Soldat Ds?

[djgman]

*mockup, not real image*

Wow I haven't been here in ages...
Hello everyone, I've been playing around with the idea of soldat for the nds in my head for the past couple of days. I'm just wondering what the official soldat community thought of it along with the people designing the PC version. I thought up a pretty manageable control scheme for the game which aiming the angle of the gun is just using the stylus to rotate the gun on the bottom screen. The d pad could be used the same as aswd on the computer and the player could double tap the top and bottom D-pad buttons for crouching and using the jet boots. I've got all kinds of ideas flying in my head and I was wondering of any of you could have other input on whether or not this would be a plausible project or not. I'm also wondering if the ds could handle all the rendering of the levels and the bullets/bullet shells/blood/explosions, along with using the nds wifi. The library I'm going to end up using if there is enough support for the project is the PAlib library, but I already posted a topic about this on the forum over there and there wasn't much interest. So yeah, just wanted to start a little brainstorm over here and see what people think and listen to any ideas you all could come up with.

controls ideas:
abxy or dpad: for movement depending on writing hand.
Gun on the bottom screen: to rotate the gun angle and shot range.
L OR R: for shooting.
Start: main menu

Bottom screen buttons:
NADE: switches from gun to grenade mode(changes L and R to throwing grenades)
WEP: switches to secondary weapon(holding WEP throws your weapon)
REL: reloads your weapon.
CHAT: brings up bottom screen keyboard with options for team chat and regular chat

[UnknownSniper]

It's been 'suggested' Here
I myself think it is a bad idea and will never happen.

[djgman]

Wow that's a horrible screen setup...
how on earth would you move the cursor?

But yeah, I am a programmer and it will happen if I get enough support to program it and the original creators are ok with it.

[Twistkill]

* Twistkill lols at the chances of this happening.

[Thinkto urself]

Wow that's a horrible screen setup...
how on earth would you move the cursor?

But yeah, I am a programmer and it will happen if I get enough support to program it and the original creators are ok with it.

You can make a NDS game yourself, I'm not sure how, but the intarwabz should have a program to make .nds files that work. It's been done with the Java game, "Endless sand," So I can see it happening.

[djgman]

Umm... well I already program for the ds using the PAlib library, so I don't really need to search said "intarwabz" for that info. Also there is no "chance" in this, I'm trying to get ideas and comments on it beforehand so I don't waste my time programming something that people aren't going to play.

[.Long-Range]

aiming would be extremely hard with a DS since you would need your right hand to aim with the stylus on the touch screen and then your left hand on the D-pad for movement.

[djgman]

I don't see how it would be any harder than using a mouse really. It's also interchangeable with left handed people by using the abxy buttons for the dpad. Now obviously the bottom screen couldn't cover the aiming area that you could be using for say... the barret in the sniping mode. But I figure a way to compensate for it would be the as you move the stylus further away from the center of the gun on the bottom screen it would incrementally add a little more to the cursor x and y on the top screen.

[jrgp]

Not going to ever happen (read the stickies); the creator of Soldat has said that it will never be ported to a console. It's just...impossible. Reasons why:

• Soldat exclusively uses Microsoft's DirectX for graphics, which the DS doesn't support.
• Soldat is written in Borland Delphi which most likely does not have a compiler to make a binary for whatever processor and operating system the DS uses
• In the DS' case, it has extremely low specs. (I think like 10MHZ processor and a few megs of ram, the last time I looked.) That wouldn't support Soldat at all.
• In order to make a game for a console, you need the console's SDK, which you have to get a contract for which will cost a shitload of cash.

Sorry for being a killjoy, but you've gotta except this realization.

[djgman]

I'll just bold my arguments against your bullets. Eventually I can get more than "u can't do it hurrr" comments in here...

   * Soldat exclusively uses Microsoft's DirectX for graphics, which the DS doesn't support.

Well first of all it's not going to use soldat's actual source code. It will be coded from the ground up.

    * Soldat is written in Borland Delphi which most likely does not have a compiler to make a binary for whatever processor and operating system the DS uses

See above post.

    * In the DS' case, it has extremely low specs. (I think like 10MHZ processor and a few megs of ram, the last time I looked.) That wouldn't support Soldat at all.

The ds has two arm9 processors and over 4mb of on board RAM. That's more than enough resources to build a soldat client with.

    * In order to make a game for a console, you need the console's SDK, which you have to get a contract for which will cost a pooload of cash.

Wrong again, there are already two(or more) programming libraries made for programming the nds, which are libNDS and PAlib. libNDS was built similar to the Codewarrior SDK by the nds homebrew community and PAlib was built on top of the libNDS library.

Sorry for being a killjoy, but you've gotta except this realization.
*accept.

[EnEsCe]

So in other words your just wanting to make a clone of Soldat, though it wont actually be Soldat.

Bound to fail like the 50 other people who've tried it; but you can try ofcourse. Good luck

[jrgp]

djgman,

 -- Well first of all it's not going to use soldat's actual source code. It will be coded from the ground up.

MM said he won't port the code to Linux, which requires rewriting all of it from the ground up using OpenGL instead of DirectX. He said he won't ever do that, why would he do the same thing for a console game?

