
Porting Day of the Tentacle to Linux - thiagoharry
http://cheesetalks.net/porting_dott.php
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jamiesonbecker
I just bought this game last night. It's worth every penny (no DRM, and you
can switch back and forth between operating systems without trouble; I've
played on Debian Jessie native as well as wine..)

This is a funny but mildly challenging game that kids seem to like too, and
it's not scary, adult, or violent; I half expected to see the Mystery Mobile
pull up and Scooby and Daphne jump out.. or maybe Cruella De Vil. The music is
a perfect fit.

I never played the original, but this seems like a nearly flawless remaster
with great new art, audio, and animations and seems to be like a perfectly
working Linux port. Even cooler, you can press F1 in any scene and see it
morph into the old pixel art.

It's $8.99 at GOG while on sale[1]. Absolutely worth it and kudos to Cheese
for a great Linux port.

1\.
[https://www.gog.com/game/day_of_the_tentacle_remastered](https://www.gog.com/game/day_of_the_tentacle_remastered)

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mhurron
If you liked this, you might also want to checkout Grim Fandango if you
haven't already.

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eru
And the first two Monkey Island games, that got a remake.

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ajsalminen
The remakes haven't been ported to Linux.

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eru
Oh, that's a shame. Got to keep playing the un-remade versions on ScummVM
then.

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mjlee
For those who aren't yet aware, Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick (of Secret of
Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion fame) are currently developing Thimbleweed
Park - due to release in early 2017.

Dev blog here:
[https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/](https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/)

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shinymark
Nice write-up Cheese! And good work on the Linux port.

I'm Mark Cooke, CEO of Shiny Shoe and producer on both the Day of the Tentacle
and the Grim Fandango remasters. If anyone has any questions about the
production of the remasters I'd be happy to try to answer.

~~~
asimuvPR
In technical terms: What is process of remastering an old game? How much of
the old game do you use?

~~~
shinymark
In the case of DotT a significant amount of the original game code was re-
used. Both the C run-time as well as all the original SCUMM code, a domain
specific language invented by a team at LucasArts for creating adventure
games.

On top of that is a modern C++11 engine harness that inter-operates with the
original code, provides platform services, adds a brand new rendering system
and art pipeline for the remastered art, etc.

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binji
This is an interesting article, and mirrors my experience of porting. I really
loved seeing the advice from various other developers he consulted. It's a
nice way to expand it from being just his experience to a more general
statement about what it's like to port software. I never ported a commercial
game, but did quite a bit of porting to Native Client. The parts about knowing
your tools, knowing the project, and the process of porting are spot on.

One thing he didn't mention (or I missed it), is how it feels when your port
starts to work. I found it to be thrilling to have a big pile of code that
doesn't work at all, and it stays that way for a while, until suddenly almost
everything seems to come together. It's very different from normal software
development, which is more gradual. Porting software feels more like solving a
puzzle.

~~~
Cheeseness
It's interesting - I feel like I've experienced that more from working on my
own games/projects than doing this port.

Perhaps it's difficult for me to reflect on that with regards to DotT at the
moment - all I remember feeling whenever I got something working was relief,
and that was usually fleeting because there was always something else that
needed attention.

Poetically, I feel a little cheated that having the renderer work out of the
box meant I didn't have an opportunity to get screenshots of any cool mangled
visuals (although I am glad I didn't have to touch the renderer at all) :D

It's possible that I'll feel differently after the dust settles. If that
happens I'll definitely update the article with some extra thoughts!

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voltagex_
FTA: Ryan Gordon's Serious Sam porting changelog:
[https://icculus.org/~icculus/dotplan/SeriousSam-
CHANGELOG.tx...](https://icculus.org/~icculus/dotplan/SeriousSam-
CHANGELOG.txt)

I need to step up my changelog game. This is fantastic.

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Yokohiii
For some of us it feels like DoT came out yesterday and we had insane fun with
it. But if you cite something and your peers just stare at you, you realize
those peers are 10 years younger or more. This is a shame, I will certainly
setup a friday afternoon session and see if I can get my younger peers into
it.

DoT must never be forgotten.

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jimjimjim
I love this game and the others from the Golden Age of LucasArts (monkey
island, tie fighter, fate of atlantis etc).

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franciscop
This artcle was surprisingly difficult to follow with all those comments

