Announce: CellarDoor 1.0.1 for PalmOS Released

jeremydb

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Apr 12, 2008, 4:01:05 AM4/12/08

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I'm very pleased to announce the 1.0.1 release of CellarDoor for
PalmOS. CellarDoor is a free, open-source interpreter/player for Z-
Code (Z1 - Z8, incl. Z6) and Glulx story files, supporting graphics
and blorbs. It requires a hi-res screen and a memory card.

Full documentation, instructions, user forums and similar can all be
found here:

http://cellardoor.sourceforge.net/

Changes since 1.0:

- Support for newer Glulx games (via Git 1.2, see below)
- Command history filters out consecutive duplicates.
- Fixed completely broken resolution scaling for blorbed Infocom
graphical games.
- Fix for broken MORE prompts on the (>1)th start of Glk games
- Redesigned Preferences screens. System settings which cannot be
changed during game play are now only available from the Story List.
Landscape and L/R require a restart of the app to avoid graphical
weirdness.
- The "Num cols" setting in the Preferences now defaults to the "Act
cols" value, when new Preferences are created.
- "Sort Quetzal Files" no longer leaves a file reference open.
- Plugged small, but potentially nasty, memory leak in pop-up word
lists.
- Interpreter sometimes wasn't redrawing completely after using (for
example) the word list form. Fixed.
- Graphic libs won't be initialized if graphics have been disabled.
- Updated Git engine to 1.2 (from 1.1.3), adding support for @mzero
and @mcopy opcodes
- Updated palmPNG to latest version (slightly modified to permit
operation on screens set to 8-bit), changing from static to dynamic
lib linkage. The CellarDoor app is weighing in at only about 296K now.
Of course, you have to install the 100K shared library, too
(included).
- /PALM/Programs/CellarDoor is now the preferred documents location.
The old location is used, though, if it's there.
- Fix for paths specified with a '/' on the end causing issues in the
simulator. I think that this was a non-issue on the actual harware,
but it's fixed now.-
- Fixed very minor Git unicode bug in the Glulx interpreter.
- Minor fixes (memory leaks, etc.)
- Implemented 'down' check at startup for prompted Autosave removal.
- Added a timestamp to the About screen.

Enjoy it!
Jeremy

Mario Donick

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Apr 12, 2008, 5:05:28 AM4/12/08

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jeremydb schrieb:

> I'm very pleased to announce the 1.0.1 release of CellarDoor for
> PalmOS. CellarDoor is a free, open-source interpreter/player for Z-
> Code (Z1 - Z8, incl. Z6) and Glulx story files, supporting graphics
> and blorbs. It requires a hi-res screen and a memory card.

Great! However, I've got a question.

I wanted to run City of Secrets by Emily Short which has a 2,5 MB blb
file. I'm using a PalmTX, free heap RAM size is about 2113688 bytes. So,
unfortunately, the game says "failed to allocate memory to store game file".

Is there a way to use the rather big internal storage of the TX as
addition to the normal RAM?

(Or knows anybody a version of City of Secrets without graphics?)

Thank you,

Mario Donick

jeremydb

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Apr 12, 2008, 5:20:42 AM4/12/08

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Grüß dich, Mario -

I'm using UMDH from palmpowerups and City of
Secrets loads and plays pretty well on my TX.
(I haven't gone very far into the game, admittedly, but it
can be read into memory, displays images, and seems
to be working fine).

jb

Mario Donick schrieb:

jeremydb

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Apr 12, 2008, 5:27:50 AM4/12/08

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Sorry, that should have been UDMH.

rpresser

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Apr 14, 2008, 10:57:51 AM4/14/08

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On Apr 12, 4:01 am, jeremydb <listor...@expr-i0.net> wrote:
> I'm very pleased to announce the 1.0.1 release of CellarDoor for
> PalmOS. CellarDoor is a free, open-source interpreter/player for Z-
> Code (Z1 - Z8, incl. Z6) and Glulx story files, supporting graphics
> and blorbs. It requires a hi-res screen and a memory card.

