BuzzingCars and Blupimania 2 sources

[Skywalker13]

Hello guys,

I'm working for Epsitec SA; my boss (@epsitec) and the main author of the games (@SpeedyBlupi) are OK to open the sources of BuzzingCars, Blupimania 2 and the assets like for CoLoBoT (some years ago) to the free and open-source community.

The question is; are you interested by working on these games which are based on the same engine that the original CoLoBoT? (note that CoLoBoT was the first game with this engine) We think that it will be great to see these games on all platforms. You have made an amazing work and it should not be too difficult to adapt these games in order to use your engine (maybe your engine can be extracted to a library in order to be shared by the other games, not sure if it's already the case?!).

And I'm sure that @OdyX will be very happy to provide the Debian packages and maybe more?

---

I can provide the source code shortly but please, if your answer is Yes, we want 😸, then the official repository will be managed by your team and you will work on these games at least for using the new multi-platform engine. If you think that you are not really interested, I think that it's too bad but at least, it will be clear. The goal is not to provide source code and assets if nothing will be done.

Because "maybe" in this case, I will work on it.. but my free time is very limited and now you are the best people for doing this work.

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About the names, I don't know exactly but "Blupi" is registered (I've no idea about the conditions). The code will use GPL3 like CoLoBoT. Just regarding the names and Blupi, it depends of my boss.

PS: have you everything about CeeBot? (if not, I can provide the missing parts) http://www.ceebot.com/ceebot/family-e.php

I hope that you will accept the challenge.

[OdyX]

For what I'm concerned, I'm absolutely thrilled to see these games from my childhood eventually become freesoftware!

I'm very happy provide advice and patches towards suitability for distribution packaging, and liaise with Debian, including packaging and maintenance of these games for Debian (and Ubuntu PPAs), but I absolutely (but unfortunately) don't have time or the skillset for game development.

[epsitec]

By the way, if you have any licensing questions, I am your privileged contact ;-)

[Emxx52]

Such marvelous and unexpected news!

It would be a great honour for us at TerranovaTeam to be able to work on these fantastic games.

As for now the development of Colobot: Gold Edition and further improving its engine would be our main focus. We will experiment with and provide support for CeeBot-Teen, CeeBot-A, BlupiMania-2 and BuzzingCars until GOLD’s engine is flexible enough to handle full multiplatform releases of these games.
We cannot promise too much without seeing games’ source files, we will try our best though!

Regarding CeeBot: we would be immensely pleased to work on a major update for CeeBot4 SCHOOL in the future, as it is a perfect tool for teaching the basics of programming. The idea of porting the project to numerous platforms and expanding its educational capabilities is quite thrilling. The game also features a ton of interesting solutions that would be really beneficial to Colobot: Gold Edition. Unfortunately, as @epsitec stated before we wouldn’t be able to acquire rights and source code of the game without Otto Kölbl’s permission. We planned on reaching Mr Kölbl concerning this subject. We are yet to do so as we don’t suppose anything changed on that matter...?

So: Yes, we want 😸

I am writing this on behalf of the entire TerranovaTeam

[Skywalker13]

Great, glad to hear 😄

@Emxx52

Unfortunately, as @epsitec stated before we wouldn’t be able to acquire rights and source code of the game without Otto Kölbl’s permission. We planned on reaching Mr Kölbl concerning this subject. We are yet to do so as we don’t suppose anything changed on that matter...?

Wow, I forgot this point.. Mr Kölbl is no longer employee of Epsitec SA since a significant time. Maybe a colleague knows his current email address. Then you are right, unfortunately nothing has changed about this point.

---

So, I will provide the files for Blupimania 2 and BuzzingCars this saturday (2017.01.28) or sunday (29).

[Skywalker13]

@Emxx52
Look at your gmail box...
Enjoy

[epsitec]

@Emxx52 Otto Kölbl has a public e-mail address. Have a look at this entry.

[Emxx52]

@Skywalker13 @epsitec
Thank you very much!

[ghost]

@Skywalker13 && @epsitec
Thank you very much :) ! Can't wait until I'll drown in all of those assets. Receiving sources of all of these childhood games was a great honour and kinda personal turning point in my life 😁 .

