Porting Zelda Classic to Consoles and Mobiles

[HtheB]

Hi,

First of all, I'd want to thank to everybody who involved in the development of ZC.
I saw that there is a linux port available now.

I'd like to port this game to the Nokia N900 and the N9. Both run on Maemo and MeeGo (real linux, unlike android), which should be very easy to port with minimal things to change.

It should be possible to port this to the Nintendo DS and even the PSP.
I would like to participate on porting this to those devices, but I couldn't find the sources.

Is there any chance to get the sources or get in touch with the developers to talk about this?

Thank you

[Chris Miller]

I doubt they'll share the source code. The main focus in porting ZC is split between Windows, Mac and Linux at the moment, the "big three", if you will. They're the most practical platforms for it anyway, as it's oriented mainly toward use with a keyboard and mouse. You might look around for an emulator to run Windows programs. I believe there's one for the PSP.

[HtheB]

Well, the N900 and the N950 has a keyboard and a Touchscreen, so that shouldn't be a problem.
Both runs on a debian based linux OS (Maemo and MeeGo).
It has to be recompiled to run for ARM processors and a bit adjusted to fit with the OS.


Nokia N900
http://static.salland.eu/newfiles/product/40/60/406080.jpg

Nokia N950
http://cdn2.gsmarena.com/vv/pics/nokia/nokia-n950-2.jpg

[Chris Miller]

Interesting. I'm afraid I don't know very much about modern phones. My cellphone makes calls, and that's about it.

[SUCCESSOR]

HtheB, hello! I am always glad to hear enthusiasm from a community member. I do not know the viability of porting ZC to mobile devices. I do know that ZC is being prepped for open source development release. This may take time. If you are an experienced developer you may speak with one if the current devs( Gleeok or Saffith) about getting access to the repository. I do not know their requirements or they're willingness at this time.

Things I do know that have prevented such a project in the past:

Mobile devices lack the CPU power and memory to support ZC. Becoming less of an issue as devices are becoming more powerful

Allegro is not easily portable and usually requires emulation of environments it supports. This is the reason ZC 1.9 on the Wii used DosBox.

Mobile devices do not have the peripherals to properly use ZQ. Your phone has a keyboard but what about a mouse? ZQ is also not designed for touch screen input.

Also a modest ZC quest uses 6 input buttons(a b l r start map) and an 8 direction dpad excluding the possible Ex1-4 and mouse inputs. This makes it difficult for playing on touch screen devices.

All of this being said, I would love to see ZC ported to mobile devices. I personally would prefer Android as I am not a member of the Maemo or Meego communities.

[HtheB]

HtheB, hello! I am always glad to hear enthusiasm from a community member. I do not know the viability of porting ZC to mobile devices. I do know that ZC is being prepped for open source development release. This may take time. If you are an experienced developer you may speak with one if the current devs( Gleeok or Saffith) about getting access to the repository. I do not know their requirements or they're willingness at this time.

Things I do know that have prevented such a project in the past:

Mobile devices lack the CPU power and memory to support ZC. Becoming less of an issue as devices are becoming more powerful

Allegro is not easily portable and usually requires emulation of environments it supports. This is the reason ZC 1.9 on the Wii used DosBox.

Mobile devices do not have the peripherals to properly use ZQ. Your phone has a keyboard but what about a mouse? ZQ is also not designed for touch screen input.

Also a modest ZC quest uses 6 input buttons(a b l r start map) and an 8 direction dpad excluding the possible Ex1-4 and mouse inputs. This makes it difficult for playing on touch screen devices.

All of this being said, I would love to see ZC ported to mobile devices. I personally would prefer Android as I am not a member of the Maemo or Meego communities.

Thanks for the warm welcome!

Well, the devices I mentioned, the N900, N9 and the N950 should have enough power to run it.
Believe me, the N900 is a BEAST :)
You can just pop in a Mouse and there you go, you have a mouse on your mobile device. USB Host mode. (bluetooth keyb/mouse also works)
Pop the TV OUT cable in, and you have an awesome "console" :)

Another thing to mention is that there is also a Game Gripper for the N900.
You just snap it on the N900 over the keyboard, and voila... you have gamebuttons which should work perfectly
http://www.portablegear.nl/media/visuals/nieuws/groot/nokia-n900-gamegrip-groot.jpg

Allegro is already ported on the N900...
http://wiki.maemo.org/Allegro

About Non Touchscreen apps... have a look at this (Skip to 2:20):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJghBapvnC0

What I really want to have ported is at least the gameplay part... (The creation part could be done. As shown on the video above that even THIS could be achieved on the N900)

[SUCCESSOR]

Allegro is already ported on the N900...
http://wiki.maemo.org/Allegro


Well sweet. If Allegro is ported then there may be a fair chance that ZC could run well in the N9 phones. To actually get access to the code before it goes Open Source you will have to talk to a ZC Developer. Also I know almost nothing about Allegro and nothing about how ZC is built.

Since you posted this I am wondering how difficult it would be to port ZC/Allegro to Android with Android NDK. I suppose with a large touch screen(I have a 4.7inch screen with 720p display) most quests could be playable with a touch screen.

[HtheB]

Well sweet. If Allegro is ported then there may be a fair chance that ZC could run well in the N9 phones. To actually get access to the code before it goes Open Source you will have to talk to a ZC Developer. Also I know almost nothing about Allegro and nothing about how ZC is built.

Since you posted this I am wondering how difficult it would be to port ZC/Allegro to Android with Android NDK. I suppose with a large touch screen(I have a 4.7inch screen with 720p display) most quests could be playable with a touch screen.

