[Release] Blake Stone for Vita

[01y]

bstone-vita

Blake Stone is a fun first person shooter from 1993 that sadly got overshadowed by Doom, which came out the week after its release. It's based on the Wolfenstein engine, but includes many features that would later appear in the Doom engine, such as textured floors and ceilings, interactive map elements such as switches and shootable objects, dimming of distant objects, automap, etc.

BStone is a full-featured port of the original source code. And now it's available on Vita, running smoothly in native resolution widescreen mode.

I think it's attained a sufficiently good state to merit the status of "release" as of now, so here you are. Big performance improvement over the pre-release version (usually in the 40s). Only caveat is that having music enabled can lead to crashing, so best to disable it in the menu (if anyone can figure out why, I'd be interested in knowing ).

monsters.png (95.01 KiB) Viewed 3021 times

automap.png (58.3 KiB) Viewed 3021 times

lots of plants in this game.png (64.74 KiB) Viewed 3021 times

Changes:
0.2

• L is now "use"; -/= in the front
• Joystick sesitivity adjusted
• Performance improvement (>20%)
• HUD no longer drawn over in various circumstances
• Live Area assets tweaked, -ps shortcut added
• Heartbeat on by default

0.1.1

• Elevator button touch location in ui_stretch mode

0.1

• Merge in changes from mainline develop branch up to the current state

0.0.1

• Initial port to PS Vita

Download:
Shareware data included with the first prerelease. More info in the README.md
https://github.com/01y/bstone-vita/releases

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[Disco]

Tried it last night (I love Blake Stone games, didn't even know of the PC source port, so thanks for that info ), and when I pressed start it gave me an error and game closed. Also, i don't like how the game is 16:9 but the hud is 4:3, it doesn't look natural.
I have vita slim on enso 3.65 and sd2vita. I also have pstv with 3.68 h-encore on offical sony mc, will try there also.
For example soruce port of wolf3d runs OK on my pstv, but on vita it gives me random errors, I think this may be related to sd2vita in some way.
I use samsung 64gb msd evo+ and it's in perfect condition.
Great work BTW !!

EDIT: OK, my bad, I now see there is option for hud stretch
EDIT 2: I just tried the full version instead of shareware that is included and for now no errors on vita.
EDIT3: Tryed full AOG and PS on pstv and as You said there are crashes in PS, AOG worked fine (I played only trough first mission). Only other ''problem'' I found is that all sounds/music go mute for a seocond when the new sound is played for the first time, for example you pick up ammo for the first time, and all sounds mute except the ammo pickup sound, after that all sounds play during the ammo pickup...

Just to let You know one more time that I appreciate Your work; thanks, port is awesome!

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[CountDuckula]

I love blake stone, one of the shareware games from the mid 90s 'game demo collection' CDs I had that I played a lot of.

This runs really well (30-40fps feels smooth to me), music and saving/loading work. Aliens of Gold (gog version) hasn't crashed on me yet
Having the touch screen to operate the elevator buttons etc is a really nice touch.

I did find the default sensitivity too fast for me personally. Lowering 'in_mouse_sensitivity' in ux0:data\bstone\bstone_config.txt from 5 to 1 or 2 makes it much more playable IMO.

Am I able to swap the square (use) and L (show map/stats) buttons? Not sure how to do so via the config file.

Thanks a lot, excellent port

[01y]

I'm glad at least someone's enjoying it! I'd say this is one of those games that was unfairly underrated.

DIdn't think many people would use the stretch option, but I just made a new release which corrects the button placement on the elevator screen in stretched mode.

I don't have a PSTV. Do you use a DS4 for the touch controls (does it work)? is the resolution and screen geometry the same as the Vita (is someone able to check whether it's 960x544, or something else? The logic for screen layout works differently in the new version)

As for switching controls, maybe at some point I'll add a way to do this from the menu (with proper labelling of buttons, etc). For the time being, transposing the occurrences of "tab" and "space" in the config file will probably work. Open to suggestions for better button layouts as well.

The joystick sensitivity is a conundrum. On the one hand, it seems to make sense to match it to the maximum speed possible on the keyboard. On the other hand, like Wolfenstein and Doom, the max strafing speed is really high already, so that would feel a bit odd only to be able to go fast sideways. Additionally, the max possible speed allowed by using the mouse is also very high, but unpleasant to actually use because of the physical necessity of repeatedly lifting it and setting it down again. So in this case, it seems like a good idea to just go with whatever sensitivity feels the most fun, since the "accurate" limits are a bit weird.

Getting ~40FPS is definitely playable, and good enough for this kind of game, but I'd still like to get it up to 60 (while underclocked-- why waste battery power running old games? ) One pie-in-the sky idea I had was multithreading the raycasting engine, but I have no idea if this has any feasibility whatsoever.

[Disco]

PSTV is the same as the Vita, so the resolution is same 960x544.
Yes, I use DS4 and touchpad works. You can also use DS3 and DS4 for touch controls without touchpad.
When you pres L3 little hand appears on screen indicating the finger used on front touch, and when you press R3 it's the same but for rear touchpad.
Of course DS4's touchpad is much more convenient. And when gaming on PSTV, OC is not a problem

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention, PSTV has upscaling to 720p and 1080i, but internal resolution is 960x544.

[CountDuckula]

Thanks for the update, I've enabled the stretch UI option also and the touch screen input now matches up nicely with the buttons.

I tried swapping the references to 'tab' and 'space' in the config file, however it seems the game resets these to default when run.
Changes to 'in_mouse_sensitivity' stick, but the modifications I make under the '// Input bindings' heading (including adding a new comment line in between the settings) were reverted after playing and the buttons stay as L for map/square for use. Deleted the config file on vita, confirmed the content of it on PC and copied again with same result.

AoG episode 1 crashed a couple of times while playing last night, once in the elevator and once part way through a level. I can upload crashdumps if they are of any use. Will play some more now with the new version.

I appreciate your persistence in optimising, good performance and long battery life

[Disco]

For me the ''mouse'' speed is just perfect
BTW, do you use Opengl to render game? If not, can you try that, I think it would run smoother.

[rmatheso]

First of all this is the best homebrew game release for Vita in awhile. I do have some comments:

Yeah, the movement does seem too fast using a dualshock 3 on my PSTV. The sticks are motion sensitive, so I can not push them all the way to go slower. It is a bit of an adjustment. I tried taking autorun off and it was just too slow with both analog sticks, But using the digital d-pad it was faster... weird.

Aliens of gold worked great, could not get planet strike to work. Which files for planet strike did you use?

And finally, maybe you could look at the Catacomb 3D series to port next. The GOG version I bought just doesn't play well with dosbox.

https://www.gog.com/game/catacombs_pack

[BenMcLean]

Aliens of Gold works great.

Speaking of obscure Wolfenstein 3D engine games, I had an ambition at one point to try to port Super 3D Noah's Ark to the PSP based on Chilly Willy's Wolfenstein 3D port but although I could get his code to build, it would always only show a black screen when it ran and since I didn't have proper debugging tools, I couldn't figure out why. Plus, the pspsdk toolchain kept breaking for various reasons. So frustrating. Oh well, maybe I can try again on the Vita sometime.

[bololabich]

Thanks for your work making this port!