[Skywalker13]

You're welcome

I've spoken a bit with my colleague (@SpeedyBlupi, the original author) about the Mr Kölbl rights. Mr Kölbl has no rights on the CeeBot source code (c++)), then it's GPL3 like all other source codes of CoLoBoT. Some rights exist for some exercises but it's just a fraction. I will send you a list of "exercises" which need the agreement of Mr Kölbl but it seems that's only a small part.

[jounathaen]

Hello,
I'm interested in the Source of Planet Blupi and Speedy Blupi.
Is it possible to get the Source? I'd like to develope it further, but I'm a bit concerned of my coding skills. So I'm not sure if I can maintain that Project (altrough I'd like to)
Greetings

[Skywalker13]

Hi,
I've converted Planet Blupi to SDL2 and I've a working version for all usual platforms: Linux Windows and Darwin

I will provide the sources soon on github.

For Speedy Blupi, I'm planning to do like Planet Blupi.

[PracticeBot13]

Can't wait for the sources. @Skywalker13

[Skywalker13]

Yes you can

I'm father since only 1.5 month.. I've less time for that but it's on the way. I want to publish everything properly with the website and the releases for all platforms for the end users. The public git repository will be provided when the website will be done. Note that it's the 20th anniversary of planetblupi. It must be done correctly.
😃

[PracticeBot13]

@Skywalker13 Take your time, I'll still be waiting.

[epsitec]

Hey @Skywalker13, by the way, having a little child gives you plenty of opportunities not to sleep at night ;-). Any progress on the Blupi releases?

[Skywalker13]

Mostly for the game, I've just lost too much time on the website impl. by playing with CSS3.

[Skywalker13]

Enjoy http://www.blupi.org (20th anniversary of Planet Blupi)

[PracticeBot13]

Great! Now we just need Speedy Blupi 1 & 2!

[Skywalker13]

I plan to publish Speedy Blupi in open-source for 2018.

For now, you can download most games (latest original Epsitec SA releases) on http://www.blupi.org.

[AlbertHamik]

Any word on the Speedy Blupi (2) source? Particularly interested in the Speedy Blupi 2 source.

[Skywalker13]

I hope for this year...

[AlbertHamik]

If you don't mind me asking, what all do you have to do to get the code ready to be published?

[Skywalker13]

Cleaning by re-using the work (replacement of all old DirectX stuff by SDL2) done for Planet Blupi because Speedy Blupi 2 is a fork of Speedy Blupi which is already a fork of Planet Blupi. It means that a lot of code can be shared between these games.

[AlbertHamik]

Ah okay, I understand. Also, a big issue that has plagued both Speedy Blupi games has been the brief pause that occurs when the midi music cycles. Is that also in your sights with this work?

[Skywalker13]

Problems like that will be fixed automatically when I will reuse the audio player based on SDL2_mixer available in Planet Blupi. Maybe it's just related to the main game loop which is not implemented correctly in these old games.

For example, Planet Blupi <= v1.8 is using 100% of one CPU (core) and it's no longer the case since I've rewrite everything with SDL2. I think that's the same problem with Speedy Blupi games.

[AlbertHamik]

I also wanted to mention, merely as an aside, that there are minor differences in some coding between Speedy Blupi 1 and 2 that contribute some fascinating glitches in the sequel at least (the first game acts differently when you attempt the first linked video):

Glitch 1 (Twitter Video): pic.twitter.com/JReeT6ZTjL
Glitch 2 (Twitter Video): pic.twitter.com/uS0BqLP6LZ

I'm not expecting you to fix these glitches, and in fact am more or less interested in simply knowing why they occur. Keeping them intact would be ideal as those of us in the, admittedly, niche Speedy Blupi 2 speedrunning community are still hunting for potential uses of these glitches. And secondly, it seems that Speedy Blupi 2 shares the Planet Blupi speedup option coding. Do you think it'd be possible to have a menu option to toggle that feature? Thanks for the replies.

