WIP: U-Type (working title)

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danboid
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Re: WIP: U-Type (working title)

Post by danboid »

Impressive!

utype still builds under Ubuntu 18.04, 9 years later, against the latest kernel. I've not found many open source Uzebox games that build at all under Linux.

Whilst it builds the graphics are glitchy so obviously some tweaks are required to have it play nice with the latest kernel.

Has anyone got a fully working build of this? If you try downloading it from the UB games list you get Uze-a-move, not U-Type.
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nicksen782
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Re: WIP: U-Type (working title)

Post by nicksen782 »

Are you talking about the game library online for the Uzebox Online Emulator? If it is missing something or a game points to the wrong thing please send me a private message about it and I'll take care of it for ya!
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danboid
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Re: WIP: U-Type (working title)

Post by danboid »

Yeah sorry I was a bit vague there!

I was referring to the ROM link here:

http://uzebox.org/wiki/U-Type_(working_title)

Downloading that gets you Uze-a-move.
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nicksen782
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Re: WIP: U-Type (working title)

Post by nicksen782 »

Yes, that link is incorrect.

But, good news! I found Cosam's Github! https://github.com/SteveMaddison . And, it has the source for both Uze-A-Move and U-Type. Perhaps I should compile them and update the online emulator and the wiki posts?
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danboid
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Re: WIP: U-Type (working title)

Post by danboid »

Yes, I got U-Type to build (under Ubuntu) and run under cuzebox but there were several gfx issue that made it unplayable. I reported it as a bug on github when I saw this but the author hasn't responded. If you could fork and fix it that would be great!
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mapes
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Re: WIP: U-Type (working title)

Post by mapes »

This is not meant to hijack this post, and probably deserves its own, but originated from this.

I thought I'd look at the code for uze-type and uze-a-move but noticed that they don't have an avr project file to open.

Is there a way to easily import this into an avr studio project? I am not an expert of working with multiple development environments or importing them.

I didn't see anything in the tutorial section on this topic.
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danboid
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Re: WIP: U-Type (working title)

Post by danboid »

Hi Mapes

I've only ever used Atmel Studio / Microprocessor Studio to try its chip programmer but now I exclusively use avrdude for programming the MCU and Kate as an IDE. I don't think I ever got the programmer in * Studio to work for some reason and its the most horribly bloated suite of apps I can think of. The installer for the latest version even goes as far as updating your BIOS before it lets you install it. That was a first for me!

There is a bit of news regarding recovering U-Type. I managed to fix some of the graphical glitches by adding an extra CFLAG to its Makefile. I added this to my UType bug report on github and then the author re-appeared to reply yesterday to say that he's applied my fix now before he forgets but he's not got his Uzebox dev environment configured currently to help fully fix it.

There is a YT vid of someone playing Utype so I commented on that video yesterday to ask if they could send it to me, if they still have the file. No reply from them yet. Ideally we'd get the source fixed up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgaQ7GRABy8
Last edited by danboid on Sat Feb 04, 2023 8:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Artcfox
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Re: WIP: U-Type (working title)

Post by Artcfox »

danboid wrote: Sat Feb 04, 2023 8:40 am There is a bit of news regarding recovering U-Type. I managed to fix some of the graphical glitches by adding an extra CFLAG to its Makefile.
What was the fix? Is it adding

Code: Select all

-fno-toplevel-reorder
to the CFLAGS? I also had to add that to my games when compiling them using a newer version of GCC. We should probably note that somewhere prominent. It would seem that this is pretty much now a required CFLAG since newer toolchains are reordering things, and this is causing a silent mismatch with where the Uzebox kernel expects things to be.
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danboid
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Re: WIP: U-Type (working title)

Post by danboid »

Yes, that is the flag he added for me yesterday which got halfway to fixing the graphics.

I was hoping you might take a quick look at Utype and see if you can fix the remaining glitches Artcfox? You are the authority on the Uzebox API - much better than ChatGPT! :D

Utype is in my Top 10 most impressive Uzebox games list so it'd be good to revive it.
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Artcfox
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Re: WIP: U-Type (working title)

Post by Artcfox »

I tried it with the new flag, but it still has glitches. I tried compiling it with the older toolchains, but they segfault on the latest Debian. I even tried the latest toolchain from Microchip which uses avr-gcc version 7.3.0, and that makes smaller code and has much better warnings, but it still had graphical glitches.

I even tried with an old Live USB image of an earlier version of Debian 8 in a VM, booted that up, and used the older official toolchains from Atmel (I have them all saved!), and the ones from the Debian 8 repo, to no avail. I tried that in combination with different historically accurate versions of the Uzebox kernel from when U-Type was created and different versions throughout the years, and it gave me different graphical glitches, but still glitches. I tried with and without the new flag. Too bad the .uze and .hex weren't checked in along with the source code.

Edit: Added instructions for quickly running an old Debian Live USB:

Code: Select all

# Download an old Debian Live ISO/hybrid from: https://cdimage.debian.org/mirror/cdimage/archive/
sudo apt install qemu-kvm
kvm -cdrom debian-live-8.11.0-amd64-gnome-desktop.iso -m 4096 -smp 2 -soundhw all -usb -usbdevice tablet
Last edited by Artcfox on Sat Feb 04, 2023 6:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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