Devlog: Open-source TLBA1&2 Classic engine

Going a little bit deeper into the rabbibunny hole…

The programming work done by the original teams is not only tremendous but exceptional for the time. It can’t be kept on old CDs in suitcases in the programmers’ homes (*wink* Didier 😏).

This  codebase can benefit developers as a source of knowledge / education, TLBA fans or retrogaming communities.

And then, just like that, we decided to OPEN-SOURCE THE CODE OF TLBA ENGINES AND TOOLS that have been trusted in our hands, so it can outlive all of us, somehow.

Our objective is to preserve those pieces of technical mastery and true groundbreaking vision. We also want to give back to the TLBA community who kept cheering on the games during all those years.

I’d like to invite all fans to keep expressing their passion for the game through different means. We’re especially excited about bringing modding capabilities in the future!

Follow the github links to check how you can contribute:

For each game, there is:

  • An “historic” repository where only ex-Adeline developers or [2.21] developers will contribute (if we forgot a file or a mention somewhere),
  • A community repository that is open to pull requests

We also invite the community to contribute to the general “engines” documentation.

If you want to discuss our projects in general or the open source specifically, we opened a dedicated channel on Discord.

By the way, this code was never meant to be seen by anyone outside the Adeline Software team. The source we are releasing is mainly untouched (only the developers names were removed) including bad french, variable names in “frenglish” and some comments that are just too funny not to share. Enjoy 😁

read infostest if object has animno too bad bye

It’s over… What ?!!! already ?!!This compression method is stupid !But it works !

Let’s sound the situation with a little *chbooing*

We’re so grateful for…

We are very thankful for the people helping us recover the source code and working on those files : Seb, DBug and Vincent.

Not forgetting Didier Chanfray for driving 2h30 with the famous “suitcase” full of CDs and Frédérick Raynal for his true passion for technology.

We want to thank both of them for their trust in us with this initiative!

Lastly, cheers to Alexandre, Adrien, the good people from ScummVM and our french friends from the M05 association who were kind enough to answer our questions!

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10 thoughts on “Devlog: Open-source TLBA1&2 Classic engine”

  1. Thank you for this. I discovered this game in early 2000s installed in a PC my dad brought home, and it inspired me to learn how to code a 3D render engine. I wanted to imitate the shading and visuals of LBA 3D models. I finally succeeded a couple of years ago with a very rustic engine, but I learned a lot! Now that the code is open I could see how it was done back in the 1990s. Thank you!!

    1. If only LBA2 would be published simultaneously with LBA1, even Quake – first one would be no longer the first 3D polygonal game…

  2. Ok… what about the COW ‘BUG’ where Twinsun f*ck’ and get a heart stone? Can anyone post that code part pls??

  3. Anything that was done to work in a dedicated environment, like network paths and disks and DOS4GW will work in DosBox as well, since this emulator supports mounting of host directories under any path imaginable, from A to Z and that all at once!

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