Was wondering why none of the fixes for MIDI playback in WINE were working. Turns out this is a "bug" with the original code (mci.c in WINE is partly to blame but it looks like the fix never got merged upstream)

https://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-bugs/2019-January/507548.html

I want to test messing with SpaceCadetPinball/midi.cpp but I have no idea how I would compile this from Linux.

While the ball moves, it visibly stutters, as if there was an FPS drop.

Turns out that Windows timer resolution, more specifically Sleep() is the root cause, its precision is too high.

Set the timer precision to 1ms and sleep for 1ms only. This still doesn't cause much CPU usage but provides a significantly better visual experience.

This merge adds the following changes: Move Linux related files in folder Platform/Linux Change SpaceCadetPinball.desktop to reflect the original game name and description Add a metainfo.xml file to support Appstream data Add a new upscaled icon (at 192x192) that will be nicer in the launcher Update readme.md with a brief description of the original game, and some instruction for building on Linux

Once I tried Hungarian translation (which is my native language, I grew up playing this) I immediately noticed that Arial doesn't match the original vibe:

I went ahead and I can see three real options to get better results, focusing on European languages with Latin characters:

1. Decompile a Hungarian (or any localized) exe to get original font rendering mechanism. I tried using Process Monitor, and it looks like it isn't using a Windows font, but some built-in rendering mechanism. Note that I only tried Hungarian 3DSC version.
2. Find the original font in TTF, and use that instead of Arial.
3. Use an approximation font.

Good news is, 2. does exist, it's called PIXymbols WINmenu W01 Menu, I tried that, and it actually is the original font, with 17 px base size. I don't know about higher resolutions, I don't have FT.

see in a bigger window

Bad news are:

• It doesn't contain some accented characters from half the supported languages. I spent a few hours with a font editor, and now I have added all accented characters for all the languages that Pinball has localizations for. Most of them were just putting existing accents on basic latin characters, only Polish Ł was tricky.
• The original game just replaced the characters with accent-less ones in the texts. I'm pretty sure we don't want to follow that path.
• I don't know whether we can redistribute it. Either the third-party one, or with my modifications. It's possibly the greyest of grey areas, as the font was visually copied from the game itself (or from some other Microsoft or EA property, who knows).
• I tried rendering the texts with WinMenu font plus falling back to 3. when there is a missing character, MS Sans Serif would have been a good candidate, but that didn't work and can't really work for multiple reasons. It ended up being a lot easier to fix the font itself.

So, assuming 2. can be a no-go, I explored 3. and found three similarly looking, authentic XP fonts: MS Sans Serif (a.k.a Helv), Helvetica and Tahoma (also available as MS Shell Dlg 2). All of which are most likely installed on all the target systems of WindowsClassic branch: Windows versions and Wine.

I used 16 px Bold fonts, with NONANTIALIASED_QUALITY.

This is how they look:

MS Sans Serif see in a bigger window

Helvetica see in a bigger window

Tahoma see in a bigger window

I prefer MS Sans Serif out of these, but I think accented characters look more authentic with Tahoma.

As I have no means to properly perform option 1., I'd recommend trying to open WinMenu font, if that's not found then fall back to MS Sans Serif. And provide installation link for the WinMenu font.

There's a huge difference between 2, and 3. though: WinMenu font is a bitmap font, so it basically doesn't scale. Others are TrueType fonts, and scale nicely and (in this context) weirdly. We could get bitmap font-like results with rendering the fonts with fixed size, and then stretching that out on the final screen.

The 2.0 release works only with XP version of Space Cadet. Attemting to run Full-Tilt version gives error "The .dat file is missing" even though older versions before 2.0 worked.

This built right through on MacOS Monterey using the sdl2 libraries from homebrew in a minute or two, and with the resources from my old Windows Pinball installation, works just great!

Well done -- I had no idea you could decompile an older game like this and remake it in SDL2.

now I'm in for some serious wasted time!

In this PR:

1. Some of the images inside Icon_1.ico have been extracted and converted to png
2. A basic Linux desktop file has been added, which uses the new icons
3. Cmake adds an install phase, which copies the binary and installs the desktop file

All of this should only affect Linux systems, and from my tests works as intended. It should also help with packaging (see #95), since right now maintainers have to manually move the executable. Please note that although it is probably fine, I have not tested this on other operating systems.

No errors during cmake. System is openSUSE Tumbleweed. Development libraries fro SDL2 and SDL2_mixer are installed. Help appreciated.

Hi,

Here is the PR to add translations as discussed in https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball/issues/152.

I've used the C++11 version as there is no significant performance impact (I've checked with valgrind that the initialization doesn't use much cpu time).

I've also added a when to change the font, this is required to display characters that the default font doesn't support. For that, I use the current language to construct the font atlas with only needed characters. When using a non-default font, text is not as good, but I can't make it better. I think subpixel rendering is what is needed, but ImGui doesn't support it (yet).

