Kobo IIKobo Deluxe

20051122: Kobo Deluxe on Syllable

Andrzej "And3mD" Kilijański has compiled Kobo Deluxe 0.4pre10 on the Syllable operating system.

20051115: Kobo Deluxe on Debian and Gentoo

Somehow, I never got around to update the Download page, but anyway, for those who haven't noticed already, there are packages for both distros. :-)

20050612: Kobo Deluxe 0.4pre10 released

Major oops! This one's been around for ages and has been tested by several users and package maintainers - but somehow, I never got around to release it officially. So, Download it is. BTW, it compiled and worked out of the box on my new Gentoo/x86_64 (AMD64) box. It's been tested by others on a bunch of 32 and 64 bit platforms, so I guess it should work pretty much anywhere.

20040614: Kobo remake for GP32

A remake of Kobo for the GP32 is in progress; check out Rov's place!

20031001: Kobo Deluxe package for QNX 6

Dave Rempel at QNX compiled and packaged Kobo Deluxe 0.4pre8 for QNX 6, so

  • Now there's yet another OS on the list!
  • QNX users are now at risk of becoming Kobo addicts. ;-)
  • QNX users don't even have to compile the game!

20030917: Kobo Deluxe on Xbox!

It has been reported that Kobo Deluxe now runs on the Microsoft Xbox console. The port was done by Xport using SDLx, a version of SDL for the Xbox. Go here or here for more info.

20030626: Playstation 2 & Tiny Sounds

Paul Smith has successfully compiled and played Kobo Deluxe 0.4pre8 on PS2Linux. It takes ages to load due to the heavy use of floating point math while rendering sounds, but the new "cache sounds on disk" feature in 0.4.0 should take care of that.

Jolan Luff reported that Kobo Deluxe works on OpenBSD/i386, macppc, sparc and sparc64.

Tech Trivia got a new entry about the sound scripts vs rendered waveform size. If you think the new sounds and instruments sound like they're compressed over 450 times, here's why: They are! :-)

The Hints section got an update as well.

20030518: Slackware package

Added a 0.4pre8 Slackware package compiled by Torsten Giebl. Thanks!

If there are binary packages, ports and stuff out there that I haven't listed, please tell me! It could be that I'm not aware of them, rather than just plain lazy. ;-)

Kobo Deluxe 0.4.0 is coming along nicely. The urgent TODOs are done now, and the only major issue remaining is OpenGL with real page flipping. (Most commonly seen on Windows, AFAIK. Most drivers for other platforms cheat and do back->front blits instead, and Kobo Deluxe likes that better the way it is now.) I'll have to restructure some rendering code to get this to work, but I'll have another look. If it's not too much work, it'll be in 0.4.0 too.

20030514: New web site!

Finally some action around here again. The old single page, news style site was a mess and people had trouble finding out what to download. Didn't look too cool either. I hope this one is better.

New site design and all... There's a new version of the game available, right?

Gotcha! ;-)

No, not yet. Sorry. I was about to release 0.4 "final" three months ago, but there's always another tiny detail that needs fixing, it seems. The idea was to make 0.4 a stable release where no features are flagged experimental, but that's too much work, and it's time to kill this nasty X.YpreZ thing before people start to think "0.4" is part of the name.

20030211: Some links and excuses

Sorry 'bout the extremely long delay! Lots of IRL stuff has happened, and I've spent most of my hacking time on other stuff, such as Audiality, an evolved version of the sound engine used in Kobo Deluxe, and XAP, an audio plugin API. I'm back hacking Kobo Deluxe now though, and plan on having a final 0.4 ready for release soon.

Added a link to PalmKobo and a Mac OS X binary submitted by Adam Marks.

20020704: RPMs and other ports

If you don't feel like building Kobo Deluxe from source on Linux/x86, there are good news: Nicolas Vignal has created binary and source RPMs of Kobo Deluxe 0.4pre8.

If you have a handheld computer, there's another XKobo port that might be of interest: PocketKobo.

20020622: Kobo Deluxe v0.4pre8

This is a minor update from pre7. Most important changes:

  • Various minor and major bugs in the audio engine fixed.
  • Optimizations in the off-line synth. (Music loads much faster.)
  • Major audio engine code cleanup.
  • Music/sfx loading fixed; will now load music after changing settings.
  • Stupid map rebuilding during the intro fixed.
  • Some minor GCC3 fixes.

