SDL Sopwith FAQ

• Q: What is this? What is Sopwith?

  A: Sopwith is a classic side scrolling shoot ‘em up developed in the 1980s by the Canadian firm BMB Compuscience. You pilot a Sopwith Camel biplane, attempting to bomb enemy targets while avoiding enemy planes. The original game was for MS-DOS.

  In 2000, Dave L. Clark, the original programmer behind Sopwith, released the source code to Sopwith. This is an updated version based on his released sources; it is not a rewrite or recreation. It is named SDL Sopwith as it makes use of the LibSDL multimedia library to access the screen and the sound device.

• Q: What is SDL?

  A: LibSDL is a multimedia library designed for portability. Instead of coding for a particular platform (such as Windows, Linux etc.), you use the SDL interface. Your program can then be ported to many different platforms with only minor changes. There is more information at http://www.libsdl.org/

• Q: What platforms does it run on?

  A: I have compiled and run it successfully on Windows, Linux, macOS, OpenBSD and NetBSD, for a variety of different CPU architectures. Others have done ports to AmigaOS, and the Nintendo DS and Wii.

  As it uses LibSDL for video and sound, it ought to compile “out of the box” on any platform supported by SDL. Other platforms supported by SDL include Haiku, RISC OS, iOS and Android. If you’re able to get it running on new platforms, pleas let me know!

• Q: This is different to the original Sopwith!

  A: If you played one of the original DOS versions of Sopwith, you may notice some differences, depending on the version you played:

  • If you played what is known by fans as “Sopwith 1”, you might remember the ground being drawn as a solid mass instead of . You might also notice that there are oxen and flocks of birds which were not present in this version. These were added in “Sopwith 2”. The musical theme was also changed.
  • If you played what is known by fans as “Sopwith 2”, you might notice that there are new features such as wounded planes and “splats” that appear on the screen. These were added in the “Author’s Edition” release made by Sopwith’s original author, Dave Clark.

  In general, SDL Sopwith tries hard to avoid making any large changes to the original gameplay. The default settings emulate the behavior of “Sopwith 2” but it can be reconfigured to behave like “Sopwith 1” if that’s what you prefer.

• Q: Does it have sound?

  A: Yes! Sound is done through an emulation of the PC Speaker using the digital output available on modern sound cards.

• Q: Does it have multiplayer support?

  A: Yes! Classic Sopwith had support for multiplayer as well, but it used a proprietary networking system (which Sopwith was made to demonstrate). Sopwith 2 also had support for “2 players over an asynchronous line”, presumably for playing over a serial cable, although this did not seem to work either. I have replaced the serial code with code to use TCP/IP. This means that you can play 2 player SDL Sopwith over a LAN with TCP/IP or even over the Internet.

• Q: How do I play this through a firewall?

  A: Most home routers require you to set up port forwarding to establish a connection for multiplayer. You’ll need to forward TCP port 3847.

  Alternatively, if you can run a TCP server that forwards data between clients that connect to it, two Sopwith players that connect to this server should automatically find each other. It is fairly simple to write do this with “netcat”. for example:

  nc -l -p 3847 -c "nc -l -p 3847"

• Q: What license is this released under?

  A: This is released under the GNU General Public License, version 2. The Sopwith source was originally released under a more restrictive license, but it has since been relicensed.