Fixes: #152

since 3D Pinball: space cadet is just a slightly modified version of the space cadet version of full tilt pinball, I thought you could take the CADET.DAT from the original, which has a 1024x768 version of the table and copy it over or something.

https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball/blob/de13d4e326b2dfa8e6dfb59815c0a8b9657f942d/CMakeLists.txt#L222

When I try to compile with CMake 3.10.2 on Ubuntu 18.04 gives the error:

CMake Error at CMakeLists.txt:222 (install):
  install TARGETS given no RUNTIME DESTINATION for executable target
  "SpaceCadetPinball".

I think this can be fixed by adding DESTINATION bin to line 222 like so:

install(TARGETS "${PROJECT_NAME}" RUNTIME DESTINATION bin)

Note: CMake on Ubuntu 20.04 and MSYS2/MinGW doesn't seem to have any issue with it being left off, it's only CMake on Ubuntu 18.04 that complains.

I've got this running on my linux-ified Chromebook and as such, I don't have an F3 button to pause. Can you add either an auto-pause feature to the game when anything in the menu is clicked or maybe add the Pause option to the Player Controls so players can map that button to something other than F3.

Love this project! Thanks for all the hard work on this.

Hi Muzychenko!

When I'm switching language or game data via "Option" on the menu bar, the game hangs (a.k.a. no response).

This is a piece of terminal output when it hangs:

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 22:27:12.935: cannot register existing type 'IpatchSplitsType'

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 22:27:12.935: g_param_spec_enum: assertion 'G_TYPE_IS_ENUM (enum_type)' failed

** (process:19001): CRITICAL **: 22:27:12.936: ipatch_type_install_property: assertion 'G_IS_PARAM_SPEC(prop_spec)' failed

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 22:27:12.936: g_boxed_type_register_static: assertion 'g_type_from_name (name) == 0' failed

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 22:27:12.936: cannot register existing type 'IpatchSF2GenType'

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 22:27:12.936: cannot retrieve class for invalid (unclassed) type '<invalid>'

** (process:19001): CRITICAL **: 22:27:12.936: file /build/libinstpatch/src/libinstpatch-1.1.6/libinstpatch/IpatchSF2Gen.c: line 152 (_ipatch_sf2_gen_init): assertion `enum_class != NULL' failed.

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 22:27:12.936: g_type_class_unref: assertion 'g_class != NULL' failed

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 22:27:12.936: cannot register existing type 'IpatchSample'

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 22:27:12.936: cannot register existing type 'IpatchItem'

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 22:27:12.936: g_type_interface_add_prerequisite: assertion 'G_TYPE_IS_INTERFACE (interface_type)' failed

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 22:27:12.936: cannot register existing type 'IpatchSF2GenItem'

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 22:27:12.936: cannot register existing type 'IpatchItem'

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 22:27:12.936: g_type_interface_add_prerequisite: assertion 'G_TYPE_IS_INTERFACE (interface_type)' failed

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 22:27:12.936: cannot register existing type 'IpatchSF2ModItem'

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 22:27:12.936: cannot register existing type 'IpatchItem'

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 22:27:12.936: g_type_interface_add_prerequisite: assertion 'G_TYPE_IS_INTERFACE (interface_type)' failed

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 22:27:12.936: cannot register existing type 'IpatchSF2VoiceCache'

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 22:27:12.936: cannot retrieve class for invalid (unclassed) type '<invalid>'

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 22:27:12.936: cannot register existing type 'IpatchItem'

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 22:27:12.936: g_type_register_static: assertion 'parent_type > 0' failed

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 22:27:12.936: g_type_register_static: assertion 'parent_type > 0' failed

(process:19001): GLib-CRITICAL **: 22:27:12.936: g_once_init_leave: assertion 'result != 0' failed

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 22:27:12.936: cannot retrieve class for invalid (unclassed) type '<invalid>'

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 22:27:12.936: cannot register existing type 'IpatchItem'

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 22:27:12.936: g_type_register_static: assertion 'parent_type > 0' failed

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 22:27:12.936: cannot retrieve class for invalid (unclassed) type '<invalid>'

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 22:27:12.936: cannot register existing type 'IpatchConverter'

(process:19001): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 22:27:12.936: cannot retrieve class for invalid (unclassed) type '<invalid>'

Built successfully on Fedora 37.

I did read #59, did not see the same error I'm having.

I initially tried export SDL_SOUNDFONT=/path/to/your/soundfont as indicated in BUILD.md with a custom soundfont but got:

Loading game from: /home/3laws/.local/share/SpaceCadetPinball/PINBALL.DAT
SDL Error: Couldn't open /etc/timidity++.cfg

Using fluidsynth now I get:

Using SDL renderer: opengl
Loading game from: /home/3laws/.local/share/SpaceCadetPinball/PINBALL.DAT
SDL Error: Couldn't open /usr/share/soundfonts/fluid-soundfont-lite-patches/FluidR3_GM-Standard/Splash

After compiling using cmake and attempting to run, I get the following error:

Could not load game data

The .dat file is missing. Make sure that the game data is present in any of the following locations: working directory /Users/danielcarlson/SpaceCadetPinball/bin/ /Users/danielcarlson/Library/Application Support/SpaceCadetPinball/ /usr/local/share/SpaceCadetPinball/ /usr/share/SpaceCadetPinball/