Heart of Darkness : a one of best cinematic platform video game now and for AmigaOS4 !

Heart of Darkness is a cinematic platform video game developed by Amazing Studio released in the late of 90x.



Lately, I see that BeeWorld made a port of the game to MorphOS, so I give it a go and it was easy enough to build.

Through, there were some issues that I wasn't able to fix fast, so with the help of the author of that cross-platform engine rewrite, it was a faster deal with and everything ready.



The author is our known Gregory Montoir, who did those tasty cross-platform rewrites of Another World, Bermuda Syndrome, Fade To Black, Flashback: The Quest For Identity and now Heart of Darkness

http://cyxdown.free.fr/

To play in the game you need original data files of course and place them to the "data" directory. Files which you need are:

- hod.paf (or hod_demo.paf, hod_demo2.paf if you play demo version)
- setup.dat
- *_hod.lvl
- *_hod.sss
- *_hod.mst

In OS4 archive there is a tasty PDF manual coming (for control and stuff), as well as README, so you will have there all explained well.

Game build over SDL2, which means all tasty stuff: it works in all possible modes (window/fullscreen), in window mode it can be resized, working iconification, joystick support (tested at least on Logitech Gamepad F310) and so on.



Everything about engine and display can be controlled from the hode.ini placed in the root of the archive.

Game do autosave once you hit the new screen, and when you will run the game again it will start from the last place. If you want to start from the beginning, delete "date/setup.cfg" file.

And of course, a video on amigaos4 in action:

video of Heart of Darkness in action on AmigaOS4, 1920x1080 full HD

Thank you!

Ya, i remember to have played it years ago in the house of my friend .. can say this was really a good title at the time ... it's a surprise to see it ported in our Amiga land!
By the way see the Ocean logo in a 2020 Amiga's game give me a strange sensation ...

Thank You for the Port, GOOD WORK!

Back in the days i played this famous game on PSX now playing on X5000.

Thx for the port!

@kas1e
Wow another great game ported to Amiga.
Thank you very much.

@all

New version in os4depot's upload query. What new:

1). fixed spiders and worms movement
2). fixed small/skippable DSI when passing the levels (there was free of uninitialized memory)
3). when exit from fullscreen mode no more "returned with unfreed signals 0xc000000". That was due missing SDL_Quit, which on other modern oses not that important and can be easily forgotten as OS doing re-cleanup of resources on app's exit too.

I've found two versions of this game, the other being a "Platinum" version. Does anybody know what the difference is?

@trixie
I just find original ISO on some site (i send you link in PM). Through, it need to be installed firstly on PC to have all need it files extracted.

@trixie
the difference is the price. When Sony or any other publisher publish a game, at first it releases the game at full price then, after 9 month (if i remember well) the game will be released as budget version and in the playstation is the "platinum version". Like the commodore that had the Kixx version

Tested the French version of the game on Sam460 & Sam440ep (scale-factor=1).

Never played the game before, quiet hard but seems fun to play! (Nice soundtrack)

Thank you kas1e for the OS4 port.

Hi,

Thank you for the port!
I don't think you need to install it on a PC first, on my side I extracted the files needed from the main .exe file using UnArc ;)

Regards,

@All
New 2.0.6 version in os4depot's upload query. Changes since last:

* release 0.2.6
- added initial code for menu (so currently not fully functional, but some parts are)
- added initial code for PSX sounds (SPU ADPCM)
- fixed skull animation in 'rock' screen 18

(click on images for fullsize)


Thanks for BeWorld to remind, and Gregory for interest to keep BigEndian support.

