Fairtris 2: The Ultimate Challenge is a Tetris clone and another excellent contribution to the games list of Pascal SDL2 games! It improves classical Tetris by a lot of settings you can modify, e. g. you can choose from 6 additional pieces generators, or, of course, you can use the classical one. The original description shares more details:
Fairtris 2: The Ultimate Challenge is another installment of the game Fairtris, this time not in the form of a tool for testing various mechanics and generators, but as a normal video game. The engine remained the same, but it was modernized, I added a lot of improvements and fixes (including bug patches), and it also received a new graphic design, much nicer than that of its predecessor — a graphical jump from NES to SNES. The game is of course free, the source code is open and unlicensed, so you can do anything you want with it.
Project name: Fairtris 2: The Ultimate Challenge
Author: Jarosław Baran a. k. a. furious programming
Latest version: 3.0
First release date: 22 Aug. 2021 (Ver. 1.0)
Compiler and SDL version: Free Pascal / Lazarus / SDL2
The description of this project found on it’s Wiki page says it all, nothing to add other than that this project is really capable of spawning some good, nostalgic feelings (!):
“Fairtris is a video game, a clone of the 32-year-old Tetris® game produced by Nintendo for the Famicom and NES consoles, designed for modern Windows and Linux systems. Fairtris is not an emulator — it is a full-fledged game, created from scratch in Free Pascal language (using the Lazarus IDE) and with Direct3D and OpenGL support via the SDL library. Thanks to this combination, it is super-fast and ultra-light.”
Project name: Fairtris
Author: Jarosław Baran a. k. a. furious programming
Latest version: 3.0
First release date: 22 Aug. 2021 (Ver. 1.0)
Compiler and SDL version: Free Pascal / Lazarus / SDL2
FFPlay4Laz2 is the SDL2 version of the older SDL 1.2 based (Win32 only) FFPlay4Laz FFmpeg Video and Media Player. FFPlay4Laz2 is extended to have more features than FFPlay4Laz and provide better performance. It is designed to be cross-platform by replacing Win-API calls by SDL2 calls. The project is open source and can be found on the official Lazarus forums.
Console menue of FFPlay4Laz2. (Image source: Captured from FFPlay4Laz2_Images.pdf, see link below; 28/12/2022)
This project has no official website and the author provides updates via the official Lazarus forums (see link below).
Project name: FFPlay4Laz2
Author: metis
Latest version: v2.5.2
First release date: Thread startet in Dec. 2014
Compiler and SDL version: Free Pascal / Lazarus / SDL2
Menue screen of the engine. (Image: With permission of the author.)
Well, the introduction for this amazing project over at the Kirinn’s (developer) website says it all!
SuperSakura is a free, open-source visual novel engine that can run quite a few old games, mostly published by JAST, one of the first developers in the field. In addition to well-known localised titles, Japanese companies produced lots of fairly good games in the 90’s that were never translated.
And this project is fully written in Free Pascal and uses SDL2. Amazing work! I was happy to hear, the author got started with Free Pascal and SDL2 right here, with these tutorials :-)!
Could you please give a short description of Savage Vessels for those who have never heard of it?
Within fields of asteroids and fragmented freighters you scavenge and combat against robot vessels. At the same time you have to keep away from the surrounding void. With your carrier you got into this threatening area. In order to escape you have to determine your location repeatedly: leave the carrier, visit some navpoints, land again and move on. But the robots won’t let you. So you have to arm against them by gathering and crafting.
The visuals are based on top down pixel-art and a dynamic field of view. Modern physics provide inertia and collision. Sound fx creates an eerie atmosphere. It’s a spiritual successor to Teleglitch.
Why did you decide to choose Pascal as a programing language and SDL/SDL2 as a library for this project?
Pascal is my mother tongue. It’s capable of everything I need and I’m feeling comfortable with it.
SDL is versatile, platform-agnostic and plain.
What do you think is the most interesting Pascal/SDL/SDL2 project out there (besides of your own, of course :-D)?
