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Back to school 2013-09-21 20:21:53

Because it's been a month and to make sure everyone is on the same page: School has started up again so that means productivity on ECWolf is going to be much lower than it was during the summer. I actually didn't plan on spending last summer working on ECWolf constantly like I did the summer before (I have some private projects and I still intend to complete the ACC++ project), but of course various exciting things meant that how things played out.

Honestly, I didn't expect this semester to slow things down as much as it did, but I'm not the type that needs to spend all day studying, so hopefully things will pick up a little more once I figure out how to best schedule all the work that needs to be done. As far as the already announced plans go, at this point I see no reason why I shouldn't meet the deadlines. The heaviest feature promised, in terms of workload, is the auto map and that has already been started. Still a bit of work to go on it though since there are still no controls and there's a handful of things to do to make it suitable for Blake Stone's mini map. After the auto map is done the only remaining big feature I need to do before 1.3 can be released is implement the quiz for Super 3D Noah's Ark (some variant of the USDF format I'm thinking). The rest is basically just cleaning up some of the differences between S3DNA and Wolf3D. I don't think those little features will take too long to do.

As for the Blake Stone port, I believe it's on schedule, but it's too early to say for sure if I'll meet the target of some time next summer.

ECWolf 1.2.2 bug fix release w/ Windows GUI game picker 2013-08-03 05:05:59

I have decided to make ECWolf 1.2.2 available today. This release is primarily a bug fix release so nothing should be broken by updating. Windows users will definitely want to upgrade as this release finally contains the GUI game picker bringing the Windows release on par with the Linux and Mac releases.

For those feeling nostalgic, K1n9_Duk3 contributed a PC Speaker emulator which can be used instead of the Adlib sounds. Below is the change log highlights:

Head over to the ECWolf page to download. Comment on the forums.

Blake Stone source code has been released! 2013-07-08 19:28:20

For those who haven't yet heard the Blake Stone Planet Strike source has been released! As a bonus for those who keep track of these kind of things, it's released under the GPL as well. As a result, I've started a branch for Blake Stone support in ECWolf. (Kind of weird the Planet Strike commits go before the release huh? ;) ) Supposedly one of the reasons it wasn't released before is everyone was just assuming it was lost.

But wait, ECWolf is dual licensed isn't it? At this time, I do not think the Planet Strike source release will be changing that. As far as code that can be cut and paste into the ECWolf code goes, I don't think there's a whole lot there. While ECWolf still uses Wolf3D code at its core, a lot of important systems have been rewritten in order to allow run time scripting or remove limits that it would likely take just as much time to adapt the old code as it would be to rewrite from scratch. What this does allow is providing far more accurate context than a disassembly can provide.

Now it does seem to be the case that the Aliens of Gold source was lost, but that shouldn't be a huge deal. Some of the AOG code seems to be in the Planet Strike source either hanging around dead or commented out. One again though, this does provide more accurate context for the disassembly. This will mean that Planet Strike support will be added first though.

So you may be wondering, what exactly are you working on now (with regards to ECWolf)? The plan still remains to support Noah's Ark as soon as possible. This is being developed in the main branch and eventually Mac Wolf will be developed there to. Simultaneously I'll be trying to churn out a Blake Stone port in the ECBlake branch (horrible name considering where "EC" comes from). When the branch is merged ECWolf will bump major versions again to 3.0. The reason for the branch at the moment is I want to get a port out faster than I can add adequate modding features to properly support the game.

Also, I would like to give a shout out to Svecke who donated the Wolf Pack on Steam as well as a pre-order of the new Rise of the Triad (which of course, includes the Apogee Throwback pack). I should now be able to actually test the automatic lookup code and expand it to Blake Stone myself. More immediately, due to a packaging error on Apogee's part, the pack includes Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold 1.0, so I was able to update my patching utility to work on all versions of AOG!

ECWolf 1.2.1 2013-06-12 04:57:00

My apologies to the 40 some people who downloaded ECWolf 1.2. A critical bug with saving was identified so a new build is up.

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