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JudasIscariot: The one thing I know that is missing from the source code that we provide is the Smacker library from RAD Tools. As for anything else being missing, I have no idea as I am not a programmer/developer.
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Pidgeot: Smacker is not freely available, so it makes sense that one is missing, but there are definitely other missing files that aren't Smacker-related.

It seems that only the "main" source code has been kept - C++ files (.cpp and .h) from the main code directory have been included, along with a Visual Studio project file (AT.DSP); everything else, including code in subfolders, is gone. This includes some program resources, and some documentation that is referenced in the project file, and three libraries which appear to be developed internally at Spellbound (SBL, SSE, TeakLibW).

According to the file SSE.h, SSE is short for Spellbound SoundEngine. This seems to be the code that handles MIDI playback, and there's a matching sse.dll in the game directory which appears to contain the code for the library (so hacking would target the sse.dll file, possibly by reimplementing it entirely?).

I don't know if Black Forest Games are allowed (and willing) to add the source code of the SoundEngine, but if they did, that should be enough to allow someone else to fix the MIDI lag without too much trouble (should just be a matter of compiling a new DLL).
Would have loved to get the library files for AT so we can get this game working. Don't know why they release the source without the custom library files. :S seems strange.
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Pidgeot: Smacker is not freely available, so it makes sense that one is missing, but there are definitely other missing files that aren't Smacker-related.

It seems that only the "main" source code has been kept - C++ files (.cpp and .h) from the main code directory have been included, along with a Visual Studio project file (AT.DSP); everything else, including code in subfolders, is gone. This includes some program resources, and some documentation that is referenced in the project file, and three libraries which appear to be developed internally at Spellbound (SBL, SSE, TeakLibW).

According to the file SSE.h, SSE is short for Spellbound SoundEngine. This seems to be the code that handles MIDI playback, and there's a matching sse.dll in the game directory which appears to contain the code for the library (so hacking would target the sse.dll file, possibly by reimplementing it entirely?).

I don't know if Black Forest Games are allowed (and willing) to add the source code of the SoundEngine, but if they did, that should be enough to allow someone else to fix the MIDI lag without too much trouble (should just be a matter of compiling a new DLL).
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PoTskii: Would have loved to get the library files for AT so we can get this game working. Don't know why they release the source without the custom library files. :S seems strange.
Check the source again :)

Keep in mind though that the game does make use of some proprietary libraries that cannot be freely distributed with the source.
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JudasIscariot: Check the source again :)

Keep in mind though that the game does make use of some proprietary libraries that cannot be freely distributed with the source.
It's not ideal for fixing the MIDI issue I was talking about earlier (since that's still in one of the libraries, SSE.lib), but it does at least provide additional information that might be useful to reimplement it (still requires some reverse engineering, of course).
Post edited November 20, 2015 by Pidgeot
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JudasIscariot: Check the source again :)

Keep in mind though that the game does make use of some proprietary libraries that cannot be freely distributed with the source.
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Pidgeot: It's not ideal for fixing the MIDI issue I was talking about earlier (since that's still in one of the libraries, SSE.lib), but it does at least provide additional information that might be useful to reimplement it (still requires some reverse engineering, of course).
So even though you have the SSE.lib file now, it's still not all that helpful?
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Pidgeot: It's not ideal for fixing the MIDI issue I was talking about earlier (since that's still in one of the libraries, SSE.lib), but it does at least provide additional information that might be useful to reimplement it (still requires some reverse engineering, of course).
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JudasIscariot: So even though you have the SSE.lib file now, it's still not all that helpful?
The .lib file makes it possible to re-compile the game (although apparently some header files for the two other libs may also be missing? Haven't had time to try it out yet), but the libraries are still in compiled form - they don't contain source code. Since the SSE library is the one that would need changing to fix this MIDI issue, that means it's still necessary to do binary modification and reverse engineering.

Now, in fairness, having the .lib does add a bit of information to make it easier to reverse engineer them. Therefore, it's also a bit easier to *perform* those binary modifications, but it's still many times more difficult than it would be with plain source. Of course, the .h file for SSE was already there, so that already gave us a lot of information...

The ideal, of course, would be actual source code for those .lib files. Of course we're not going to get any third party stuff like Smacker, but the three added LIB files at least appear to have been developed by Spellbound back in the day, so Black Forest Games *should* have the rights to do so. (Whether they want to is of course a different question.)

EDIT: Yep, it's missing two headers: TeakLibW.h and sbl.h, which match the names of the other two libraries.

Specifically, they're referenced from the stdafx.h file like so:
#include "\sb-projekt\TeaklibW\TeakLibW.H"
#include "\sb-projekt\sbl\inc\sbl.h"

Having those two header files (and any additonal header files those two files include, of course) should make it possible to re-compile (although possibly not before ripping out some stuff relating to Smacker and whatnot). They could probably be reverse engineered if need be, but if BFG could be convinced to provide them, that would of course make things exponentially easier.

(It would be even *easier* if they also provided the full source code of those three libraries, but at least with the headers, we know what the game needs, and can implement our own set of functions to do that - and that means it should be possible to just create a new set of binaries that fixes the issue.)
Post edited November 21, 2015 by Pidgeot
Any new information about the header files, or any other information, on how SBL or TeakLibW functions? I could extract most of the header information from the lib file (VS Studio dumpbin.exe /LINENUMBERS sbl.lib gives nearly all function definitions, and the TeakLibW with /SYMBOLS gives me many information, but not enough), but it is far from the original header files.

I narrowed the source code down to around 57 compiler errors (with some more IntelliSense errors) and most of them come from missing defines, like SB_Hardwarecolor or CREATE_SYSMEM, which are possibly in the TeakLibW header

I found an open source version of smack, but I can't test it until the all the informations are together, but I could compile without those smack videos for now.
The only thing that worked for me (Win8.1x64) to fix the stuttering in main hall is the "atdfix.rar" which was hard to find again in the net (there's an old polish AT forum)

# download atdfix.rar from one of the links below
# Navigate to the Airline Tycoon Deluxe game directory (where the game executable is located)
# Unzip atdfix.rar and move the included files into the game directory
# Change the compatibility mode for At.exe to "Windows XP (Service Pack 2)" (this step was not necessary for me)
# Launch the game

Mirrors for adtfix.rar (I can't post links here, so replace the stars manually)
h**ps:**dl.dropbox.com/s/yqk905zknztk6lz/atdfix.rar?dl=1
h**ps:**mega.nz/#!xpEyVQAB!6v2SZprEzdh_VBod7pFWXBvOR92jhRnd8a9VRLsdd6s
h**p:**s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=09157094080249925534