Prince of Persia Level Editor 'Apoplexy' Reaches 2.0 44
An anonymous reader writes "Last year, Jordan Mechner, the creator of the Prince of Persia video game franchise, released the long-thought-lost original Apple II source code for Prince of Persia. Today marks the release of version 2.0 of apoplexy, the free and open-source level editor of Prince of Persia for DOS. Roughly 5.5 years after its initial release, support has been added for editing Prince of Persia 2 levels in both GNU/Linux and Windows. The game has its 25th anniversary next year, but the original trilogy only has a (very) small fan community. Will old games such as this also interest future generations or will they gradually lose their appeal because of technological advances?"
Future Generations (Score:5, Insightful)
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I have fond memories of spending several months on one of the last bits of the DOS version...I'd managed to get to the top of a fairly huge tower but failed to realize that I had to take small steps to cross an invisible bridge instead of jumping a chasm...
Or something like that, mainly I remember swearing and restarting a lot...
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Pissed because his McDonald's job doesn't come with a participation trophy?
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Re:Future Generations (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Future Generations (Score:5, Interesting)
Or, to quote MC Frontalot
You canâ(TM)t hide secrets from the future with math.
You can try, but I bet that in the future they laugh
at the half-assed schemes and algorithms amassed
to enforce cryptographs in the past.
Wise words.
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Yes, if only there were people working on removing DRM from games, sometimes before they were even officially released. But that would never happen.
POP had the what is the first letter on page X (Score:2)
POP had the what is the first letter on page X on line X as it's copy protection
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And there were plenty of copies floating around with that protection removed.
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That is if there's any way to get CoD or Portal to run in twenty five years time - easily defeatable or no copy protection on older games makes running them in DOSBox or similar quite easy. Trying to figure out how to work around Steam, Origin or the newer optical media protection systems to allow games to run in emulation in future isn't going to be as simple.
All those games you mentioned have been cracked, drm removed and private servers made for them already.
Pretty much everything gets cracked.
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Copy-protection ain't exactly a new invention, games in the days of the original Prince of Persia where full of them, be it checks that made you look up something in the games manual or checks for faulty sectors on the floppy that you couldn't copy easily. But just as with modern copy protection almost all of that stuff has been cracked.
What you have to worry about isn't really DRM, but just plain old archival. I tried to toy around with some Grand Prix Legends old mods a few weeks ago and a huge amounts of
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Well., many of those games come with their own editors already: You can make Portal levels with the same tools Valve used to make the game in the first place. The problem with those games is that making new levels is far harder than it was with the old stuff. Just compare making a level for Doom, Quake and any modern shooter. 8 year olds could make Doom levels easily: The map was actually 2d, so it was pretty easy. A level for Quake was way harder, because not only you are sculpting in 3d, but you have to c
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Future generations will be creating editors for Call of Duty or Elder Scrolls or Portal or something like that.
Not necessarily. The data formats are so much more complex that you likely need full-time engineers to work on the editors. It took a long time even for the community-made Prince of Persia level editors to be finished.
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I tried to get into PoP but it was kind frustrating. I think a lot of games from that era were very hard and needed a lot of effort putting into them. Of course back then we were kids and had the time to play then over and over.
In that sense early games are often more instantly gratifying and more suited to short sessions. PoP is from the middle era of gaming when home computers ruled and long games were popular, but you really had to have played the game at the time or put in a lot of effort now to really
Demonstrate your level designing skill to HR (Score:5, Insightful)
What use is a free editor when the games themselves are proprietary?
What use is a free compiler that makes Windows executables? What use is a port of Linux to a patented microprocessor?
Why not contribute towards something worthwhile, say Battle for Wesnoth?
That depends on to what extent one can show off an improvement to Battle for Wesnoth. Someone applying to a video game company for a job as a level designer might want to show levels for a game with which the interviewer is likely to be familiar.
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Got a patent-free modern processor to share?
1. MIPS. 2. Who said anything about modern? 3. Got a notable free-from-day-one video game that exceeds the quality of proprietary games in the same genre to share?
Ummm, can you hold on a moment? (Score:2)
I'm busy with Chuckie Egg in one window and Elite in another. I really need to write an OXP for Oolite that will let me play both in just one. Can't wait to use military beam lasers on that giant yellow rubber duck.
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I have no idea what you're talking about, except that it's awesome.
depends on the game and context (Score:5, Insightful)
Will old games such as this also interest future generations or will they gradually lose their appeal because of technological advances?
A huge portion of the games people play on their mobile phones are basically versions of '80s games. Tetris, Snake, Drugwars, Bubble Bobble, etc. Sometimes almost literally a clone of the original, and sometimes one of the many variants [jesperjuul.net].
Help. (Score:2)
I keep getting shot by the aliens in Oo-Topos.
Forever (Score:2)
I will love Prince of Persia as long as I live because it was a formative game for me. It taught me to have guts and just jump, but to practice my ass off before doing so. I will die at some point though (probably), and so will everyone else that feels like me. So I think odds are pretty strong that games like this will fade into oblivion. Think about it this way: do you know what board game your great-great-great-grandpa liked?
There is still need for this kind of games (Score:4, Interesting)
Will old games such as this also interest future generations or will they gradually lose their appeal because of technological advances?
No problem. Many times when I watch gameplay videos of old DOS games in YouTube there are comments like "where can I download this game for Mac??" The right answer is to show them DOSBox and GOG... But the point being, there still is a lot of interest of these kind of old, simple games. Look at something like Papers, Please [gog.com]. Technologically that could have been implemented for a 286 DOS PC, and yet people love it despite "technological advances". Simple, good games, into which you can get quickly by bashing Enter, not having to wait 3 minute long load times.
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do they even have the rights to this? does Disney (Score:2)
do they even have the rights to this? does Disney and Ubisoft now own them? or will the copyright bot try to mess up the 25th anniversary
A lot of work -- has it been done already? (Score:2)
I remember playing Prince of Persia quite fondly, back when I was in elementary school. Around 25 years ago. I went back and played it again as a 20-something some time ago, as well. Finally beat the damn thing. Video gaming is one of those skills that you definitely get better at with age. Don't let people say it's just a kid's hobby.
I would make levels for it, but I am dead sure that every little possibility had already been utilized, that while you could make more nefarious and harder levels requiring mo
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I have my apple //e with a CFFA3000, so I can use a USB stick as a virtual floppy disk. I'm going to try my hand at assembling the PoP files and see if I can get it running.
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Okay, this is exactly what I was referring to when I said things like "nefarious" and "anal-retentive".
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They really did present practically every edge-case of what the player is capable of doing, every different length and height of "leap of faith", and every confusing combination of trap floors and so on.
You should see what's being done in the Super Mario World hacking community. Good luck beating even the first level of Kaizo Mario World without save states.
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I can appreciate nefarious and anal-retentive levels, to an extent, I really can.
Back when Super Nintendo released "Super Mario All-Stars", I actually completed every level of Super Mario "Lost Levels" within three days of the game's release, well within the time frame needed to take a picture and send it in to get your "No Warps!" patch. Did I do it? No. How many 12 year olds are into taking 35mm photos of the TV, getting the film developed, getting an envelope ... hold on, I need to sleep in for a bit ...
mg (Score:1)