20020611: Kobo Deluxe v0.4pre7

This prerelease version should have been released months ago, but I couldn't keep myself from hacking new stuff. (And then I'd rather have most of it working before I release... *heh*) Most important changes:

  • A software synth that can play MIDI files. (On platforms with OSS or ALSA, it's also possible to drive the synth with external MIDI.)
  • EEL - The Extensible Embeddable Language. Yet Another Scripting Language...
  • AGW - Algorithmically Generated Waveforms. Sound effects and instrument waveforms rendered using an EEL script driven off-line synth.
  • Music! (Just three little demos for now, with only AGW sounds - I'll make some serious tracks when the synth engine is ready for real work.)
  • Two brand new AGW sound effects. (You will learn to fear them, I'm sure. :-)
  • 2D positional sound! :-)
  • Player Profiles. (Thanks to Jeremy Sheeley for the 0.3 patch!) You can have multiple profiles per installation, and each profile logs scores in a "private" high score table.
  • That highscore table in the intro *finally* shows real scores! (Best score from each profile.)
  • "Chase scrolling" radar screen (optional) and other radar improvements.
  • ALT+ENTER to toggle fullscreen/windowed mode. (Works any time - pauses game automatically.)
  • PrintScrn/SysRq saves a screenshot to disk. (Currently not in OpenGL mode, though.)
  • Dithering for low color depth modes.
  • Diagonals Emphasis Filter. (Optional.) Makes it possible to stay in diagonals without holding down keys or holding the joystick.
  • Initial game code changes in preparation for new game modes. (Such as deathmatch... :-)
  • Possibly other interesting stuff I forgot. (Look at that ChangeLog entry... And it's not even complete, naughty, sloppy me!)
  • Various other tweaks, optimizations and fixes.
  • A whole lot of brand new bugs to discover! ;-)

Oh, and if you want to try OpenGL on Win32, keep in mind that Kobo Deluxe still doesn't support plain double buffering (which OpenGL/Win32 normally gives you) properly. And, just in case buffering settings don't do what you expect; on my G400, asking for single buffering seems to give you a retrace synced double (or triple) buffered display ("ultra smooth"), while asking for double buffering gives you a "fake" double buffered setup with back->front blits without sync - tearing and jittering, that is. (Dunno' if it's Matrox or me...)

20020120: A new screenshot!

Shot 1 from 0.4No release just yet, but here's a 640x480 in-game screenshot from the current source tree (to be 0.4-pre7). Note the refurbished screen framework with background graphics for the displays, the dithering (this is in 16 bit mode!), and the scrolling radar, with all destructible (and equally hostile - especially on this stage!) nodes marked; not just the core. All graphics data is (still) 320x240, and the scaling to 640x480 is done with the "Diamond2x" filter.

20020116: Status report and links

Kobo Deluxe 0.4 is currently at pre7, and contains some fixes, like the elimination of the old "new life" and "game over" scroll position bug, some new features, like (optional) scrolling radar screen, and some major code changes, such as a new sound engine with dynamic voice allocation, multiple effect buses and other stuff that unfortunately won't make much of a difference for yet a while...

Further, I've finally remembered to include some links to binaries for platforms that I don't use myself. (Sorry about forgetting the Solaris link for so long! I'll add links right away from now on.)

20011205: FINALLY, the third release!

KoboDeluxe 0.3 is out! "Any day now"...! *heh* Well, I got sidetracked by OpenGL stuff, autoconf problems, and of course, silly things like "work" and "real life". ;-) Anyway, this version builds and runs on Linux, Win32, Mac OS X, and probably some other platforms. The most interesting changes:

  • Finalized the name "Kobo Deluxe"
  • Mostly menu based user interface
  • Flashier user interface :-)
  • Transient effects, "get ready" countdown etc...
  • Improved sound
  • Joystick support
  • Selectable scaling filters for high resolutions
  • Improved keyboard input handling
  • Several engine fixes and speed-ups
  • Greatly improved internal game state management

Well, that's about it... (Unless you're a hacker - the most interesting changes are probably only visible in the source at this point.) Get the stuff from the download page, and have fun!

The Windows binary package includes the SDL DLLs, so all you need to do is to unpack it somewhere, and double click the EXE file. Source packages are installed with the usual ./configure; make; make install sequence. The build scripts will automatically create bundles for Win32 and Mac OS X targets. Unknown targets are assumed to be Un*x-like.

20010912: Update

Seems like SKobo 0.2 runs on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X. :-) Of course, there's still more work to do; most importantly improving the configure scripts, adding an in-game configuration menu, and re-implementing some old features. Expect v0.3 to be released any day now!

20010911: The second release is out!

skobo-0.2 is out! :-) It should now build and work properly on Un*x platforms and Win32, and perhaps build on some other targets as well. Other than that, no major news.

20010910: The first release is out!

skobo-0.1 is out! :-) It's not 100% ported to SDL (audio and some file handling is still Un*x-only), but the game, graphics engine, keyboard input, score etc etc are fully functional. Of course, here are some screenshots:

Shot 1 from 0.1Shot 2 from 0.1As you can see, I couldn't stay away from GIMP. :-) The screen framework (with alpha blended game screen frame for fading and highlights) is brand new, as are the logo and font. The screen layout is somewhat modified as well; the "highscore" display is moved from the intro screen to a display in the top right corner. The scrolling level 20 in the intro mode is also new.

Shot 3 from 0.1Shot 4 from 0.1As to the enemies and gameplay, the only difference is that the base core (the magenta/orange ball) is slightly bigger, to nicely fill it's tile square. Unless I've done something stupid somewhere, the game should play exactly like XKobo on the game logic level. The game engine still runs at the original 30 Hz - the smooth animation is achieved through linear interpolation between the last two "world states" generated by the game engine, which makes it possible for the game to fully utilize any video frame rate.

Copyright © 2001-2012 David Olofson