Dreerally

Hi to all!,

Much time from the last updates of dreerally.

At this moment I move the development phase to Shrieker because all logic is recognized, and we need to start fixing bugs and refactor code (a lot!).

Now I’m focus in the menus of the game, I increase the stability of them and I start to fix some typographic and graphic errors to have a version near the original one.

Also, now it can be a good idea to open issues in github to solve them in order. Feel free to open what you want, the only requesite is to put clear information and things not very big. For example: «In the driver’s license page, the name of the driver is not well written».

As always I show some screenshots:

The main objetive of the project is possible and near 🙂

Regards

«Listen to True Tom. I tell no lies»

Hi to all,

Long time have passed since the last update, but waiting has ended.

These months I was involved in the portability feature to allow enjoy Dreerally in other platforms like Linux.

As Dreerally use SDL1.2 and FMOD 3.75 I suppose that it could be ported easily, but not. The first problem was compiling the source code, it had a los of windows references in some include files like windows.h, so I try to select imports via compilation variables 🙂 .

The next problem was that I wasn’t able to make a correct Makefile because libraries are not included well. In this situation Neuromancer helped me to compile well under Travis CI using a 64 bit Ubuntu machine.

Then I need to change a few pointer (there are a lot of errors) and Dreerally starts!

At this moment it is a preliminar version but it the next days I try to merge this feature-portability branch with the 0.2.x version and close this version.

The next step probably gives me the oportunity to solve a lot of errors on windows, code refactoring, code syntax validation and more.

As always, I share a small video running Dreerally on Linux.

Regards.

Hi to all,

Today I have uploaded a new funcionality to the repo: the i18n subsystem. This is a basic implementation but allow people to do their our translations.

Here is the way to add a new language:

• Create a new file under lang directory, for example langBr.txt. Please, follow this name lang%locale%.txt
• Add your entries to this file. You can copy from langEs.txt
• Launch dreerally.exe with the parameter -lang=langBr to use your translation.
• If everything goes well, please, do a merge request to the project 🙂

Also I fix some small issues in the menu and new game screen.

Regards

Hi to all,

Death rally is not death, and it appears that 2019 will be the most exciting year since the launch of the game in 1996 and the release for windows years ago.

A lot of projects are open and are have updates very often.

I start with the Death rally editor (https://www.advancedstudios.it/forum/threads/editor-completo-death-rally.3723/): his author, Simone, tries to do an editor for this amazing game. Now, we can edit the savegames (great utility for the development of dreerally), bpa extract/compress tool and image decryptor.  Simone is doing a great job and in the future we expect image swaping and the hability to modify/create new circuits (this could be awesome! and will give a new life to this game).

The second project is drally (https://github.com/urxp/drally). His author, urpx, has decompiled the classic dos version of the game and tries to generate the assembler version. This is the younger project but it appears to have great development speed.

The third project is Death rally launcher. At this moment this project is death in favour of dreerally. This project allow us to change the number of laps of a race, but this kind of this will be very easy to configurate in dreerally (via mods or something similar).

And the last one is Dreerally. This project started in 2016 with the idea to learn how to use debugger and other tools like Ida, but with some time results appears and dreerally become a real project with objetives.

In dreerally the main idea is to have the same game that Death Rally in a higth level programming language. With this scenario we will add more features like traslation,multiplayer, mods, new circuits…. and all things we can imagine.

At this moment all kind of files are decompiled and its format is undertand (you can see in the wiki of the project i guthub), and you can complete a race with a los of issues but from my point of view, these issues are not very important (are easier to resolve that the 3dsystem or the music effects subsystem).

The project advances very quickly, think that one year ago the race environment was not implemented, we had no intro video,  we had no sound effects, so develop speed is nice at this moment.

In this months of 2019 and 2020, my plan is to open the project to the comunity to increase this speed and receive the feedback of people to resolve the game issues (i know it, there are a lot 🙂 ), but the idea is to have a funcional game in the next year.