After a quick search, it seems like that allegro is ported aswell to Android. So Maemo AND Android both could be done if you ask me :)

[Gleeok]

HtheB: Yes, it is possible. Post 2.5 ZC is all going to be open-source; you've just got us at the transitioning phase right now, where, I'm sorry to say, we are lagging a bit. (We are working on it.)


After a quick search, it seems like that allegro is ported aswell to Android. So Maemo AND Android both could be done if you ask me :)
I could be mistaken but I believe only the allegro 5 branch works on Android. Unfortunately 4.x and 5 are incompatible (A5 is D3D/GL hardware accelerated and has no packfiles). I think someone was working on an allegro 4 to 5 wrapper library but I don't know how complete it is.

Personally, I'd love to see ZC ports for the Wii, PSP, Android (OUYA) consoles. The DS may be very difficult if not impossible though...IDK. Were you able to run allegro examples on any devices with success so far?

[HtheB]

HtheB: Yes, it is possible. Post 2.5 ZC is all going to be open-source; you've just got us at the transitioning phase right now, where, I'm sorry to say, we are lagging a bit. (We are working on it.)


I could be mistaken but I believe only the allegro 5 branch works on Android. Unfortunately 4.x and 5 are incompatible (A5 is D3D/GL hardware accelerated and has no packfiles). I think someone was working on an allegro 4 to 5 wrapper library but I don't know how complete it is.

Personally, I'd love to see ZC ports for the Wii, PSP, Android (OUYA) consoles. The DS may be very difficult if not impossible though...IDK. Were you able to run allegro examples on any devices with success so far?

Allegro 4 (version 4.4.2) is ported on the N900 as told before, so there are a couple games that uses Allegro on the N900.

Check out the discussion concerning this:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1050896
and on https://www.allegro.cc/forums/thread/607818

[HtheB]

any news regarding this?
or any news when this will be open source?

Cant wait to port it! :)

[Gleeok]

Once the public repo is up there will be a public zc-port branch where the goal is to get ZC (Not ZQ) off of Allegro4 so it can be ported to Homebrew, Android, etc.. hopefully we can find some more people willing to help ou with this as well.

As for when, I am not sure. I am not involved with design/coding the new site stuff so I can't give any kind of answer on that. I will try to get a status update from DD though.

[HtheB]

Is the source still not released yet?
I still want to port this game to the N900.... :(

Any news would be welcome guys...

[CJC]

ARGH! Forum ate my post!


So I'll just summarize what I said: The code is currently built on a language that is dated, and in fact is causing compatibility issues with even the latest operating systems (hence our problems with Windows 8 at the moment). Many of the original programmers have moved on and some of them have admitted to using untidy coding practices because they were only learning about coding at the time. In short, it is going to take a long time to sort out these hiccups while keeping the program backwards compatible (if that is even possible).


Rest assured we will send you a message when we have an estimate.

[Zim]

Albeit this sounds like a really great idea for "regular" ZC games, i.g. games without a lot of scripting or extra stuff, those smaller devices are probably NEVER going to have the processing and memory to actually run a full-fledged original quest file on ZC with a lot of extras and scripting, they just aren't big enough to actually be able to do that without having some sort of linkage to a device with more capacity for storage.
I mean, the only way I could think of that this would feasibly work is if someone linked a super fast wifi connection with an Android, and communicated with a base computer with wifi as to the graphics and the inputs, so the inputs go directly to the larger computer, and the larger computer does the actual computing, then the smaller device receives the feed of what the sound and graphics are doing frame by frame. If that were done right, a smaller device would be able to run a large quest file with the help of a more capable machine. This screams Wii U to me, basically the same principle as the touch screen interface device.

I already mentioned this but what I'm referring to is stuff like the file I made Zim.qst:
I was running that on a Toshiba i7 4-core processors brand new laptop. That thing could run ZC at 3000+ fps, and run Zim.qst with absolutely no slowdown. A smaller device would pretty much fail miserably at such a task, because it just doesn't have the hardware to do so, it's just not possible.

[King Aquamentus]

If the current version goes to android, I might do more in ZC more often.

EDIT: and I'm pretty sure my device can handle at least a single quest, even a big one.

[Zim]

That was just a guess on my part, I've never even actually owned my own android yet.

[HtheB]

ARGH! Forum ate my post!


So I'll just summarize what I said: The code is currently built on a language that is dated, and in fact is causing compatibility issues with even the latest operating systems (hence our problems with Windows 8 at the moment). Many of the original programmers have moved on and some of them have admitted to using untidy coding practices because they were only learning about coding at the time. In short, it is going to take a long time to sort out these hiccups while keeping the program backwards compatible (if that is even possible).


Rest assured we will send you a message when we have an estimate.

Dated or not, it should work on the N900 out of the box (or with minimal changes to it).
That is the reason why I ask for the sources in the current stage.

Read the first page to know why :P
I still hope one of the devs will read this...

[SUCCESSOR]

Dated or not, it should work on the N900 out of the box (or with minimal changes to it).
That is the reason why I ask for the sources in the current stage.

Read the first page to know why :P
I still hope one of the devs will read this...

I am sure it can run on the N900. It runs on my laptop and that says a lot. Though, It's a limited experience as I have read that N900 can't process sound for Allegro games and the experience isn't perfect. If you can show proof of your experience/capability with porting/game development then I am sure it would be no problem to hand you the code.

I wish we would release the code right now. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long.

[HtheB]

I am sure it can run on the N900. It runs on my laptop and that says a lot. Though, It's a limited experience as I have read that N900 can't process sound for Allegro games and the experience isn't perfect. If you can show proof of your experience/capability with porting/game development then I am sure it would be no problem to hand you the code.

I wish we would release the code right now. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long.
It's been almost over a year now... Still no source :( :( :(