DarkXL: can't progress past agent menu in Linux

[JPLeBreton]

I've compiled the latest (master) in Arch Linux, and can launch DarkXL. (I had to rename a few files due to the case-sensitivity issue there's currently a pending PR for). However at the Agent Menu, I see no agents in the list and no missions available, and none of the buttons work except for the "DOS" button to quit.

In case it's useful, stdout gives the following output while I'm launching and in the menu:

cut=26, 4cut=26, 3cut=27, 4cut=26, 3cut=3, 3cut=3, 3

On a more general note, looking through the code and scripts in the git depot, I don't see any code or scripts that seem like it would handle the bulk of what I'd expect to see in a fully working DarkXL, eg code/script for weapons, enemies, etc. As I understand the Jedi Engine is Doom-like in that the game logic is still in the EXE; ie the only things in the game's resource files are graphics, sounds, level data, etc. Do the current depot contents contain a fully working DarkXL (ie analogous to the DarkXL Alpha version 9.08 build from long ago) or will that need to be totally reimplemented?

[psi29a]

You're not the only one. ;) This is the state the code was left, but we've done a lot a cleaning to get it this far. We're also trying to figure it out. We're not sure how it all works together, there was no svn history when it was given to us and things were in half-refactored state. The most work was done on the software renderer and the opengl renderer is in a sad state. Daggerfall terrain and sky are for example is rendered in black & white.

The pending PR won't be merged in until the issues are addressed, but honestly there is a better way to handle this: make a lookup table. Internal is in uppercase and it maps to what is found on disk regardless of case.

[JPLeBreton]

I just remembered that older builds of DarkXL/XLEngine might have more AngelScript files for the game logic, and had a look at the .as files from this build: https://archive.org/details/XLEngineRelease02
Simply replacing all the scripts in the master branch with those produced a lot of errors and DarkXL didn't launch. Copying over only the files that didn't replace newer versions produced no change in behavior. But I think that at least answers the question of where most of the game logic is - it wasn't included in the AprilFirst.zip drop.
It's possible that the last non-XLEngine version of DarkXL, alpha 9.08, has scripts that work better with the 2011-vintage codebase that (as I understand) is in the master branch, but I'm having trouble tracking down that build. (the link on https://darkxl.wordpress.com is dead)

[psi29a]

Already a month ahead of you. Those scripts, if tried in master, will just give you loads of errors about unresolved function names. Not only that, if you remove the AS files from the DarkXL (9.08) release, it has no effect, like they aren't even used. It was like he made a release with a lot of extra files that he was in the middle of working on and didn't clean up.

Feel free to try yourself, but we've not had much success.

We're getting to the point where we are just looking through the strace of the older binaries or try decompiling the older binaries to see what was missing in the source... obviously not a good sign.

It would have been nice to have a snapshot of the code at the DarkXL 9.08 release, but alas, we don't. However, perhaps, there is some yet un-read code that we've not yet poked. So the more eyes, the better.

Same with Daggerfall, there is a lot of missing features that were in the last release from Lucius that we do not see in the source dump which is disappointing.

[aybe]

After looking at this line, suddenly everything is clearer:

https://github.com/Mindwerks/XLEngine/blob/master/resources/DarkXL/CoreUI_LevelSelect.as#L72

We have nothing more than 'launcher' code ... I wanted to add joystick input but no :(

[psi29a]

Not necessarily, a lot of the meat and potatoes are in the code itself and not in the angelscripts.

[aybe]

The cell loader class for DF is not there, by looking at other games there's a huge portion missing.

It's one thing to try reverse-engineering a game but another thing to reconstruct missing bits from someone else's attempt.

It would have taken one minute for the author to right-click, zip and share the working version :(

[JPLeBreton]

FWIW, I asked for another drop in the thread here by the person who gave us the original drop:
http://forums.dfworkshop.net/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=940&p=12431#p12431

[aybe]

Let's see what happens !