[Skywalker13]

About the first bug, it's a race.. something like that exists with Planet Blupi too and because it's fun, I've added a --restore-bugs command line option in order to re-enable bugs like that.

I don't have the Speedy Blupi code in mind but about Planet Blupi, there are two speedup options. The firts one is using the cheatcode by taping quick then it's possible to use F7 and F8 for increasing the speed of a factor 4 or 8. The second one is by changing the timer value of the main game loop. For Planet Blupi it's possible to use the command line (see --help) or the config.json by adding a timer entry. By default the main loop uses a timer of 50ms. If you change to 10ms (timer: 10) + you enable the cheat for a speedup of 8x, the game will be 40x faster.

I've not checked for Speedy Blupi but you should find a config.def or config.ini file where it should be possible to change the timer with a line like that (like the old Planet Blupi version <= v1.8):

Timer=10ms

instead of 50ms...

[AlbertHamik]

Ah okay, I didn't know that was doable. Thanks. And I'm glad you're aware of the bugs and already interested in making sure to preserve them. Thanks alot man!

[foutsJ]

Wow, what a surprise! Who would've thought that a game (or at least the Demo) I sunk hours into would've gone full open-source?

I hastily downloaded what I needed, and discovered that the game can only work in windowed mode at what I think is at a 640x800 resolution. I think it would be cool if this resolution scaling feature would be "modernized" to allow full control over windowed/borderless windowed modes.

I'm in college studying for a Computer Engineering degree, and I like to tinker with things like this. Would there be any possibility of allowing me to take a peak at the code to see if I can fix up the resolution features?

[Skywalker13]

What game are you talking about? All games work in fullscreen.

[jounathaen]

@foutsJ The Planetblupi sources are already available here: https://github.com/blupi-games

[Skywalker13]

and discovered that the game can only work in windowed mode at what I think is at a 640x800 resolution

If you are speaking of Planet Blupi, it's not the case. The display ratio is computed accordingly to your screen and the fullscreen mode is perfectly supported (SDL_WINDOW_FULLSCREEN_DESKTOP by default (widescreen) or SDL_WINDOW_FULLSCREEN mode when using the legacy fullscreen resolution of 640x480).

[foutsJ]

Oh, to clarify, I'm speaking about Buzzing Cars. I spoke somewhat vaguely, so I apologize. The game did boot up in a proper resolution, but when changing to windowed mode, it defaulted to 640x800. When in windowed mode, the resolution selections are greyed out, and are unable to be chosen. Is this a general design, or is it an issue just with the copy I have?

I think maybe I missed something, so before I set upon messing with the code and files to try to implement windowed resolution selection, is windowed resolution selection already available in some form?

Again, thanks for opening up the code for these projects. It's always neat to go back and see the technical side of old pastimes.

[Skywalker13]

The sources are in the colobot repository (here), in the dev-buzzingcars branch.

[foutsJ]

Awesome! can't wait to give this a shot.

[FreshFreeze]

This has been wonderful news to first hear and seeing all the transparency with these games over the years has been awesome! I'm really hoping that we get to see Speedy Blupi's source soon :) thats the real one i played the most as a kid and now as a career software developer I am so excited to take a whole new look at the game!!!!

[vittorioromeo]

Hello @Skywalker13, hope everything is well. Any news on an open-source version of Speedy Blupi?

[Skywalker13]

Hi, not yet

[HMVocaloid]

Can't wait to see Speedy Eggbert (Blupi) be open-source!

[Mk-rbv]

Hi @Skywalker13, I hate to bother you but I was wondering if you had a status update on the open sourcing? I hope you're enjoying being a father :)

[Skywalker13]

Hi @Skywalker13, I hate to bother you but I was wondering if you had a status update on the open sourcing? I hope you're enjoying being a father :)

https://blupi.org/letter.html

[Mk-rbv]

Hi @Skywalker13, I hate to bother you but I was wondering if you had a status update on the open sourcing? I hope you're enjoying being a father :)

https://blupi.org/letter.html

Great to hear that you're now a father again, haha. I completely understand why you prefer to work on Blupimania, (which, like you said, is generally the funner game ;) ) thanks for the update!