FOSS puzzle game engine (Free Hero Mesh)

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zzo38
Posts: 1096
Joined: Mon Feb 07, 2011 12:46 pm

FOSS puzzle game engine (Free Hero Mesh)

Post by zzo38 »

I made up a FOSS puzzle game engine called "Free Hero Mesh". It is fully usable in its present state, although nevertheless I am looking for contributors (many kind of contributions are possible), reviewers, users, etc.

At first, I made it because I wanted to play Hero Hearts on GNU/Linux, although I could also make many improvements, so I did that too, and now it has many improvements compared with the original.

First thing I did is to figure out the file format, by making files in MESH:Hero and figure out what each thing means in the file by examining by a hex editor, and I figured it out and documented it. Then, I designed my own format, and wrote a converter into the new format.

Next thing is figuring out the game behaviour. Some of this was already documented, although the documentation was incomplete anyways (and some parts wrong), so I had to figure it out anyways. This can be done by scientific testing, by making a hypothesis, and then making a experiment to test it and see what are the results, and then document the results and try again, etc.

And then, reimplementing those behaviours (in addition to any improvements that I might have, but ensuring it to be compatible as much as possible), and testing it. In some cases this involved comparing message trace output from the two programs.

Since MESH:Hero puzzle sets include solutions, I added a -a switch to auto test that all of the solutions work; this way I could ensure that the game behaviour is compatible. Now, the -a switch can also be used for regression testing too, if you are making your own puzzle sets in Free Hero Mesh and want to ensure that if you change any class definitions that they do not break existing levels.

Later, I also documented the format of the class definition file, and implemented the level editor and picture editor, so that it can be used even if you do not have Hero Hearts. Additional features were also occasionally added. And, more things may be fixed in future, too.

(There are some similar programs but there are some problems with them, which is another reason why I made up my own. Probably Free Hero mesh could not be ported to NES/Famicom, although porting to other systems is possible. On NES/Famicom (and Game Boy, Super Nintendo, etc) probably though it would be possible that some puzzle sets can be converted from Free Hero Mesh into a NES/Famicom code, if the capabilities used in your puzzle set are limited, and converting in the other direction would also be possible, if a converter program is written, too.)

I had some trouble in past, and now too, of promotion, to get anyone else interest in such a thing. Do you know?

(There is a link in the signature.)
(Free Hero Mesh - FOSS puzzle game engine)
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