Rocks'n'Diamonds development source code available now!

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Holger
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Rocks'n'Diamonds development source code available now!

Post by Holger »

The latest development version of the Rocks'n'Diamonds source code is finally available via Git:

Code: Select all

$ git clone http://git.artsoft.org/rocksndiamonds.git
Check out some of the new features of the next release version:

- SDL2 support, including window scaling and improved fullscreen mode
- support of all image, sound and music formats supported by SDL_image and SDL_mixer
- support of different sizes and locations of playfield, game panel and tape area
- support of different sizes of custom graphics for game elements (other than 32x32)
- experimental Android version (some Makefiles still missing in repository though)

Always available from the Download section now!
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Holger
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Re: Rocks'n'Diamonds development source code available now!

Post by Holger »

Some additions and hints about running the current development version of R'n'D:

The current version uses the same graphic files as release version 3.3.1.2, but in PNG format instead of PCX format. Therefore, please just convert all PCX files in folder "graphics/gfx_classic" from PCX to PNG. All other existing artwork of all other existing level sets with custom graphics can (and should) be left unchanged as PCX files, of course; the next version of R'n'D supports all graphic formats that SDL_image/SDL2_image supports. Just the classic default graphic definitions have been changed.

The current source code snapshot in the Git repository does not yet contain all files required to build the Android version, as this has to be cleaned up first. I hope I will have it in a distributable form soon.

The next step will be to create "nightly builds" (well, sort of) either manually from time to time, or when the source code in the "master" branch has changed. This will probably be limited to the Windows and Android version, as the Linux systems may be too different to provide one single binary that runs everywhere. (Maybe a statically linked binary will do it; this would have to be tested.) But building the Linux version shouldn't be too hard anyway.

Currently the development version can be compiled and run with either SDL (1.2.x) or SDL2 (2.0.x); maybe support for the relatively outdated SDL version 1.2.x will be dropped soon.

When built with SDL2, the R'n'D window can now be scaled (resized) up and down either with the mouse, or using the usual Ctrl-"+", Ctrl-"-" and Ctrl-"0" keyboard shortcuts. This does not change the size of the playfield (in number of tiles), but just scales the whole window content to make the window larger (or smaller, but I doubt that anybody will need this). Using Alt-Enter or F11 toggles to fullscreen mode, which does not "destroy" your desktop resolution and window arrangements, but uses a "desktop fullscreen" mode which always uses the same screen resolution, but scales the game window to the full screen size (respecting aspect ratio, of course). (When built with SDL instead of SDL2, "real" fullscreen modes were used, like 800x600, which could mess up you desktop on recent Linux systems instead of switching to a "real" fullscreen mode, like it did years ago.)

Last but not least, the possibilities to customize various aspects of the game window (like playfield size in number of tiles, tile size itself, size and position of game panel and tape recorder area, and the dimensions of the game window itself) have been extended to quite some degree. Some of the custom level sets of Eizzoux for R'n'D 3.3.1.2 have already shown a little bit of what is possible now. I will describe the new possibilities a little bit more in a separate post, with some examples to demonstrate what can be done with it.
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