I have no more to say, but I am very happy with this scenario because i am a great fan of the classic Death rally.

Regards

Hi to all,

Today i have very great news about dreerally. Last week i finally ended the reimplementation of the sound effects system!

I think this was one of the most difficult task in dreerally for now. The sound effect system is based is the know minifmod development to load all xm files. Each sound effect system file is crypted (why?) and then have a lot of sounds that are loaded. Each sound effect system file is loaded in one channel, so we can have up to 32 files loaded in memory (nowadays is not a problem because memory are much bigger). Inside each file there are a lot of sounds that are loaded as instruments in minifmod.

Then there are a few tricks to calculate the correct frecuency of the sound and the volume, probably this solution is not perfect and need a little tweak, but for now is enought.

So, with this update I can say that ALL asset files are decompiled (may there is some bug) :), whe are near to the Shrieker phase when we can start modding, traslating and more.

The next step is to publish the source code (I need time to reorder things and allow people to use vstudio o mingw compiler, maybe it can be compiled under linux). At this time we can create issues, month releases, and people can colaborate with this amazing project.

From my point of view, at now, there is no reason to think that this project will be not concluded. From last summer to now I afford the mos complicated task involving, sound effect system, 3d system, animation system, all track files interpretation and the possibility to drive a race.

Probably at this point I will need some people to test the game and report issues because, probsbly this people will be more critic than me 🙂

At last, I only want that at this moment I have the all information of assets (music,effects,tracks,anims,textures), most of it were published months ago, but if someone is planning to develop a death rally(dreerally) new tracks or some stuff you can ask me what you need. Maybe I will publish a version in wich you can put your asset without crypt to make your task easier.

I hope you enjoy this article and follow updates of this great game on www.dreerally.com

Hi to all,

Due to various problems I have not been able to continue with the Dreerally project these months as I would have liked. But I would like you to know that the project is still alive!

From now on I will try to continue publishing articles in which you can see the progress of the project more frequently, and I am even considering releasing the project in github so that you can collaborate in it.

This project, although it does not look like it, has a long journey, imagine a game where there can be more than 20 runners, multiplayer, new circuits, new mechanics for racing. For the moment I leave you a first step with the first «release» of the project.

https://github.com/enriquesomolinos/DreeRally/releases/tag/0.1

Thanks to all for your interest.

Hi all!

As is always happening in recent weeks, the advances in the future are still many :).

This time the part I have reimplimented is the 3d system in the race. This system consists of 3D elements and textures that are painted on some of these objects.

The truth is to see the «simplicity» of the solution, since the 3d objects are only polygons painted in one color and in the upper part a texture is incorporated, the solution looks very good.

After several weeks of work with a lot of help from Simone (thank you very much) we have been able to understand how it works and thus be able to reimplement it (it is at 99%).

I leave a video of how the development is currently:

Throughout the following days, the specification of the 3d system files of the game will be added to the project wiki.

Greetings to all.

Hi!, good news from here,

I have started to rewrite the IA module and you can see the first results! :). Here is the first complete race for the IA players (they win me 🙁 ).

This situation confirms the information published on the wiki about circuit files (https://github.com/enriquesomolinos/DreeRally/wiki) with one modification. THe OHI file is not the optimal way, this file contain the routes to ovaertake other players, or to avoid mines, so this file allow IA players to modify the optimal route defined in the file LR1.

Hi all, Due to my last post about the advances in the graphic engine and the lighting system, I have spent some time documenting all the types of files that intervene in the game.

For each of them I have explained in a quick way how to read them. In this way I can say that, except for the texture text of the circuits TRX_SCE.BPK, the rest of the files already understand the information they have, and I also know what and how they are used in the game.

I leave the link to the project wiki where I will be adding more information: https://github.com/enriquesomolinos/DreeRally/wiki

I hope this information will help you.