Prince of Persia source code

[Yautja]

"Game industry veteran Jordan Mechner has released the source code for the original Apple II version of Prince of Persia, more than two decades after the game's release":

 

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/168709/Prince_of_Persias_oncelost_source_code_released.php

 

Would this be useful to have a port of this game for Atari 8-bits? Anyway, here´s the link to the source files:

 

https://github.com/jmechner/Prince-of-Persia-Apple-II

 

- Y -

[snicklin]

Wow! And he has documented it too!

 

I'm sure that some of the gurus on here will pick this up to play with.

 

It uses a lot of RAM though, I remember this being flagged up as a potential problem before. Can this be overcome?

[+DarkLord]

Be nice to see it on the 8bit - its a classic on the ST - the movement of the character/animation

is really nice!

[MrFish]

Superb! Many thanks to Jordan for releasing.

[Rybags]

Source Files.zip

 

The download link on the site doesn't have the package, so I grabbed each file the hard way.

Also includes the PDF with tech info, licence file not included (just points to readme), readme.mkd renamed to readme.txt

 

First step in any conversion would be to take this source and generate/verify a working game for Apple 2.

[MrFish]

Source Files.zip

 

The download link on the site doesn't have the package, so I grabbed each file the hard way.

Also includes the PDF with tech info, licence file not included (just points to readme), readme.mkd renamed to readme.txt

 

First step in any conversion would be to take this source and generate/verify a working game for Apple 2.

 

I didn't have any problem downloading the package with everything in a single zip archive.

[Rybags]

Crap... I was trying the wrong link from the page and it was coming up empty. Got it now.

[MrFish]

First step in any conversion would be to take this source and generate/verify a working game for Apple 2.

 

Don't try compiling just yet. If you go back to the site where the source code is and click the link at the top "Issues", you'll find that they didn't actually upload all of the files yet. Apparently some of the data files have not been converted/added.

[Rybags]

I suspected that might be the case - probably some graphics stuff.

 

If it comes down to stuff missing and it's game assets like that, it wouldn't necessarily be a huge drama, it could probably just be ripped from the game files or a memory snapshot.

[MrFish]

Supposedly they're going to be posting the other files soon too.

[mrsid]

I wouldn't count on that. Seems like Jordan has not much interest in dealing with this anymore.

 

If someone needs them, I've extracted the Apple II image tables a while ago, and made them available here: http://www.twinbirds.com/prince_of_persia/pop_apple2_imagetables.zip

The .bin files have two bytes of start address at the beginning, and those should match up with the memory locations at the top of GAMEEQ.S (chtable1, chtable2 and so on until bgtable1 and bgtable2). The directories also include the images converted to .png which might be useful to someone...

Of course the whole thing is under the assumption that somebody can actually assemble the Merlin files and run them on something.

[mrsid]

Oops, seems like I mixed up chtab2 and 3... My bad.

[MrFish]

I was just going by these two quotes on the site where the source-code was uploaded:

 

"The initial commit of the source code is missing some files, which will be converted and added in the future. Therefore, it is not likely the code can be compiled into a working model... yet."

 

"Tony Diaz has a copy of the data files and will be back filling in additional files soon to make the code more complete."

[/Quote]

 

It sounds to me like they plan on adding the missing files.

 

Thanks for posting the image tables though.

[peteym5]

Would be interesting to get something like that ported to the Atari 8-Bit. I am sure we can doing something with Antic-4 mode and overlayed player/missile graphics. Maybe use Super-IRG to help simulate the Apple 2 colors. Don't think the Apple 2 had hardware sprites. Getting around memory problems on the Atari should not be too hard. The 8-bits are running at better speeds. We have 128K to 1088k models, along with big bank switching flash cartridges. Someone might consider doing both a standard hardware and a VBXE version.

[Shamus]

Looks like the rest (or just some?) of the missing files were posted on Github recently.

[+Adam+]

Prince of Persia code review by Fabien Sanglard:

 

http://fabiensanglard.net/prince_of_persia/

[Wrathchild]

Has anyone made headway into getting the PoP codebase ported to an A8 assembler?

The other thread regarding graphic formats and A8 methods etc died around August and so have all efforts to port this stalled?

[Rybags]

The code review doesn't help a lot, mainly gives an A2 and 6502 overview then explains the bootloader concept and larger sector format used by PoP and many commercial titles of the time.

 

Has anyone made progress? I kinda doubt it.

 

My recommended approach would be:

1. Assemble Github source code then build disk image using original method, ensure the thing actually works on A2.

2. Convert to modern X-platform assembler, do asm/build process then test and compare to previously generated one.

3. Remove copy protection stuff, test etc. Once done, conversion could begin.

 

But that's the easy part (before conversion) - I've not really delved into the code but there'd be all manner of hurdles to overcome.