Neverball!

DaMadFiddler · Post by **DaMadFiddler** » Mon Apr 05, 2004 8:00 pm

[Cross-posted from Dev. Ideas, since it didn't seem to be getting any attention there]:

Hi-

So one of my Dreamcast-related inquiries finally paid off.

I've talked a little with the creator of the "Super Monkey Ball" clone Neverball, explaining a little about the homebrew scene and the hardware specs, and he's interested in potentially doing a Dreamcast port.

However, he's not really familiar with the specifics of DC coding, and would like some assistance [glances hopefully at veteran devvers] getting used to the software/development tools. Anyone who could help out with this would be greatly appreciated. Here's the exact e-mail I received:

Hey yeah I'd love to see Neverball running on the DC.

I think it would be a bit of a squeeze, since the DC is well below my
original target specs. Of course nothing prevents a Monkey Ball game
from fitting on the platform, it's just that I was a little lazy with
some of my resource utilization, especially processor load.

I wouldn't ask anyone to do that port for me unless they really wanted
to. I'll look into the available DC dev stuff and see if I think it's
within the realm of possibility.

I'm not motivated by any potential market for it.

If you or anyone else have any suggestions on how I could bootstrap
myself into DC homebrew dev, I'd appreciate hearing them.

--
Robert Kooima

I've already pointed him in the direction of this site for info, but if anyone would like to offer more specific help or details about DC programming/porting (which is, unfortunately, something I don't really have the wherewithall for on my own), you can reach the programmer at rlk@snth.net .

Neverball is an open-source "Monkey Ball" clone written using SDL and utilizing OpenGL for 3D graphics, and is available for Win32, Linux, FreeBSD, and OSX. The Neverball project website is at http://icculus.org/neverball .

DaMadFiddler · Post by **DaMadFiddler** » Mon Apr 05, 2004 8:07 pm

Specifically, Neverball was coded in C using SDL, and as far as hardware, requires OpenGL 1.2 video compliance, a mouse or joystick (analog joystick is MUCH better than mouse, in my opinion), and "recommends" a 500MHz processor because the author was admittedly lazy in his program's resource handling. However, he seems confident that he can reduce this, as the current incarnation is not particularly streamlined codewise, and the game engine itself is pretty simple.

Ian Micheal · Post by **Ian Micheal** » Mon Apr 05, 2004 8:49 pm

Well If he could change get rid of the high memory useage it be a go last time i tryed to port it i got kernal panic out of memory and Bero's opengl does not work like pc opengl and your going to need to use that if you want to keep the game using SDL..

SDL+opengl games ive found very hard to get running or working as it seems both opengl and sdl together use rather a lot of memory.

Get the game check the memory useage in winxp then report how much just use ctrl alt del and check..

Im sure it's well over what we have. Most sdl and opengl games on the sdl homepage i have tryed to port and if you dont see it out then ive fail at it.

But thats not saying it cant be done.. It be neat hope he does it but a more optimized pc version to start with then converted to work with beros opengl you might have it working.. Not saying it would run nice.. Xpired is a great puzzle game i have it ported but it crashes when you load the level packs uses 32 meg of memory.. This is a problem but check it for me and thats what the author will have to get down speed is not that much of a problem.

Rant over sorry..

DaMadFiddler · Post by **DaMadFiddler** » Mon Apr 05, 2004 10:11 pm

Actually, with the quality settings on "low" (which still looks/sounds pretty decent) and the resolution set at its "minimum" of 640x480 (which is probably what DC would be doing anyway) the memory usage never exceeded about 15Mb (of course, that probably doesn't account for external libraries, etc). But that's with the current PC build, which the author has said is highly unoptimized. I'm pretty sure the memory issue could be worked around; I think what the author needs, really, is an introduction to the DC's "quirks" and how to make his code work with the homebrew development tools we have. I really do think this game will work, in some form.

impetus · Post by **impetus** » Mon Apr 05, 2004 10:55 pm

I'm moving this to programming discussion so the devvers will see it (and maybe take it more seriously).

Ian Micheal · Post by **Ian Micheal** » Tue Apr 06, 2004 12:15 am

DaMadFiddler wrote:Actually, with the quality settings on "low" (which still looks/sounds pretty decent) and the resolution set at its "minimum" of 640x480 (which is probably what DC would be doing anyway) the memory usage never exceeded about 15Mb (of course, that probably doesn't account for external libraries, etc). But that's with the current PC build, which the author has said is highly unoptimized. I'm pretty sure the memory issue could be worked around; I think what the author needs, really, is an introduction to the DC's "quirks" and how to make his code work with the homebrew development tools we have. I really do think this game will work, in some form.

Add the size of the bin to the memory useage.. Well the problem is there really is no set faq it's mostly trial and error.

Barret7sc · Post by **Barret7sc** » Tue Apr 06, 2004 12:26 am

Well, I don't know how good kGL is, but if you just ignore the SDL stuff, and port it over to KOS native libs, you could probably do this.

If I had more time, I might give it a shot, although I know next to nothing about 3d

-B

AmeNeko · Post by **AmeNeko** » Tue Apr 06, 2004 1:03 am

I've had fairly good experience with KGLX 0.2(kgl with some additions) so far. Though its missing a few things I'd like to have like glCallLists. KGL itself doesn't support display lists at all.