Gruntz - playing on Windows ...and Android?

       Some time ago, I accidentally stumbled upon a Polish version of the game Gruntz. This was my big surprise: "What? This game had a Polish version?".

Unfortunately, even though Gruntz was a game from my childhood, I only had access to the English version. I can even say that at first I only had the demo (which I played for I don't know how many hours), and a few years later, I found some cut-down version that allowed me and my friends to play over LAN.

Gruntz on Android

In the end, I left Gruntz somewhere on my old computer
and forgot about it. When I found out about the Polish version, the memories came back. I really wanted to see what it looked like. Unfortunately, because I couldn't install the game on Windows 7 or 10 (the installer is 16-bit and doesn't work on newer systems), I gave up on it for a while. But recently I learned about a certain Android app that allows emulating PC games.
I decided to test it, it's called Winlator.
I was surprised when I managed to run many of the games I played on PC back in the day on my smartphone: e.g. Half-Life 2, Portal, The Settlers IV, Little Fighter 2, Swarm Assault.
Then I thought: "what if I run Gruntz?". It took some effort: I ran Windows 98 in Virtual Box, installed Gruntz in it, copied it to Windows 10, and then to the phone. In the meantime, I found a still active forum for Gruntz online. I didn't think anyone still remembered this game. I found patch 1.01 and NoCD on it - although CD emulation also worked on the phone.
And here's the result:

The default controls work quite sensibly - I completed a few levels.

My settings for Gruntz in Winlator: Windows 7, Screen Size: 1280x720, Graphics Driver: Turnip (I have a Snapdragon) DX Wrapper: CNC DDraw

Windows 10

But, to make the game run well on Windows 10 (on PC) - I had a lot more "fun". I had to install a DirectX wrapper (I used dxwrapper) - to make the game run smoothly.
To set a higher resolution, I had to change an entry in the registry.
For me it was:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\VirtualStore\MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Monolith Productions\Gruntz\1.0]
"Resolution"=dword:00000003
You can copy this to notepad and save it as a .reg file - it should also work (3 here means the highest resolution 1024x768)

Additional files for Gruntz

List of files from my collection: 

• Plugin for Dragon UnPACKer 5 to export .PID graphics files - recently I managed to make this plugin with the help of AI (as part of my self-learning and AI testing); 

Other

I'm also adding a few screenshots from other games, from Winlator:

The Settlers IV - List of Supported Languages

Here I share a complete list of languages that are (or can be) supported by The Settlers IV. On the list I also wrote a translation status. It tells which part of the game is translated to a given language.
The list should be automatically updated if something has changed.

If you are thinking of making a new translation or you want to make some corrections/update to an existing one (or translate The New World or Great Crusades add-on), please share it on this GitHub page - where you can also find all the translations.
I have created this GitHub project to keep all the game translations, with their updates, in one place. If you want to contribute to it, please do.

This is the list of the game languages and their translation status:

Description of the codes:

• O - official translation
• U - unofficial translation (e.g. made by fans)
• No - Nothing, no translation
• All_HE - Full translation with extra texts from the History Edition
• All - Full translation (old version, not History Edition)
• ? - Unknown: probably GE or Bas
• GE - Gold Edition translation
• Bas - the basis of the game
• MP1 - Mission CD 1
• Tro - The Trojans and the Elixir of Power
• SE - Second Expansions translation
• NeW - Die Neue Welt (The New World))
• MP2 - Community Pack

Future translations can be added to the game after number '18', however they can use only standard ANSI.

How to set any language from the above list, in the History Edition:

1. Go to C:\Users\<your username>\Documents\TheSettlers4\Config and open the GameSettings.cfg file, e.g. with notepad.
2. Find the line Language = <number> and change the <number> to the number of language you want from the above list.
3. Save the file and run the game. Now the visible language in the game should be the language you have chosen.

In the Gold Edition the GameSettings.cfg file is located in Config directory, in a location where the game is installed. Other steps remain the same.

Bear in mind that History Edition is officially translated only to German, English and French. If you change the game language to any other of these three, you will have partial translation of the game - without the New World and the Great Crusades - unless somebody will translate them (I've translated them to Polish). See The Settlers IV - Game Translation Tool.

It may happen that after some Ubisoft update, you will have to repeat all of these above steps.

In the History Edition, the menu texts: "New World" and "Great Crusades" are only visible in English, German or French, because someone hardcoded them that way in the game code. So for them, the game ignores the translation file of your language, and loads hardcoded signatures. This only happens in the History Edition.

 

The Settlers IV - Game Translation Tool

I was writing a program that can edit language files from Settlers 4. So you can edit them and make translation of the game, with all game additions like Neue Welt (New World), to your own language.

The program is in beta version and you can download it here.

If you make a new translation or you make some corrections to an existing one, please share it on this GitHub page.

According to my research this is the list of languages for The Settlers IV game:

        0 ENGLISH
        1 GERMAN
        2 FRENCH
        3 SPANISH
        4 ITALIAN
        5 POLISH
        6 KOREAN
        7 CHINESE
        8 SWEDISH
        9 DANISH
        10 NORWEGIAN
        11 HUNGARIAN
        12 HEBREW
        13 CZECH
        14 FINNISH
        16 RUSSIAN
        17 THAI
        18 JAPANESE

It seems that number 15 is not used but I am not absolutely sure.

Chinese (traditional) as number 7

For more detailed and updated list see this post.

