[Prima Aprilis][Pre-Announce]The Witcher SDL Port
 

Inspired by wonderfull work of gdizzz, who bring us awesome Homeworld SDL port to N900, I started to search for other amazing games, that could run on our linux enviromnent via SDL.

The Witcher SDL project got my attention, especially, that I remember RED Engine being very customizable form the beginning (on native windoze, II was able to set it up for such exotic things as 840x525 resolution, and it worked flawlessly!).

It turned out to be right bet, and after messing with dozens of OpenGLES 1 oddities, I've come with sometihng to show. It's still very early stage of development - as expected, it runs OK on our native 800x480 resolution, but framerate is awful (yet), and sound doesn't work at all (say "hi" to our ancient pulseaudio version). There are, also, some minor things to fix, like pesky software cursor, appearing from time to time, but those are easy to fix.

I suspect huge performance gain (15-20%), when I manage to get rid of wrapping functions and run 100% native surface. Rest msut be achieved by turning off some expensive effects, that works solely on CPU in our case - like part of particle calculations, and some ambient lighting.

Preview video here:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xym...ort_videogames

Sorry for quality of those video, I had only old Fujifilm Finepix Z at hand, and my tripod is damaged, so it's recorder from hand - also, after coding for 46 hours straight, I spent only 15 minutes on making this video. And, some screenshots from N900:

http://lorienart.pl/tw1.png
http://lorienart.pl/tw2.png
http://lorienart.pl/tw3.png

And yes, mwhile engine is FOSS, you *will* have to own original game data files, in order to play this.

More to come.

/Estel

Re: [Pre-Announce]The Witcher SDL Port
 

Wow 0.o ... This is amazing!!

Awesome job!

edit: 5am here... i just got it how you've done it.

Good work my friend ;)

Re: [Pre-Announce]The Witcher SDL Port
 

wow. if it can maintain those graphics it will probably be the best looking game on here.

Re: [Pre-Announce]The Witcher SDL Port
 

Wow i hava a super game with super graphics:) good job estel
you spent 48 hrs on this take a nap at least:(

Re: [Pre-Announce]The Witcher SDL Port
 

Announcing it on 1-Apr-2013 frightens me with the possibility it's an April Fool joke... :/

Re: [Pre-Announce]The Witcher SDL Port
 

Please say this is true!!!!!!!!!!!

Re: [Pre-Announce]The Witcher SDL Port
 

^^i dn think estel gonna fool us :)

Re: [Pre-Announce]The Witcher SDL Port
 

Hey guys I modified the source code estel sent me. I got it running on my 3310 but as usual the framerate is awful. Could someone write a gpu driver for 3310 with hw acceleration?

Re: [Pre-Announce]The Witcher SDL Port
 

grrrr Worst ever thread by ESTEL

Re: [Pre-Announce]The Witcher SDL Port
 

hehe nice aprils fool! Was it through VNC? :P

Re: [Pre-Announce]The Witcher SDL Port
 

Don't worry, I'll have a method of attaching a GTX Titan to the N900 without an external power supply soon enough.

Then we can play Crysis 3 at not-20 FPS!

Re: [Pre-Announce]The Witcher SDL Port
 

Yes, it was VNC on some "steroids" config, to make it faster over LAN connection. The fun thing, is that it was really "played" using N900's keyboard and touchscreen, while recording that video :P

I hope it also bring some more attention to gdizzz's Homeworld SDL port, which - by any means - isn't any kind of joke, and by now, most advanced game available for N900, natively or not.

As for The Witcher, while i like CDP RED studio that made it, and absolutely adore game itself, reality isn't as joyful for Linux users - Witcher depends much on DirectXShit(tm), and even by using wine, some unfixable bugs remain. Interestingly, MAC OS version uses almost same method as Wine, and there, those bugs are fixed - but, apparently, code changes haven't made it into PC code branch-> patches (so workaround for linux to get no bugs is to use mac version bits through wine... *sigh*).

There are rumors, that they're rewriting things to work on OpenGL instead (or at least, that Witcher 3 will use OpenGL), so I hope that my joke - which was also published on their's forum - will add to the motivation ;)

I wouldn't expect them to go Relic's say and release source code (like with Homeworld) - REDs still hope to sell someone rights to make game on their (The Witcher 2's) amazing engine. BTW, if anyone is still in doubt - no, even then, we wouldn't have enough resources to run ARM port of it ;)

/Estel