Posted: 1/15/2020 7:17 AM
Post subject: Blix - An old Shockwave game
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Ramzi
Joined: 3/25/2004
Posts: 459
I used to play this great Shockwave game called Blix. It seems impossible to play now, or to find anything about it on the Internet. I spent hours trying to install Shockwave plugins for modern browsers. None of them run the game well at all. The game freezes or crashes randomly. The game can still be found by Googling for blix300.dcr. I think the only hope of playing it again is if someone has an old computer with an old version of Shockwave still installed. But it might not even work then, if part of Shockwave calls out to shockwave.com which is now dead. I don't know if such calls out exist though. I would like to recreate the game, but I can't find the level data anywhere. If there were screenshots or videos of the levels, then I could remake the game. One hope would be to somehow recover this level data from the blix300.dcr file, but I really don't know how to begin with that. There would be patterns to be found with a hex editor, unless the levels were procedurally generated, in which case writing a level editor for blix300.dcr would be a lot harder. The best hope would be that the levels were straightforwardly laid out, such that all of the levels' data could easily be recovered. If anyone knows how to play this game again, please inform me. I'd love to remake this game and bring this great game back to life. Thanks. Oh, and I tried contacting the creator of the game already, but he didn't respond back to me.
Posted: 1/15/2020 8:48 AM
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Patashu
He/Him
Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4043
'I spent hours trying to install Shockwave plugins for modern browsers. None of them run the game well at all. The game freezes or crashes randomly.' Dumb question, but why not install Shockwave for a NON modern browser?
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
Posted: 1/16/2020 1:07 AM
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Ramzi
Joined: 3/25/2004
Posts: 459
It didn't occur to me, since all the guides I found had directions for installing newer plugins on newer browsers. I suppose I could look for old versions of browsers and Shockwave, and hopefully that'll work. Thanks for the idea!
Posted: 1/16/2020 1:49 AM
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Ferret_Warlord
Skilled player (1416)
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1978
Location: Making an escape
Shockwave, and support for it, was officially dropped last year. It's a shame. The other week I had a hankering to replay Xananeko but couldn't.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Posted: 1/16/2020 2:28 AM
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Ramzi
Joined: 3/25/2004
Posts: 459
I tried downloading an old version of Internet Explorer. It said it couldn't install on a 64-bit system. Then I tried downloading an old version of Shockwave. And it also said it can't install on my system. I'm wondering, could a Docker image be made with something like 32-bit Windows XP and an old IE and an old Shockwave, that could be easily distributed? Maybe not even Windows XP, but some version of Linux with an old IE that runs on it. There should be a standard solution to playing old Shockwave games.
Posted: 1/16/2020 2:32 AM
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Dacicus
Editor, Player (69)
Joined: 6/22/2005
Posts: 1050
There's software from Adobe called Projector Skeleton that can run DCR files. I tested Blix through level 5. When loading the DCR file, it did request several other files, but it seemed to work even without them. Note that I had to close Projector Skeleton via the Task Manager, since the usual methods did not work.
Current Projects: TAS: Wizards & Warriors III.
Posted: 1/16/2020 3:50 AM
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Ramzi
Joined: 3/25/2004
Posts: 459
Wow! It works! I wonder why none of the tutorial sites had mentioned this Projector Skeleton solution! I had to come to these forums to get a solution. Someone tell Ferret Warlord there's a way to play his game.
I tested Blix through level 5.
Wow! Level 5! You're good! Edit: Ugh! I just crashed with a script error on Level 4! Edit: I got past it this time! Edit: Don't you guys think this game would be great for TASing? Edit: I was able to close Projector Skeleton by right-clicking in the task bar and selecting Close, since the red X of the window didn't work.
Posted: 1/16/2020 5:13 AM
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Patashu
He/Him
Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4043
Can you record some gameplay footage? Curious to see how this game looks. This might be useful for archiving other old shockwave games, too.
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
Posted: 1/16/2020 6:27 AM
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Ramzi
Joined: 3/25/2004
Posts: 459
I was going to need to record some gameplay footage anyway, so I can see the initial configurations of the levels, because I had wanted to recreate the game, possibly to add TAS functionality. Everything I do is in Java, because I'm a Java fanboy. I was thinking of making a TAS for this using Java robot to issue mouse clicks at certain times and locations. The game appears to be deterministic. So likewise, I don't use a standard screen recording software. I use Java to take screenshots, save them as BufferedImages, and then use a Java library to turn that into a gif. I'll go ahead and try to make a .gif for you tonight, even though it's past midnight and tomorrow is my first day of work at a new job. Shit. There was a delayTime parameter which put a 10ms delay between every frame in the animated gif, so the final product came out looking way slower than the actual game. Nevertheless, here is what I produced: https://imgur.com/a/qpP5d0u
Posted: 1/17/2020 7:08 AM
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Ramzi
Joined: 3/25/2004
Posts: 459
Tonight I tried writing a TAS for this game by issuing mouse clicks. It was unsuccessful. Although the logic said to click a location, and although it would work for many of the clicks, for many other clicks they would be unregistered. Also, when the ball destroys a paddle, that usually causes the game to not register a click. Finally, it is very dangerous to put clicking behavior in a loop. If the loop is infinite, it can become impossible to even Control Alt Delete to stop the process. Even if the loop isn't infinite, if it clicks out of the game window, it can start dragging files around in your code base or file system. For these reasons, I think I should first recode the game in a manner that is friendly to TASing, rather than trying to figure out the technical intricacies of why Shockwave doesn't register certain mouse clicks when other events fire.
