Where are the old dos-like RPG games? Can you say rogue? Nethack?

[Jason Arthur Taylor]

http://www.dosgames.com/g_rpg.php
http://www.dosgames.com/screens/rogue.gif


Why no games like this on the rockbox??  Seems perfect since there is no typing required usually.  Just up down left right and the you need to select like a potion to use on the monster and the direction to cast the spell, etc.  Seems like it would be a simple select button that would pop up a keyboard-like option menu.  How much work is it to do a port from borland c++ to arm?  I gotta a sansa clip.  Just guessing it is an arm cpu though.

[saratoga]

If the source is available under suitable license, probably not too difficult.  I'd guess the problem is lack of interest. 

[GodEater]

How much work is it to do a port from borland c++ to arm?

This question is entirely irrelevant, since nethack is written in C, not C++.

This is good news - since getting C++ code to compile and run with Rockbox is something no-one has worked on ever. This doesn't mean it'll be easy though.

[torne]

Nethack has something in the region of 100 commands, how are you going to map them? It's not just up/down/left/right, pretty much every key on the keyboard is used, with and without shift, then some more with alt...

[GodEater]

...and actual typed commands you access from the '#' prompt.

It would be a pretty hectic menu system to cope with all that.

[torne]

Having said that there do exist ports of Nethack to shockingly constrained systems, but they are mostly very hard to play.

Powder (http://www.zincland.com/powder/) is a roguelike under a Creative Commons licence which is designed for input-constrained systems such as the GBA and PSP, this might be possible to port but while open source it is not compatible with the Rockbox license.

My still work-in-progress Frotz port (Z-machine text adventures) implements a primitive buffered TTY-like display for Frotz's benefit; this code would probably be useful to anyone who wanted to port text mode games, though its API is not much like curses. I am considering expanding it and making it more curseslike for general use

[saratoga]

Are there any GPL versions of nethack?  The ports I've seen all have some weird non-GPL license, and wiki says the original is also under that license, so unless someone has rewritten it from scratch I doubt any ports are GPL.

[Jason Arthur Taylor]

Code: [Select]

C:\>grep -i shareware "Role Playing Games_ Nethack, Rogue, Unreal World, and many more!.htm" | wc & grep -i freeware "Role Playing Games_ Nethack, Rogue, Unreal World, and many more!.htm" | wc
     14     236    3372
     20     248    4409
C:\>expr 20 * 100 / ( 14 + 20 )
58

In english=58% of those RPG dos games are freeware.  Freeware != GPL, but isn't it close? Like, dude, send an email to a randomly picked author and code will be sitting in the inbox my morning.  I'd put $$ on it.  And maybe a bounty, but not much.

This thread reminds me to ask the obvious or too stupid to ask quesiton (not sure which it is, but at least this is off topic): where is the x86 arm dos emulator plugin?  Did transmeta's stench smoke them out?  640kb is dos max, so should run on most of these boxes, no?  Sort of like putting 1950 hemi engine inside a yugo.

[saratoga]

Freeware != GPL, but isn't it close?

No thats not how licensing works.  All rockbox code must be under a GPL compatible license.  If its free but not GPL you cannot use it in Rockbox. 

[[Saint]]

If its free but not GPL you cannot use it in Rockbox. 

Well....it couldn't be included in any official build of Rockbox, but it could be used, just not "legally".
What the end user does is their business, but Rockbox certainly isn't going to get involved in any legal disputes over licensing for using code that is non GPL.

In theory, (if anyone wanted to take the risk) there's nothing to stop anyone from porting non GPL code for use with Rockbox and uploading it somewhere....but the Rockbox Team certainly won't do it.


Basically, it can be done, just not "legally"....but what anyone wants to get up to in their own time is their business I guess 
I probably couldn't say that I wouldn't use it if someone did manage to port one of these games, but I wouldn't make a huge song and dance about doing so...



Anyway....a HUGE issue would be the keyboard I'd say, as the virtual keyboard currently has no shift or alt input.


[St.]

[saratoga]

Basically, it can be done, just not "legally"....but what anyone wants to get up to in their own time is their business I guess 
I probably couldn't say that I wouldn't use it if someone did manage to port one of these games, but I wouldn't make a huge song and dance about doing so...

If you're going to violate our licenses, I suggest you not tell everyone about it if you would like to continue to participate on this website.

[[Saint]]

Whoa, I think you took that wrong, while I did say there's nothing "theoretically" stopping anyone from doing so (due to free will), I never said I'd done so, and pointed out particularly that violating a non GPL license is not something that Rockbox would get involved in.

[Llorean]

No, but the part he quoted where you said

I probably couldn't say that I wouldn't use it if someone did manage to port one of these games, but I wouldn't make a huge song and dance about doing so...

says you almost certainly would do so if the opportunity would arise.

Generally speaking we ask people to actively and strongly discourage license violations. The GPL is one of the things that makes open source strong and it require respect of the license from both sides.

[saratoga]

Whoa, I think you took that wrong,

No I did not.  

[[Saint]]

Yeah, sorry, I see the point.