Messages

1

SCI Development Tools / Re: SCI01 Template Game

« on: March 14, 2020, 02:49:04 PM »

I was not discounting your efforts, just noting that it restores a functionality that was in the official games. It is good to have it in or restored the template game.

2

SCI Development Tools / Re: SCI01 Template Game

« on: March 13, 2020, 01:52:58 PM »

Many (most?) SCI0/SCI01 official games had right-click look.

Which LockerGnome? Redux had SciAudio.

3

AGI Syntax Help / Re: DOSBox fails to find smiley faces?

« on: March 02, 2020, 09:04:01 AM »

The Run utility is an old workaround for SGI Studio and earlier versions of Companion. You could run many DOS programs in Win9x, so you could run SCI DOS games directly from the IDE. The Run utility was a way to run a game
from the IDE on more modern versions of Windows. SCI Companion 3 and WinAGI can direct the game to DOSBox without external help so this utility is not needed

4

AGI Syntax Help / Re: DOSBox fails to find smiley faces?

« on: March 02, 2020, 08:50:55 AM »

Having file extensions hidden by default was a bad choice back in Windows 95 and it's still bad now, and that's one hill I'm certainly gonna die on.

Agreed.

5

AGI Syntax Help / Re: DOSBox fails to find smiley faces?

« on: March 01, 2020, 05:49:07 PM »

Do you have any special characters or characters with diacritics in the path to your game? What is the contents of the conf?

6

SCI Syntax Help / Re: Police Quest 1 VGA

« on: February 27, 2020, 09:18:24 AM »

Enrico did do the Italian translation of both GK1 and GK2. It is why he wrote TraduSCI. There were a few extra GK2 tools and patches he wrote as well. He wrote a tool to concatenate the resources of multi disc SCI games as well as a patch to fix the opening menu broken by joining the discs. NewRisingSun made a couple of timer bug patches for the game, but Enrico wrote his own versions.

7

SCI Syntax Help / Re: Police Quest 1 VGA

« on: February 26, 2020, 08:43:17 AM »

It may be a while to get a response from Enrico Rolfi. I don't think he has much interest in SCI these days nor do I think he visits his WordPress site often.

8

SCI Syntax Help / Re: Police Quest 1 VGA

« on: February 25, 2020, 08:49:09 PM »

It is Enrico Rolfi that oroginally developed the no interlace patch. He developed several other patches for the game for his Italian translation of the game, including the HDD/DVD patch. He developed several tools for his efforts, such as his FotoSCIhop for editing SCI2.1 pic and view resources and TraduSCI for translating script and message resources. His page is no longer available, but seems to have been captured by the wayback. http://web.archive.org/web/20081023182524/http://www.vogons.zetafleet.com:80/gkpatches/

9

SCI Development Tools / Re: Decompilation Archive

« on: February 21, 2020, 06:59:52 PM »

How about KQ6 CD? Be nice to see this with the actual system scripts and with the original Sierra names for defines, globals, scripts, and procedures, etc.

10

SCI Syntax Help / Re: SCI Audio - how to set up a music on/off toggle

« on: February 15, 2020, 04:00:57 PM »

I'm a little confused still. In the properties I see the following (In Studio Script, which I'm using for BA 1)

Have you considered converting to Sierra script? It would be a good excuse to familiarize yourself with it.

11

SCI Syntax Help / Re: SCI Audio - how to set up a music on/off toggle

« on: February 14, 2020, 02:18:34 PM »

Perhaps store it as a global and every time you invoke an sciAudio script have the first thing the script does is to get the volume variable?

12

SCI Syntax Help / Re: Setting a Cursor's location

« on: January 14, 2020, 09:44:22 AM »

I don’t have the code snippets in front of me right now, but QFG1VGA and QFG3 also both move the mouse cursor programmatically (when clicking the “other” menu for running/sneaking/magic).

This reminds me of a quirk of the game in DOSBox. If the mouse is not set to be captured the popup menu would disappear the instant the mouse was moved.

13

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: Betrayed Alliance Book One - upcoming v.1.1 Release

« on: December 16, 2019, 04:50:17 PM »

Just cleaned up the game's Wiki entry. I had updated some of the templates for uniformity between the Wikis, which broke a couple of things on the game pages. You can update the Wiki entry when you release the new version.

14

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: Worst Adventure Game Tendencies

« on: December 10, 2019, 09:34:55 AM »

I absolutely agree about out-of-place-puzzles. All puzzles *must* be organic to the game. Every time you have to think outside of the game's narrative it breaks immersion.

15

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: Worst Adventure Game Tendencies

« on: December 08, 2019, 06:26:14 PM »

Parser Vs PnC - Possibly the primary question for us old assholes.  I'm a parser fan because of the freedom of exploration.  I also understand, particularly after coming up with a demo in the format, how reliant the experience is on the understanding of syntax and basic words/synonyms.  It's something of an early AI, and very limited by memory when not by care.  I always enjoyed parser, though, that ability to look at or try anything.  I remember reading the KQ Companion and how the skull in KQ3 was a rudimentary computer.  Goofy?  Sure.  As a kid, I recall wondering why I didn't look at that thing closer.  Parser doesn't widen the world, really; PnC can do all the same, but it always seemed to me when I was younger that the world was limitless.  You could type ANYTHING and maybe get a response.  I enjoyed PnC as well, but was initially disappointed when Sierra went the PnC route.  Of course, that wasn't the biggest issue with their first game in that direction, though many of them weren't initially introduced by the change, either:

I would argue that this "freedom" is mostly an illusion. A parser or a P&C interface is only as complete as the designer makes it. There are a LOT of parser games that simply fall back on genaric responses. "I don't know what a *** is", "I don't know how to ***", "How can you do that?", etc.

The floppy version of Freddy has responses for much of what might catch your eye. There were so many hotspots with game responses that much of the more extraneous content had to be cut for the MPC version.

You touched on it, but I do not think that it can be over emphsized that a designer must include *every* synonym or variant a key object or action. Having to play 20 question with the designer of "what word am I thinking of now?" is immersion breaking. I will note that SCI0 does have enough of the rudiments of a P&C interface that you can right click on an object and the game will apply the "look" action on that object. The game's response can give its name of the object.

A parser or a P&C interface is only as good as the game's design allows. Which is better is completely subjective.

Dead Ends - These kind of suck

Josh Mandel once said that there are two kinds of dead ends; unintentional ones (AKA bad design) and those that are part of the game design. In KQ6 if you do not have all of the inventory items needed to complete the catacombs and try to enter them you are told that you are not ready. In KQ5 if you eat the pie you will not be able to pass the yeti. There is no reason to eat the pie. This is not to defend this silly "puzzle", but it is an example of dead end by design. I don't mind the designed dead ends, but see it as poor design if the game lets you advance too far after your illfated decision. It should be apparent before you have too much game play invested beyond.

Deaths

Depending on the death I do not mind them, in fact they can be fun and/or humorous. What I do not like are the tedious ones, like stairs in so many of the AGI games.

FMV

Perhaps a technology too much ahead of its time. Maybe it never will be time for it. The intent may be better met by photo realistic 3-D. The games from the FMV era were too low rez and disjointed with clumsy idle animations.

Bad/Impossible Puzzles

The less said about adventure game moon logic the better.

Basic Storytelling

Duh. A good narrative is fundamental to a good adventure game. Otherwise it is little more than a poor excuse from which to hang a few puzzles.

Surface exploration

This touches on the first point of parser vs P&C. Again, the floppy version of Freddy was particularly rich in hotspots. I would say that the ability to explore the game's world is not quite, but nearly as important as the narrative.