Posted: 1/23/2020 5:58 AM
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Ramzi
Joined: 3/25/2004
Posts: 459
I have implemented a game which is a close recreation of Blix. Its look and feel is largely almost there, but there are many quirks, and the code base is sloppy. Today I attempted to use Test-Driven Development (TDD) to make a cleaner code base. I wouldn't consider my attempt a success. While what I have so far might be considered cleaner code, I'm struggling to think how I can take what I have and actually implement a game out of it. Tonight I got the idea... If a video is taken from the start of a level with no inputs fed to the level, until the player dies, how hard would it be to auto-generate that level in my new engine? The auto-generation would have to just check that every frame's image matched the image at that frame from the video exactly, and tweak parameters until it did. Otherwise, to code it by hand would take extreme attention to detail, and even then things are likely to still be off in minor ways, like the initial velocities and positions of the balls. In the original Blix, a password is given every 5 levels. I wondered how difficult it would be to hack the binary to add a password for every level, for the purposes of taking a video of every level without having to manually play and complete them. I've been thinking about taking a screen recording of me playing the game just to show the game off, but honestly it would just be easier for anyone to download Projector Skeleton and play the game for themselves. I've also been thinking of uploading my code base to Github and linking it here for collaborative effort and code review, but I keep telling myself that I need to clean up the code more before I commit it. I'd be embarrassed by the state of the code otherwise. That's my update regarding what I've been working on regarding Blix. I've also had the idea, already mentioned in this thread, of incorporating TAS functionality like save and restore, and replaying of keystrokes, right into the remake. I think this is an interesting game for TASing, and maybe mathematical proofs of optimal completion can be given. Oh, one thing more I thought of... I don't like the idea of a TAS being able to click on extreme ends of the game board within a frame, when in reality it takes continuous mouse movement. For this reason I thought about being untrue to the original, such that there is a cursor in the game that requires continuous movement, rather than allowing the mouse cursor to jump anywhere instantly. This would complicate the math proofs for optimal completion. Likewise, depending on how much allowance there is for where in a tile a game piece can be activated would also affect the math proofs of optimality. Again there is a tradeoff in consideration of being exactly true to the original game, compared to making minor tweaks to create some more interesting game. A level editor could go beyond the original limitations of the game, like by having an increased board size. Like Mario Maker or something. Then "cryptographically" difficult custom levels could be created that would be hard to TAS, even with TAS functionality built right into the game, because the difficulty of playing and beating the levels would be a mathematical difficulty, not a technological difficulty.
Posted: 1/23/2020 6:18 AM
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Ramzi
Joined: 3/25/2004
Posts: 459
Here. I just downloaded some screen recording software. I only recorded 5 levels of play because every 5 levels Project Skeletor pops up a file browser window, and I didn't want anything from my file system to make it into the video, even though I don't think anything was exposed. I just didn't want to check carefully. And also, a file browser wouldn't have belonged in a game play video. Levels 11 through 15: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wCq6596WnI Levels 16 through 20: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oK7Xah9Wvg Levels 21 through 25: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJBSvu_NVuQ Levels 26 through 30: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c4ApTXmKjo Level 31 through 35: There is a glitch here where it calls level 31 level 000 at the start and end of the level. The glitch is probably due to me loading to that level from a password. (Because my previous game ended when my computer restarted itself for no good reason.) You can hear a Windows beep sound which belonged to a script error coming from Projector Skeleton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj__aELBG9c Levels 36 through 43: Ran into maximum screen recording time in the screen recording software i'm using. At 3:13 you can see a Windows Explorer window, which I had been trying to avoid capturing in the video until this time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnQEBhKcPEE Levels 44 through 50: Starting at 1:07 a Windows Explorer window can be seen, and again right at the end of the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47vq6pgFLME
Posted: 3/6/2020 5:12 PM
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arflech
He/Him
Joined: 5/3/2008
Posts: 1120
Although Projector Skeleton is fine, another option for those wanting a reasonably recent browser that still supports plugins is SeaMonkey; for people reading this forum in the future, get the next-to-last version of Shockwave Player, 12.3.4.204, so you can still view DIR files, and then install SeaMonkey 32-bit version 2.49.5, the latest one that still supports most NPAPI plugins. You may also consider Pale Moon 28 (possibly later) or K-Meleon 76G (possibly later), all 32-bit (because Shockwave Player was never available as a 64-bit plugin, on Windows at least).
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