This project is a program to load GoldSrc BSP files. The GoldSrc BSP file format has been derived from the id’s Quake 2 file format by Valve Software for their Half-Life game series.
It has been realized with
Lazarus, Free Pascal
SDL2, OpenGL.
The BSP Loader powered by Lazarus.Loading a WAD file and displaying a selected texture from it.Textured rendering of a scene (estate). The blue colorkey is not interpreted to be transparent yet.Scene: Oilrig.Scene: Assault.
02/08/2018, v0.1 alpha
Capabilities
Load BSP files and show contents of data lumps (exception: VIS Lump)
Load WAD files and render contained textures
Load BSP file and all WAD files which are necessary to render the fully textured scene
Navigate by simple camera through scene
To-Do’s
lightmapping from lightmap data
VIS Lump: treat it at all
collision detection
face culling
have spaces between textures in atlas texture to prevent bleeding-effect (esp. in tiled textures recognizable)
make blue colorkey transparent
sky cube
release the source code (if beta stadium reached)
Important Sources
BSP and WAD File Formats
I cannot state how important these documents were in understanding the structure of the BSP and WAD file formats. Without them, this project wouldn’t have been possible.
Why did you decide to choose Pascal as a programming language and SDL as a library for your projects?
Kornel Kisielewicz: Pascal was my first language, and in those days C++ was quite messy. I liked the clean syntax of Pascal and it’s default strong type system. SDL was a no brainer, we wanted a platform independent layer for OpenGL context creation and Input handling, and SDL was the only reasonable choice in that regard at the time.
What do you think is the most interesting Pascal/SDL/SDL2 project out there (besides your own, of course :-D)?
Kornel Kisielewicz: I have been out of touch with the Pascal scene for a long time now.
Are there any new projects planned?
Kornel Kisielewicz: We’re currently working on Jupiter Hell, a spiritual successor to DoomRL, but it’s in full 3d, and written in C++.
Could you please give a short description of Monsterland for those who have never heard of it?
Aleksey: Monsterland is a 2D realtime shooter portrayed entirely through ASCII characters. This includes blood, lighting, particles, etc. Its only gameplay mode is a 3-hour story campaign, which has voiceovers, triggers and scripted sequences. The gameplay of Monsterland was heavily influenced by original Doom games (1 and 2).
Why did you decide to choose Pascal as a programming language and SDL as a library for your projects?
Aleksey: Pascal is an underrated, well-rounded programming language. It has good diagnostics and strict syntax, which removes ambiguity from error messages. It also helps that I was first introduced to it in 1992.
SDL was chosen because I’ve also been writing an engine tied to DirectX, and given where Windows is heading, it was a mistake I didn’t want to repeat. SDL 1.2 didn’t have accelerated 2D though, so I had to do it via OpenGL manually.
What do you think is the most interesting Pascal/SDL/SDL2 project out there (besides your own, of course :-D)?
Aleksey: If Dwarf Fortress still used Pascal, I’d name that. Otherwise, DoomRL I guess.
Are there any further steps planned for the Monsterland series? What will they be?
Aleksey: Aw, you flatter, but Monsterland will not be continued.
Are there any new projects planned?
Aleksey: I’m starting to work on a new type of IF (interactive fiction) game. I clearly have an obsession with text visuals.
There’s also the ambitious isometric RPG I’ve been writing in C for years, the “magnum opus”, but it’s too ambitious at the moment, even though a lot of work has been done. I wish I wrote it in Pascal instead – it would’ve been easier to debug.
GearHead 2, successor of GearHead: Arena, is a turn-based, rouge-like role-playing game where you can explore futuristic worlds with benign graphics.
Showcase and Basic Data
(no showcase screenshots provided)
Project name: GearHead 2
Author: Joseph Hewitt, plus the work of several contributors
Latest version: 0.628
Release date: The first public release was August 23 2005; the most recent was June 1 2010. After I’ve updated GearHead-1 to my satisfaction I plan to do some revisions to this one as well.
Pascal compiler: Free Pascal
SDL Version: 1.2
Further libraries: Only those that come with the FPC compiler
