High Seize — a port for PC and Sega Dreamcast

Native re-implementation of High Seize (RedLynx, N-Gage) for the desktop and the Sega Dreamcast. Internal port name: blackbeard.

Game data

This repo doesn't include data.pak, the original game's assets — you have to bring your own. In an N-Gage install it is usually at App/System/Apps/6R36/data/data.pak.

The desktop build takes its path on the command line. The Dreamcast disc script looks for $BB_PAK, then data.pak in the repository root, so copying it there is the easiest thing to do.

Layout

src/shim/       mini-Symbian: descriptors, logging, and the data.pak reader
src/platform/   host seam + software rendering; SDL2 and KallistiOS backends
src/game/       ported game logic
assets/         soft-key icon paks and the device frame art — non-original assets
scripts/        Dreamcast build and disc-image scripts
screenshots/    the pictures above
third_party/    vfspp (submodule) and stb_image

Build

Clone with submodules — vfspp is one, and the build will not configure without it:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/nextgeniuspro/hs-dc.git
cd hs-dc

Desktop

Needs CMake 3.16+, a C++20 compiler, zlib and SDL2

macOS

Download SDL2 framework, execute once

scripts/fetch-sdl2-mac.sh

Generate project

cmake -S . -B build -DBB_MAC_BUNDLE=ON

Build it

cmake --build build -j

Windows

Install required libraries (recommended: using vcpkg) and then configure CMake.

# Clone and bootstrap vcpkg (one-time)
git clone https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg.git
.\vcpkg\bootstrap-vcpkg.bat

# Install dependencies for the x64 triplet
.\vcpkg\vcpkg.exe install zlib:x64-windows sdl2:x64-windows

# Configure and build the project using the vcpkg toolchain
cmake -S . -B build -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A x64 `
  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release `
  -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE="./vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake"

# Build
cmake --build build --config Release

Dreamcast

Needs a KallistiOS toolchain with zlib from kos-ports (cd $KOS_PORTS/zlib && make install — the build stops with a message if it's missing), and mkdcdisc on the PATH for the disc image. Python with Pillow is optional: without it the disc simply carries no device frames.

You do not need to source environ.sh yourself — scripts/dc-env.sh does it, and defaults to /opt/toolchains/dc/kos/environ.sh. If your install lives elsewhere, point BB_KOS_ENVIRON at its environ.sh:

export BB_KOS_ENVIRON=<path-to-kos>/environ.sh   # only if it isn't in /opt/toolchains

Build the ELF, then turn it and the assets into a bootable image:

./scripts/dc-build.sh                # -> build-dc/blackbeard.elf
./scripts/dc-cdi.sh                  # -> build-dc/blackbeard.cdi
./scripts/dc-cdi.sh --pak /path/to/data.pak   # if it isn't in the repo root
./scripts/dc-cdi.sh --no-pak         # -> build-dc/blackbeard-sd.cdi

The image is unpadded (~32 MB) by default, which is what an emulator wants. Pass --pad for a CD-R: it pads out to the full 700 MB so the game sits at the disc's edge, where a real drive reads fastest.

The device frame

The screen is 176x208 — an 11:13 portrait shape nothing on a desk has. Rather than pillarbox it into black, the port fills the space either side with a picture of the machine the game shipped on: the left half of an N-Gage QD, with its d-pad, on the left, the keypad half on the right, both scaled to the height of the screen and butted against its edges. They run off the sides of the window and are cropped by it, which is the point — you are looking at the middle of a device too big for the display, not at a photograph pasted beside the game.

Three frames ship — N-Gage, N-Gage QD and Dreamcast — and Settings picks between them, or turns them off. The QD is the default. The save stores the frame's id rather than its position in the list, so adding a frame never moves anybody's choice out from under them.

The screen itself is fitted, never filled: it keeps its shape whatever the window is, so on anything wider than 11:13 the fit comes out as the full window height and the frame reaches top to bottom. That arithmetic is src/platform/ScreenLayout.h, deliberately plain integers in bb_platform rather than SDL rects in the backend — a few percent of stretch is the kind of thing nobody sees and everybody feels, and keeping it away from SDL keeps it something you can check on its own across a spread of window shapes.

A frame is two PNGs and a line in a manifest:

assets/frames/frames.txt          "ngage-qd<TAB>N-Gage QD"
assets/frames/ngage-qd/left.png
assets/frames/ngage-qd/right.png