LG F60 (D390n) - Testpoint

I think it still might be useful for somebody, therefore I decided to share it. Testpoint for LG F60 (D390n):

It helped me to fix my phone when it was in super hard brick mode. While I was finding solution to fix the LG F60 I went I think through most of modes: qualcomm 9008, qualcomm 9006, android net.

At the beginning I had problem with boot loop (Boot Certification verify), and hard reset didn't help. Then by testing all possible combinations of buttons on the device, I went to qualcomm 9008 mode. However later when I tried the same combinations of buttons, I couldn't go to qualcomm 9008 mode. When I was in 9008 mode, I managed to go to qualcomm 9006 mode (Qualcomm Premium Tool). As I didn't know much about flashing a rom at that time, when I was in qualcomm 9006 mode (here you can use Linux to flash a rom or some Windows-based software like EMMCRAW), I flashed only these files which I could see already existing on my phone. Basically I just replaced these files which I could see so I didn't add any other files. I didn't know at that moment that my phone was missing all other files (I could see only 5 partitions but should be more than 20 - if I remember correctly). Therefore I super-hard-bricked my phone. All partition table was wrong. At this moment I thought my phone can't be ever repaired. It was being found on my laptop as android net device and there was nothing I could do with it.
I did try last thing, I tried to short-circuit the testpoint (I had to remove the metal cover on the board - I soldered it back later). It made my LG F60 going to qualcomm 9008 mode again. Then I went again to qualcomm 9006 mode, and this time I flashed all the files from the original rom I had om my PC. One of the files is the partition table, then when it was flashed, it restored original partition table (I also flashed every single file that was provided with the rom (after extracting) and was existing on the partition list (boot.iso, aboot.iso etc.). Now the phone works well.

How to do the testpoint (you do it on your own risk):

1. By using a wire, touch both points (shown on the photos) carefully. Make sure you don't touch anything else to avoid damaging the circuit board.
2. Connect the smartphone by USB cable to your computer.
3. Release the connection. The device should be recognised by your PC as qualcomm 9008 device.

Cocos2d-x HTML5 (JavaScript) project in Visual Studio

Cocos2d-x is a free multiplatform game engine.
Microsoft Visual Studio for many users is a very comfortable programming environment and it provides many good tools, especially for debugging.

In this tutorial I would like to describe how to open Cocos2d-x HTML5 (JavaScript) project in Microsoft Visual Studio.

1. Preparing the Visual Studio

I used Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2017 but this tutorial should work for other versions.
However, we need make sure that our Visual Studio supports JavaScript and allows us to create a new web application project. By opening the Visual Studio installer and pressing modify, we make sure that we have this add-on installed:

If we have it installed, we are fine ;), if we don't have it then it is about 2.6 GB to download (I had to download 2.6 GB).
We can also check if we have it installed by pressing in Visual Studio File->New->Web Site. If there is nothing in the Templates, we are missing the add-on.

2. Creating a new Cocos2d-x project

OK! Now we can create a new cocos2d-x project. I assume that you have configured all the system variables for cocos2d-x game engine and its dependencies. If not, I need to send you to cocos2d-x documentation. I can only briefly tell you that you need to run setup.py in the cocos2d-x root folder (you need to install python first), then you need to install everything what you will be told after running the setup.py script.

When everything is ready (system variables are set), we open the command prompt and navigate to the folder we have chosen for our cocos2d projects.
Then we type: cocos new yourProjectName -l js to create a new project:

3. Creating a new Visual Studio project

Now we can open our Visual Studio. In File->New->Web Site we select from the Templates Visual C#->ASP.NET Empty Web Site. Then we need to select the path for the project. It has to be the same path where we created our cocos2d-x project:

Now we need to select Open the exiting Web site and press 'OK':

Now we can work with the project :)

I had problems with the current version of the cocos2d-x (3.15). It didn't work in the Internet Explorer (IE11). I wrote about this issue on Cocos2d-x Forums. Unfortunately Visual Studio debugging works well with the Internet Explorer and I am not sure how to configure it to work with the Firefox.

If you ever have a problem to compile the game for Windows in Visual Studio 2017,  try to change the Platform Toolset to Visual Studio 2015 (v140).

Colobot 1.9 EN - Original Full Version Under GNU GPL v3 license.

Colobot 1.9 in English is now a free, open game under the GNU GPL v3 license.
You can download Colobot 1.9 from the link I placed below the image. It is a compiled version by me from the source code given to PPC - Polish community of Colobot.
I only extended the function 'aim()' so it can take another 'y' parameter to turn a robot turret left and right as well. In the original version it could move the turret up and down only. The game is very good for kids to learn programming basics and logical thinking.
In the game the player plays as an astronaut who builds his robots to colonize other planets.
The player can program these robots.

You can find the game here
or optionally here

The source code can be found here.

Description taken from Wikipedia:
Colobot (Colonize with Bots) is an educational real-time strategy video game featuring 3D graphics. The objective of the game is to find a planet for colonization by the human race by establishing a basic infrastructure on the surface and eliminating any alien life forms endangering the expedition. The game takes place on the Earth, Moon, and 7 fictional planets. The main feature of the game which makes it educational is the ability of the player to program his or her robots using a programming language similar to C++ or Java.

The game has been recommended by the Polish Ministry of National Education as a teaching aid for learning the basics of algorithms and object-oriented programming.

Epsitec has released the games' source code under GNU GPL v3 after being contacted by PPC (Recently rebranded to ICC & TerranovaTeam). LINK.