Beta M.a.x Reloaded


Stuckie

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Heya,

This was a nice quick port.. though there isn't a great deal you can do with it just now, hence why I'm sticking it in beta testing for the moment.
As per the project's site - http://www.maxr.org - there is no Single Player, only online Multi Player, which does limit it's scope a bit. However, it was on the ports request wiki page, and I built it on the Pandora in a couple hours without any issue, so hopefully it makes someone happy, at least!

You can grab it from my Pandora PND dump here: http://www.stuckiegamez.co.uk/apps/pandora/maxr.pnd
It weighs in at about 40mb, and only contains the free content in the M.A.X.R download; I don't have a copy of the original M.A.X to test their reloader to get the original assets, I'm afraid.. but it should just be a case of creating a "share/maxr/" folder in /pandora/appdata/maxr and sticking the files in there once the reloader's done it's job.

Any issues, gimme a shout.. I had a quick muck about with it, and it seems to work fine.

Hint: Press Alt+Return for full screen ;)
 
hey cool, didn't know about this project at all; MAX was a total flop really, so surprised it even came up; I loved MAX, but Interplay (I think it was them) didn't, so it got shorted bad..

I remember at the time, they were going public and needed to bolster their image, so they released MAX unfinished; like, it had not even been beta tested yet, the company just nabbed one of the developer imnages and good to go; the Single Player was actually impossible at many points due to broken mission requirements (or being impossible to satisfy), and there was no MP at all (even though the features on the box suggested it did, etc.) Brutal .. but still a great game. MAX2 was supposed to rectify all this, but they pulled nearly the same stunt, so MAX2 died a horrible death as well.

So no single player is sort of ironic, in light of it not having multiplayer before :)

Once they do get some AI in there, I'm in :)

MAX1 does run okay in Dosbox btw,

jeff
 
The game itself look interesting, but it is unreadable (for me) on Pandora's screen. This is due to combination of my bad sight with too small letters (small font on small display). Actually I curious if it is comfortable size even for people with healthy sight. :)
Can You do something with font size please? (I doubt, but must ask)
 
I'll have a look.. but unfortunately, the game does seem designed for 640x480 display with that font.. and as it's using SDL, it's probably not got anything to scale things properly, I'm afraid.

M.A.X was one of these games I actually wanted to play when it came out, as I was quite into all these style of games ( Masters of Orion, Imperium Galactica, Stars!, Pax Imperia, etc.. ) but never had a chance to as I never managed to find it in the shops. Granted, I lived in a small town where there weren't really any games shops to begin with, but still ;)

Wouldn't mind working on a little Turn-Based Strategy game for the Pandora, with hotseat/internet/PlayByEmail support.. that could be fun :) I kindof already have a base for it with my Ludum Dare 16 prototype, derelict_ - http://www.stuckiegamez.co.uk/index.php?page=sgamez-derelict which I've already compiled and have working on the Pandora, but the font's a bit mad ( it replaces " " with "!" for some reason ) and there wasn't much feedback or game play done at the time.

So little time, so much to play with!
 
I'm working on a multiplayer turn based game; got totally derailed by the Panda firmware and all the other projects (snes etc), but hoping to get back to it soon. The eternal question for me was .. make it a web-type client, or a native client. (With a js/css type client, you do get for free the desktop side as well, but its a huuuuge PITA to do due to the browsers on all devices totalyl sucking for feature compatibility.. ie: Canvas, etc. And god help you with opengl in a browser. Going native means you can use opengl etc, but also means we have al imited audience. Hmmmm...)

jeff
 
Could always do both ;)

Have the server do the majority of the work so that you could have a web client and a native client - they're effectively sending the same information, just how they display and deal with it could be different.
I experimented with this for a while, having a basic 2D tile-based web client display, and a 3D OpenGL display ( with multi-coloured boxes! woo! ) and it's certainly doable.. a bit insane to do everything yourself, but it does at least mean you can tailor clients to fit specific hardware needs :)

And wow, derailing my own thread ;)

darfgarf on the "other" board ( sounds naughty, doesn't it? ;) ) might be trying the original M.A.X assets with M.A.X.R at some point.. hopefully it works :) I don't have the original, so I can't test myself.. but I don't see why it wouldn't.
 
Stuckie said:
darfgarf on the "other" board ( sounds naughty, doesn't it? ;) ) might be trying the original M.A.X assets with M.A.X.R at some point.. hopefully it works :) I don't have the original, so I can't test myself.. but I don't see why it wouldn't.

oi! i'm here aswell :p (though rarely)

couldn't get the extractor to work on my original disc, but it worked with an old rip i had lying around, or at least it loaded sound effects for the units, works exactly as it does on a desktop

oh and after abotu half an hour of tapping around with the stylus, it can get an offset somehow, so the cursor isn't where you want it, just window and fullscreen again and it seems to reset it
 
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Ah good :)

Don't know about the stylus offset thing.. I tend to use the nubs more than the touchscreen ( I often forget the touchscreen exists, actually! those nubs are so good ;) ) but I remember OpenTTD getting somewhat of the same issue in full screen, but it running fine in windowed mode, so I'll assume it's something outside the code for now.

This was a hugely straight forward port.. it only needed a recompile to run. Feel a bit guilty for "stealing" an easy port, too!

At any rate, should I throw it onto the download archives then, since it seems to work as well as it does on the desktop?
I'd probably put a note up saying that it doesn't have single player, of course.. which does limit it somewhat.
 
Stuckie said:
should I throw it onto the download archives then

definately, multiplayer should work, and should be cross platform aswell, should also be able to do multiplayer of the net, pandora gaming night anyone?

(oh and anyone reading this go test pydance, need feedback on it :p)
 
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