long overdue for a release