@all
0.2.7 version in upload query:

- added 'projection' submenu (so you can use "show cinematics" in options)
- added PSX backgrounds (MDEC)

@kas1e

On latest 0.2.7 i noted a crash in the option section (show cinematic) ... it's a skippable DSI but seems reproducible

-------
Crash log for task "hode"
Generated by GrimReaper 53.19
Crash occured in module hode at address 0x6F4353E8
Type of crash: DSI (Data Storage Interrupt) exception
Alert number: 0x80000003

Register dump:
GPR (General Purpose Registers):
0: 6F435554 4A1BCA10 00000000 4FFDC680 4C2A00B4 4C2EF4C9 00000000 00000000
8: 4FFDC98D C4A29140 000001D1 018030C4 00000794 325D26C0 00000000 531D2680
16: 6F430968 00000000 00000000 00340014 02280000 02280000 14AF8E40 00000000
24: 53C1FC82 00000000 24422284 00000000 00000000 02280000 14E80AFC 4A1BCA10


FPR (Floating Point Registers, NaN = Not a Number):
0: nan 128 0 0
4: 0 767.8 575.8 1
8: 128 1 4.5036e+15 65536
12: 1 576 0 -0
16: 0 0 0 0
20: 0 0 0 1.61895e-319
24: 4.94066e-324 0 2.65249e-315 0
28: 0 0 1.58033e+09 1.58033e+09

FPSCR (Floating Point Status and Control Register): 0xA6A04100


SPRs (Special Purpose Registers):
Machine State (msr) : 0x0002F030
Condition (cr) : 0x4A862DA0
Instruction Pointer (ip) : 0x6F4353E8
Xtended Exception (xer) : 0x018233AC
Count (ctr) : 0x00000000
Link (lr) : 0x00000000
DSI Status (dsisr) : 0x01842B34
Data Address (dar) : 0x00000000



680x0 emulated registers:
DATA: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
ADDR: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
FPU0: 0 0 0 0
FPU4: 0 0 0 0



Symbol info:
Instruction pointer 0x6F4353E8 belongs to module "hode" (HUNK/Kickstart)

Stack trace:
module hode at 0x6F4353E8 (section 5 @ 0x353C4)
module hode at 0x6F435554 (section 5 @ 0x35530)
module hode at 0x6F435A8C (section 5 @ 0x35A68)
module hode at 0x6F435F94 (section 5 @ 0x35F70)
module hode at 0x6F437028 (section 5 @ 0x37004)
module hode at 0x6F433F30 (section 5 @ 0x33F0C)
module hode at 0x6F430F0C (section 5 @ 0x30EE8)
native kernel module newlib.library.kmod+0x000020ac
native kernel module newlib.library.kmod+0x00002d5c
native kernel module newlib.library.kmod+0x00002ef0
hode:_start()+0x170 (section 1 @ 0x1920)
native kernel module dos.library.kmod+0x000255c8
native kernel module kernel+0x0003e7b4
native kernel module kernel+0x0003e7fc

PPC disassembly:
6f4353e0: 7d095214 add r8,r9,r10
6f4353e4: 813f0014 lwz r9,20(r31)
*6f4353e8: 81290008 lwz r9,8(r9)
6f4353ec: 815f0020 lwz r10,32(r31)
6f4353f0: 7d2a4a14 add r9,r10,r9

System information:

CPU
Model: AMCC PPC440EP V1.3
CPU speed: 799 MHz
FSB speed: 133 MHz
Extensions:

Machine
Machine name: Sam440EP
Memory: 1048576 KB
Extensions: bus.pci

@Samo
Again null pointer, again dos.library. Again no problems on x5000 , but on other machines with older os4. Damn, will be there new amigaos4 update ever ?:)

@kas1e

.. one day Tabor need to be released to the public and assuming they will sell it with the latest version update to let it boot into, probably for that day they will also release an update for us ..atleast kind of logic, even if 99% of the time there is not so logic in amiga land :)

@kas1e

Meanwhile he release again a new version 0.2.8 ...

As for now in your current archive:

- The PDF you included is set for VPDF, but maybe better to set AmiPDF instead as default as this one is bundled with the os
- Also as we have continuos release here you may add a version info in binary like you did for dosbox

@kas1e
Should joysticks work with these versions? I am asking because I tried them, and they were not mapped right, but it might no be supported yet, and couldn't find info on that.

@walkero
Joystick works. Its SDL2, so all same: if it works in amigainput then it should work in game. Will restest today another time just in case.

@samo
Will wait at least a week, maybe there will be 0.2.9 at this time :)