 -- The ds has two arm9 processors and over 4mb of on board RAM. That's more than enough resources to build a soldat client with.

sigh...

- A PC, a keyboard, a mouse, a brain
- 333mhz processor
- Video accelerator that can run Direct3D
- Graphics card compatible with DirectX 8.1
- 32 MB RAM
- Some free MB on disk
- Sound card
- Network card or modem
- Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP
- Microsoft DirectX 8.1

 -- Wrong again, there are already two(or more) programming libraries made for programming the nds, which are libNDS and PAlib. libNDS was built similar to the Codewarrior SDK by the nds homebrew community and PAlib was built on top of the libNDS library.

What? So you don't want Soldat to be a game cartridge you buy for the DS? You want it to be something that nerds have to patch their DS with and download onto it?

[djgman]

@enesce

Not a clone essentially. It would have the same graphics, sounds, gameplay, and setup as the pc version. Only real changes I would implement if possible would be a level editor and a gostek editor for it since the resources wouldn't be as openly editable as the PC version is.

@jrgp
I think you might want to actually read this topic. It's not MM who will do the programming, it will be me. (That is if he doesn't wanna help  )

and those manual specs won't have any effect on this since... well, it's not for pc...

Also the whole cartidge thing is wrong. I'm pretty sure this can't be a download play game... actually I'm positive of it just because of the complexity. If people wanted to play they would just need to buy a flash cart like an m3, cycloDS,r4,etc and run it like any other homebrew. If people don't want to buy a nds flash cart they can also run it in an emulator, but it kinda defeats the purpose. One good thing about running it in an emulator would be that it would be loads easier on people on linux.

[jrgp]

You seem to be completely unaware of how much time, work, and money this would take. Do you have any prior game development? Any programming knowledge at all? You'll need to design the netcode, map parsers, lobby server, Soldat dedicated server, graphics engine, sound engine, and a bunch of other stuff. (millions of lines of code, why don't you read up on game development, why don't you?)

No, you can't use Soldat's existing lobby and server since they are meant for the "real" closed source Soldat, not some weirdo clone which won't make it.

"and those manual specs won't have any effect on this since... well, it's not for pc..."
Doesn't matter if you want to keep all of Soldat's speed, visuals, and sounds.

Oh, and you can't use MM's sounds or graphics without MM's permission.

"One good thing about running it in an emulator would be that it would be loads easier on people on linux. "
...
Do you look around at all? Have you even noticed this gigantic thread about getting Soldat to work on Linux through the Wine emulator?

[chutem]

jrgp, I think you've been beaten.

Just, Djgman, it probably won't 'feel' the same as normal soldat, unless you get the gravity to work exactly the same and stuff like that. But I have a feeling that you will be able to do this.

[djgman]

Ugh... dude seriously you have no idea what you're talking about.


You seem to be completely unaware of how much time, work, and money this would take. Do you have any prior game development? Any programming knowledge at all? You'll need to design the netcode, map parsers, lobby server, Soldat dedicated server, graphics engine, sound engine, and a bunch of other stuff. (millions of lines of code, why don't you read up on game development, why don't you?)

I know how much time it takes to make a game, I've been doing it for 4 years. Homebrew doesn't cost anything. No, it won't be millions of lines of code. I program in c/c++.

No, you can't use Soldat's existing lobby and server sense they are meant for the "real" Soldat, not some weirdo clone which won't make it.

It won't use  the existing lobby as I'll be designing my own server and client for it.

"and those manual specs won't have any effect on this since... well, it's not for pc..."
Doesn't matter if you want to keep all of Soldat's speed, visuals, and sounds.

the game will be the same regardless.

Oh, and you can't use MM's sounds or graphics without MM's permission

That's why I made this topic for his input and input from the community

"One good thing about running it in an emulator would be that it would be loads easier on people on linux. "
...
Do you look around at all? Have you even noticed this gigantic thread about getting Soldat to work on Linux through the Wine emulator?

I meant running it in a nds emulator like IDeaS or NDSESUME...

@chutem
I'm pretty sure I can get the physics very close to the pc version with time, so there is no reason worry there.

[jrgp]

"I know how much time it takes to make a game, I've been doing it for 4 years. Homebrew doesn't cost anything. No, it won't be millions of lines of code. I program in c/c++. "

To make what kind of a game? A pacman clone? You saying you program in c/c++ doesn't help your case at all since those two languages usually use a lot more code than alternatives to accomplish the same exact task, with the benifit of speed and efficiency.

[djgman]

A pacman clone would take about 200-300 lines of C at the most to make.
Delphi was built on top of c/c++ and has to be interpreted through it. The nds typically doesn't use interprated languages like delphi or java because they take up too much processing power. 

[jrgp]

A pacman clone would take about 200-300 lines of C at the most to make.
Delphi was built on top of c/c++ and has to be interpreted through it. The nds typically doesn't use interprated languages like delphi or java because they take up too much processing power. 

So, you're saying what...?

[djgman]

C is a low level language.
Dephi is an interpreted language.

Dephi was built to give more ease to the programmer rather than the hardware.

Can we get back on topic now please?