Another Linux port from Icculus! Noctropolis [Steam], a remastered adventure game originally released on 1994 has arrived.
Direct Link
About the game:
In a world where comic books are real - The final issue is Evil!
In the City Of Darkness, where the spirit of the times is an insatiable lust for flesh and blood, a hero stands alone. You are Darksheer, and your nemeses will stop at nothing: the vampiric Succubus, Tophat the Magician, the masochistic Master Macabre and their demonic allies have joined forces to indulge in fantasies of carnage worthy only of the end of time. Night Dive Studios presents Noctropolis, a beautifully rendered, adult graphic adventure about the grisly things you dream.
The updated version has a remastered soundtrack, SDL 2.0 Game controller support, crashes from the original code were fixed, dead-end situations were fixed and plenty more. Really nice that Nightdive Studios pick up the rights to old games and get them fixed up for a new audience. They've done it for a number of other titles too, so hopefully more of them will come to Linux with Icculus' help.
It might not be the newest or flashiest port, but I consider reviving classic games is an important job.
Speaking on his Patreon, Icculus said this port came as a result of his previous call for games to port, so that's awesome.
He is too good to not use his immense experience on titles with bigger impact, just saying, don't kill me.
You shouldn't.
I'm more surprised that an icculus port is only available via steam. OK, likely not something he can influence.
Bad surprise it still is :(
Did he explain why?
Last edited by Shmerl on 27 October 2017 at 5:57 pm UTC
OK, probably someone will slap me on the wrist for saying this...but I have this nagging feeling that Gordon is wasting his talents lately (when porting games is concerned).Part of the problem, is that the bigger the game, the more complicated a port likely is. Which means more time would be involved in porting it.
He is too good to not use his immense experience on titles with bigger impact, just saying, don't kill me.
Also, there's nothing saying he's not working on others too, I mean this was one of two Icculus ports released in the same week. The other currently being in Beta.
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 27 October 2017 at 9:19 pm UTC
Nightdive did all the porting, and already had a screenshot of a Linux build, they just wanted some confirmation they were building something that was sane and binary compatible, and I'm totally a wizard at that, so I did a build for them to post.
So he "just" helped out building the binary to ship and didn't really spent time on porting, if that's a concern ;)
These interactions are pretty cool! A studio porting the game on their own and already doing it pretty right, just getting confirmation from the guru if it's all okay. Awesome!
Last edited by Hohlraum on 28 October 2017 at 11:38 am UTC
old westwood games too plz.
Here's what you need to know about Nightdive: instead of shipping this in DOSBox or something, they rewrote the assembly to be portable, 64-bit clean C++11. Nightdive is hardcore like you wouldn't _believe_.
Holy shit! That's crazy... Sure, assembly is bare metal fast, if you're able to produce better code than a compiler can. Which I guess in the mid 90's probably wasn't unheard of.
From Ryan's blog:
Here's what you need to know about Nightdive: instead of shipping this in DOSBox or something, they rewrote the assembly to be portable, 64-bit clean C++11. Nightdive is hardcore like you wouldn't _believe_.
Holy shit! That's crazy... Sure, assembly is bare metal fast, if you're able to produce better code than a compiler can. Which I guess in the mid 90's probably wasn't unheard of.
Yes back in 1994 it was not problem to outperform a compiler by far. Also you basically targeted the 80486 or first Pentium processors and they contained very little of the "magic" that compilers are far more better to utilize. Since then processors have increased in complexity and compilers have gained tremendous optimizations.
Yes back in 1994 it was not problem to outperform a compiler by far. Also you basically targeted the 80486 or first Pentium processors and they contained very little of the "magic" that compilers are far more better to utilize. Since then processors have increased in complexity and compilers have gained tremendous optimizations.
Yeah I've read a ton of Michael Abrash's articles (have the Zen of Graphics Programming in my library too). It's very enlightening stuff, and really opens your mind to the challenges back then... Very much wish I had his books as a teen, would have kept me out of trouble and started my career 20 years earlier.
Sorry for the slight delay but the Linux version of Noctropolis is also available on GOG :)
From Ryan's blog:
Here's what you need to know about Nightdive: instead of shipping this in DOSBox or something, they rewrote the assembly to be portable, 64-bit clean C++11. Nightdive is hardcore like you wouldn't _believe_.
Holy shit! That's crazy... Sure, assembly is bare metal fast, if you're able to produce better code than a compiler can. Which I guess in the mid 90's probably wasn't unheard of.
Where can you find his blog?
Last edited by Shmerl on 1 November 2017 at 12:31 am UTC
Where can you find his blog?
Patreon is maybe more accurate... https://www.patreon.com/posts/project-15067274
View video on youtube.com
Last edited by Shmerl on 13 November 2017 at 4:16 am UTC
The campy B-movie aesthetic reminds me of the earlier Tex Murphy adventures. Gameplay is different, but if this is half as fun, I'm in.
I've just noticed - Brent Erickson who was one the designers of early Tex Murphy games (like Mean Streets and Martian Memorandum) also was designer of Noctropolis :)
Last edited by Shmerl on 13 November 2017 at 4:51 am UTC
Interesting interview with Brent Erickson about Noctropolis: https://adventuregamers.com/articles/view/29383Thanks for the distraction. It's not like I should be working or anything.
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