How vital is the hi-res screen requirement? Any chance of dumbing it
down so I could play on my Treo 600?

jeremydb

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Apr 14, 2008, 11:34:44 AM4/14/08

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I'm afraid that there are simply too many assumptions about the
resolution throughout the code to realistically do that, without
rewriting the entire app. I'm planning to do some serious tearing-
apart of the legacy CliFrotz code at some point, and could possibly
add lo-res support at that time, but no promises. Sorry!

1.0.2 is on its way out the door pretty soon, but won't have lo-res
support either. :(

Take care -
Jeremy

rpresser schrieb:

Doug Roberts

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Apr 14, 2008, 2:34:50 PM4/14/08

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jeremydb wrote:
> I'm afraid that there are simply too many assumptions about the
> resolution throughout the code to realistically do that, without
> rewriting the entire app. I'm planning to do some serious tearing-
> apart of the legacy CliFrotz code at some point, and could possibly
> add lo-res support at that time, but no promises. Sorry!
>
> 1.0.2 is on its way out the door pretty soon, but won't have lo-res
> support either. :(

As a Palm TX user I've got to say that you shoudn't lose the hi-res display.

If there's a wishlist, then I'd ask to put the ability to change the
screen colours to make it easier on the eye.

Keep up the good work. Cellardoor has done much to assist my return to
IF...

Doug.

jeremydb

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Apr 14, 2008, 8:01:43 PM4/14/08

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Thanks Doug -

I'm glad to hear it's getting used! CellarDoor 1.0.2 was just
released: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.int-fiction/browse_thread/thread/925bec1dd463339c#
(sorry about the weird line breaks. I really try...)

jb

Doug Roberts

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Apr 15, 2008, 3:48:01 PM4/15/08

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Good news! Many thanks, although I'd still appreciate it if I could
change the colour of the screen!

Doug.

jeremydb

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Apr 15, 2008, 4:23:29 PM4/15/08

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There's always 1.0.3....

Jeremy

Doug Roberts schrieb:

Doug Roberts

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Apr 15, 2008, 5:15:35 PM4/15/08

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Hmm... now I wonder if I can wait a couple of days for that!

jeremydb

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Apr 15, 2008, 5:47:39 PM4/15/08

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I wouldn't want to spoil you. Probably not until the end of the month;
but then again, it's all insomnia-driven.

Planned:

- The total number of possible windows for Glulx games is being upped
from 16 to 32, which means that John Ingold's Dead Cities won't wreak
so much havok. After a nearly endless load time, the game seems to
play pretty well now.

- Some fixes to Glulx rendering (in 1.0.2, there's a problem with
erase_color and fill_color positioning).

- The ability to mark story files as new/in progress/finished/flagged.

- I'll see what I can do about custom colors.

I'm certainly open to other requests; please let me know if there's
anything you're totally missing (I'm not adding mapping, though, nor
lo-res support).

Doug Roberts schrieb:

chip...@gmail.com

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Apr 16, 2008, 6:44:52 PM4/16/08

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On Apr 12, 3:05 am, Mario Donick <mario.don...@gmail.com> wrote:

> (Or knows anybody a version of City of Secrets without graphics?)

Grab unblorb: http://www.bobnewell.net/filez/unblorb

It's a Perl script modified from something that Graham Nelson wrote to
analyze blorb files. I run just the zcode of C of S on my Palm as
extracted by this tool. Very much smaller!

chipjack

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Apr 18, 2008, 10:14:26 PM4/18/08

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I just want to chime in here -- CellarDoor rocks, and thanks so much
for maintaining it!

-- chipjack

jeremydb

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Apr 19, 2008, 4:06:53 AM4/19/08

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Thanks! The next version (1.0.3) is coming along nicely. Look forward
to:

- User-settable default fore- and background colors.
- Drawing engine fixes - "snappier!"
- A bunch of small improvements to Glulx game rendering.
- Lots of small cosmetic changes which make it look nicer.
- Bigger word and verb lists.
- Standard edit menus in the text forms (word/verb list, Notes).

Should be out next week sometime, barring a disaster in my day job.

jb

chipjack schrieb: