princed / News: Recent posts

After a year of testing PR we decided to improve the abstraction between the console application and the library. To do that we had restructured the repository and rewritten the console module. This is going to improve the command line parsing and -combined with bash- accept wildcards for filenames.
We had also dropped lots of bugs and memory leaks using valgrind and making this version the most stable.
However, the best news is that we successfully code a compressor for the most complex algorithm in the format. This means that PR creates smaller DAT files and will be able to produce files as small as the ones in the original version and support images with more entropy.
As we didn't believe that could be possible until PR 1.5 we'll upgrade the future releases plan.

In case you know any other language than English you can help translating PR to this language. You don't need to have any coding knowledge, with only 10 to 15 minutes of your time is enough. We are using a beta version of the Transwi web interface to translate the software, the easiest way. Of course, you'll be added in the credits. You don't need any additional contact with the authors if you don't want.... read more

We are proud to anounce PR 1.0 beta is finally available in the SourceForge project download section.
The most important feature the version has added was the partial importing and exporting feature, so now it is possible to manipulate a resource avoiding a full extraction of the DAT file.
The most important format improvement is the monochrome support, now tested and stable. Potion animations may be modified now.
Of course the program was very hard tested and several bugs were solved but this doesn't mean there are no bugs. In case you find one, please report it in the Sourceforge Bug Reporting Tracker.

A bit behind schedule, the stable, fully functional version of PR that supports cathegorized extractions was completed and succesfully ported to Windows, GNU/Linux, Mac Os X, SunOs, FreeBSD and NetBSD. This version can import and export resources from all the DAT files from Prince of Persia V1.4 except for the CGA and EGA graphics.
The last release was very unstable, this release improves this, now it really works with all DAT files. If you downloaded Release 1, it is strongly recommended that you upgrade PR to 0.9 release 2.
Future releases: We do not know whether there will be a third release of the version 0.9, but we are sure that this version is very close to the version 1 of the program. Perhaps the only changes will be regarding resource cathegorization.

New features in the PR 0.9 development are done, we are now working in the stability and functionality. Lots of stable features were lost with the coding of the new recursive path extractor, the new command line parser and the plv support, however we've been debugging the program for some time and most important bugs are solved.
When we have enough stability we'll start working in the new resource file with full support for all dat files in POP1.
We scheduled the release for December the 22nd to have some more time to test and edit the resource file.

We have defined a new file format standard to be used to save POP levels. This format is .plv and we defined it with Brendon James (RoomShaker) to make a compatible file format for exported levels.
In the near future, PR 0.9 will support this file format. After that, all releases of PV3 will change the ped format (supported in alpha versions) for plv.
As soon as it is definitely working, we are going to publish the standard so other editors/extractors can use it too.

PR 0.8 has been released yesterday. This beta version has a lot of new features and optimizations. Due to the improvement of the compression tool, now imported files are between 30% and 40% smaller that the ones generated by the previous version.
There is also a new resource classification system using an XML file. This will save only necessary information about the resources and allows to set a filename and path to the extracted resource. This is the solution of several problems: the most important was to remember the palette of each image and to make groups of resources and animation frames.... read more

The first stable version of PR is now available for download. With this program you'll be able to edit graphics and sounds in the Prince of Persia 1 and extract some graphics from Prince of Persia 2. Please read instructions on the use of the program before starting to work with it.

Version 0.6 beta of the resources editor has ben released. We approached the release date due to several request from the people who wanted a full working version to start getting in touch with the program.

Some images are imported wrongly, but this problem will be solved in the next release: PR 0.7, the first full-working stable version. We are going to make some releases in several platforms using SF.net compile farm. This version should compile under the most strict ANSI C compiling options.... read more

It took 3 months to solve the problem. We didn't need to dissasemble the exe file, instead we tried some other ways repairing the imported images. Now we need to test both Prince.exe and PR bitmap features. We know there are some minor problems with crashes in the game, but they are going to be handled.

If schedules are ok, for the end of the month, PR 0.6 beta will be available for download in a source code distribution and compiled binaries in several platforms.

Princed is group of projects related to the edition of resources from the classic game "Prince of Persia". The main project is called PV3 and it's a map editor for the game, for the moment there are some Alpha releases. Other related projects are RoomShaker -another different map editor with all functionalities coded- and PR -a .dat files graphic/sound/other resources manager made Ansi C with a tar-like interface-.... read more