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[Yanlin]

I was thinking more along the lines of "Ha! I hit you in the face!" not...oh god

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7nOGaYJv-w&feature=related

[JeebusSez]

the way i see it, there are two ways of doing this:
1) a straight port with the GUI rewritten, using (during infiltration) the top display for the map and the bottom for squad info and commands and (during assignment [for lack of a better word]) the top to navigate squads and the bottom for commands
2) rewrite the whole thing from the ground up to focus on a single squad. basically continue LCS in spirit

(1) is good b/c it's a straight port and it keeps the game, but is bad b/c all of the graphics would have to be redone, plus the narrower characters would make it hard to see.
(2) is good b/c it lets us start from scratch; development might be smoother and it would allow us to develop the displays and the game code at the same time. it's bad b/c it would be...well, starting from scratch. BUT IT'D BE FUN

i'm trying to run LCS on my DSlinux, but I have a Slot-1 (top slot) device and apparently Linux would very much like that delicious memories.

Your thoughts?

[chaoticag]

1 sounds like what I would go for, as watering down games seems conservative to me.

Making a few modifications to that wouldn't be a bad idea though, such as having a map on the top screen, and touching the choices on the bottom screen (optional).

Seeing as how this is an open source thing, I can't see why the source code cannot be modified to accomodate this.

[JeebusSez]

So it turns out that once upon a time there existed on the internets an unofficial verson of the PDcurses library for the NDS (the original site is http://gpf.dcemu.co.uk/ndscurses.shtml) but it seems to be loading either slowly or not at all for me; google caches are recent and have recent dates, so I'm assuming the site is just having issues right now. As for the display, I'm assuming it's a screen-top/keyboard-bottom layout, which would be very cramped, but at least we could see if the DS is able to handle it. Does anyone happen to have these files?

in terms of a good port, I'd say the 4 biggest chunks of work are to a) redo the save system b) redo the whole input/output (which includes completely rewriting the strings to make everything fit) c) figure out how to make map generation and traversal translate properly to the DS screens and d) integrating the IO with the DS control scheme

[chaoticag]

I downloaded it, what now?

The link works for me.

[flap]

Seeing as how this is an open source thing, I can't see why the source code cannot be modified to accomodate this.

Because of time involved to do it...

[JeebusSez]

So after some poking around with DS homebrew develoment environments(PAlib, devkit arm) it turns out that the DS has some native text output; combined with some smart GUI design and controls, this means that a Curses library is not really necessary. All that's needed is to somehow map out the keyboard controls on the touchscreen and the buttons.

The only major limitation of course would be the processor power and memory requirements. The Nintendo DS has 4mb of ram and 63+33mhz processor (CPU+GPU); I'm not aware of the minimum requirement for to run LCS. However, putting LCS on the DS is actually not too much of a stretch.

[Sergius]

More than a "port" it would have to be a new game, probably using the libraries appropriate for the device, and the interface (such as clickable buttons for the stylus or at least using the simple button configuration of a DS). I've considered making a "clone" of LCS in java for cellphones and have a very crappy prototype, I think it would be a fun game.

[JeebusSez]

More than a "port" it would have to be a new game

That would require rewriting the code. Porting to the DS would require rewriting display and I/O, but the game logic is a simple cut and paste. So no, it wouldn't be writing a new game.

[edit]The DS doesn't have enough memory to handle that many floats, so there would also have to be a lot of conversion of floats to various signed integers.[/edit]

[Alexhans]

Oh... I would like a java LCS for my cell phone too!! 

but i dont know if it would be possible because all the games i have are 128 * 160. and LCS has to be a lot more than that 80*12 x 25*8? = 960 x 200. I  dont really remember the height of  ASCII text (8x12?).  and as my cell phone has only 640*480 then youd have to resize the window to 55 or something instead of 12... Easy...   

[JeebusSez]

but i dont know if it would be possible because all the games i have are 128 * 160. and LCS has to be a lot more than that 80*12 x 25*8? = 960 x 200. I  dont really remember the height of  ASCII text (8x12?).  and as my cell phone has only 640*480 then youd have to resize the window to 55 or something instead of 12... Easy...   

the interface would have to be rewritten, specifically the i/o. I have a mockup of how it'd work on a DS (the answer is a header with very abbreviated column titles) where a character is 8x8 (each screen is 32 tiles by 24 tiles), but I'm not sure how it'd work with a phone. Also, the header drawing and such isn't very encapsulated [it simply calls the pdcurses library command followed by what it draws instead of something port-ready like DrawHeader.infiltrate()].

I'm slowly going through the source to see if it's worth it to sit there and change all of the calculations to fit with the DS and if it's even powerful enough to handle the processing involved, especially with the simulation of issues (which to me is pretty much the most key concept in the game); if it can't simulate the issues during runtime the game would just be mayhem crime squad. If it is worth it, then it'll be a hell of a time going through and getting everything to fit on two tiny DS screens, plus the thought process behind how to do input (stylus? dpad+abxy? combination? VIRTUAL KEYBOARD?!).

For an interesting idea if the DS can't handle the issues simulation is porting a singleplayer version of LCS to the DS where you control a squad; after a playthrough (say there's a set number of days) the game spits out a code that you'd input on a master website to create a sortof metagame; the things you do individually effect the metagame as a whole, so as more people play and contribute action codes the master site would affect the state of the metaworld and tip it liberal or conservative. A better idea would be if everyone could connect to a central server and gameplay would effect the metagame on the fly, but I don't think nintendo would like that very much.

[jasonxfri13th]

this game would be so much better in the PSP.
DS screen is much smaller... plus the PSP had better hardware. PSP can run DOSBOX, does that mean anything?

[JeebusSez]

PSP development has been brought up earlier. However, you'd have to find a way to shrink the input from a full keyboard to six keys and the d-pad. And then you'd have to compile it with the DOS pdcurses library.

I only mentioned the DS because it's what I happen to have.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

DS has a touch screen, it's better than a mouse for clicking on stuff.

[chaoticag]

PSP development has been brought up earlier. However, you'd have to find a way to shrink the input from a full keyboard to six keys and the d-pad. And then you'd have to compile it with the DOS pdcurses library.

I only mentioned the DS because it's what I happen to have.

R and L buttons can act as shift buttons giving us 3x8-4=26 combinations, excluding unshifted directional buttons. Which I'm pretty sure is enough, if enough reworking is done. Not sure how to go around doing this.