The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

I am an avid new-generation XBox gamer, and have seen quite a few amazing things happen with this PC.  With a P4, RAM, a GeForce, HDD, 16xDVD & Ethernet card, this thing performs like a modern PC, and even uses a version of NT4.  With that in mind, they've already ported a buncha' stuff from PC, including MAME emulators and Quake 2 with the sourcecode provided by those authors.  Since this is written in compilable source, it is Easy to port this to the XBox with full sound and video emulation, even 2-joysticks for input.  Since sometimes authors get in trouble for using a stolen MS SDK to make their work, instead of buying the expensive Xbox one for $100k or so, I'm not sure how to compile.  So, since I'm majoring in CS, and I would like to play this on XBox and make it available --- if ANYBODY can help, please post here or e-mail me!!!

sigmaxix@yahoo.com

I would say it's not going to happen any time soon. And if it does happen, it probably won't be officially supported by the UQM team. UQM requires the SDL library; there is currently no port of the SDL library for the Xbox, and the SDL developers won't port it because in order to "legally" develop for the xbox, you have to sign an NDA and some other legal agreements. This by its nature will violate the GPL, which is what the SDL source is released under. Furthermore, UQM is also released under the GPL, so you probably won't be seeing anyone on the UQM signing an NDA to develop on the xbox.

That being said, if someone wants to port the SDL, a couple of other libraries, and UQM on their own accord (read: technically not legal), then you might see an Xbox release. Btw, IIRC, MAME and Quake 2 would be much easier to port, since I believe they both have versions which use directx.

The Xbox has a Pentium III not a P4 :P

I'm sure someone will port it, but probably not for a while.  By "someone" I mean someone outside of the project, as I doubt anyone doing coding for UQM now would do it.

PIII?

It's not even that, If I remember correctly, It's an celery (read: Celeron)

Install Linux on your Xbox and then download and install the Linux UQM version?

UQM v0.3 works on Xebian 1.0.0 (www.xbox-linux.org). I have a xbox with linux installed without any hardware modifications (so I can still play Halo if I want to, although UQM is better :).
UQM works perfectly, including speech and xpad control.
Porting UQM to the "native" xbox would be illegal. Xebian is free (and legal) and UQM works with it. Installing is as easy as "apt-get install uqm uqm-voice" after the package source file has been modified.

I don't quite understand why writing software for any console, even one made by Microsoft, would be illegal. Could you please explain your reasoning?

As I understand it, the legal problem comes from this:
To port the graphic library UQM uses (the SDL) to the Xbox would require
the developers to sign an agreement not to share the new code
with anyone. I may be wrong on this, but this is the argument as
I understand it.
Now, that would be fine, except that both the SDL graphics library and
UQM are open source. This means that any changes/porting of
the code must be shared with others. The developers can't (legally)
share the code they develop if they agree to the NDA.

The good news, as was already pointed out, is that Linux can run on
the Xbox ...and UQM runs on Linux.

I did some checking. Apparently, Microsoft doesn't give their Xbox Development Kit to people until they've signed an NDA that pretty much prevents them from telling anyone anything about the Xbox (see here (http://www.xbox.com/en-US/dev/regdev.htm)). Writing proper native code for the Xbox without the XDK is possible (as e.g. this (http://www.xbox-linux.org/) demonstrates) but harder, especially if you want to make full use of the Xbox's hardware (such as 3D acceleration). So, you could probably write and release a native Xbox version of UQM legally, but you'd have to do a lot of extra work. Also, the result probably wouldn't be playable on a standard Xbox without the same sort of trickery used to run Linux on it.

Tiny nitpick: SDL is LGPL, not GPL.  This doesn't affect the legal ramifications, but it does explain why, for instance, SMAC for Linux doesn't come with complete source code, despite using SDL.  :)

Well, well.  And here I was expecting the PS2 to be the first console to run UQM.  (After all, devPS2s actively encourage Linux use, and SDL has a backend for the PS2 graphics hardware.)

Good to know, all the same!  Thanks for letting us know about this.

I managed to get UQM up and running on the xbox via linux, but I haven't found a way to get it to support the D-Pad. Maybe there's something I'm missing.

If anyone manages to get it to work, it would be very kind of you to full the rest of us in.

Here is my keys.cfg joystick section :

....

joystick 0 threshold 10000
Menu-Left: joystick 0 axis 6 negative
Player-1-Left: joystick 0 axis 6 negative
Lander-Left: joystick 0 axis 6 negative
Menu-Right: joystick 0 axis 6 positive
Player-1-Right: joystick 0 axis 6 positive
Lander-Right: joystick 0 axis 6 positive
Menu-Up: joystick 0 axis 7 positive
Player-1-Thrust: joystick 0 axis 7 positive
Lander-Thrust: joystick 0 axis 7 positive
Menu-Down: joystick 0 axis 7 negative
Menu-Cancel: joystick 0 button 1
Player-1-Special: joystick 0 button 1
Menu-Select: joystick 0 button 0
Player-1-Weapon: joystick 0 button 0
Lander-Weapon: joystick 0 button 0
Menu-Page-Up: joystick 0 button 2
Menu-Page-Down: joystick 0 button 6
Menu-Zoom-In: joystick 0 button 4
Player-1-Escape: joystick 0 button 3
Lander-Escape: joystick 0 button 1
Menu-Zoom-Out: joystick 0 button 3

...

It configures movement & menu controls to the d-pad (axis 6 & 7).
The button values are IIRC :
0 = A
1 = B
2 = white
3 = X
4 = Y
6 = black

I hope this helps.

Considering that SDL has been ported to the XBOX,

http://www.lantus-x.com/SDLx/

it shouldn't be too hard to develop an XBOX port.  A native XBOX port would be great!  It would be as good if not better than the real 3DO version because there would be less load times, better pixel filters, and 2.4Ghz wireless gamepads!

Also, it is not illegal to develop an XBOX port even if you do not own a copy of the SDK.  It is only illegal to distribute binaries compiled with an illegal copy of the SDK.  Distributing the source code for an XBOX port is completely legal.  See for example, the XBox Media Center (XBMC) project.

In which case it gets the same response as all other "there should be ports to system X!" suggestions which is "Sounds great!  Let us know when it's done!"

(For those just joining us, this isn't sarcastic: we're developing slowly enough as it is, and the people doing the suggesting generally have a better idea of how to do it.)

I have a couple of Xbox's and I love UQM, so I'm up for play-testing an Xbox version if anyone actually makes it.  (Can't offer to help code though. I'd only make things worse.)

I'm curious how to install linux on an xbox without totally raping the warrenty...  ::)

Pretty sure that you can't install linux without voiding the warenty.  MS realy didn't want you using a competing OS (or otherwise non-sanctioned products) on their system (which is why online games check to see if you have 'voided' the warenty).

If you are interested in simply not 'poping the top' or otherwise adding hardware then there is a 'soft' method, if you can get your hands on the right stuff.  There is a link in here somewhere (gnulinux.org or something) with details.

OpenXDA is currently working to the point that they have a working port of Doom (original Doom). Doom requires SDL. OpenXDK has a GCC-based toolchain. I haven't used it, but it sounds like it has the potential to make a native port of UQM to X-Box fairly straightforward.

http://www.openxdk.org/

It is not illegal to develop for the XBox.  It is only illegal to use Microsoft's XDK to compile and release software since it requires you sign an NDA and pay a fee and open source developers can not do that.  However, with OpenXDK, you can develop, compile and release since OpenXDK was developed without reverse engineering MSXDK.  Using OpenXDK, it should be easy to port to XBox, since there is also SDLx.