Messages

31

SCI Development Tools / Re: Torin's Passage: I can't find 'global91' definition in SCICompanion

« on: April 26, 2020, 04:04:46 PM »

And I couldn't figure out how to add that, I'm afraid.

Saving changes to an SCI32 game might be a bit more difficult, because there's a third file, resmdt.xxx - and to my knowledge nobody has quite figured out what to do with it. ScummVM works without it, as does Companion if you rename the other two files. Since it's the same size as the resmap file, it's probably going to have the same data sorted by a different key, perhaps, but the map entry format looks different as well. It's been a while since I looked at it.

32

SCI Development Tools / Re: Torin's Passage: I can't find 'global91' definition in SCICompanion

« on: April 25, 2020, 02:58:14 AM »

What, no RESSCI.000? You need to rename that too (to RESOURCE.000).

33

AGI Development Tools / Re: AGI2HD Picture Redrawing Script Creator

« on: April 22, 2020, 02:50:27 PM »

This looks like a typo to me:

Code: [Select]

Sign|   XDisp   |Sign|   YDisp
  7 |  6  7  4  |  3 |  2  1  0 should be

Code: [Select]

Sign|   XDisp   |Sign|   YDisp
  7 |  6  5  4  |  3 |  2  1  0 right?

34

SCI Development Tools / Re: Torin's Passage: I can't find 'global91' definition in SCICompanion

« on: April 21, 2020, 02:54:56 PM »

Yup, that's what I've been doing all along as well. So much that I didn't understand Kawa's question at first.
Linux lets me make symlinks so I don't have to disturb the original game.

35

SCI Development Tools / Re: SCI32 Source Code

« on: April 19, 2020, 07:46:44 AM »

The original algorithm seems to be patented by sierra and may not be used for another few years until the patent runs out.

That was a concern fifteen years ago when pathfinding was being added to FreeSCI. The original patent was filed in 1990; it has long since expired. I wouldn't worry about it now. On the other hand, I wonder why Kawa would be reluctant to borrow code from ScummVM and not from the original interpreter.

EDIT: The Message kernel call was patented too. I don't think anyone ever took that seriously.

36

SCI Syntax Help / Re: Parser Syntax Problem

« on: March 31, 2020, 03:18:01 PM »

"pry open nose with finger"

aka 'pick / nose' . You could catch that case with some sort of allusion to QfG1

37

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

« on: March 02, 2020, 04:51:47 PM »

OK, so I'm no AGI expert, but all the code for AGI is in AGI(.EXE) and the data segment is contained in AGIDATA.OVL. These need to match, and if you're going to change them (I don't know whether WinAGI does this), you must have the right idea of which version it is. Now, the drop down box in one screenshot shows 3.002.149, but we have no data on your actual files. Could you give us the sizes of your AGI(.EXE) and AGIDATA.OVL files, please?

... I sure hope there's an adequate list somewhere once we get an answer 

38

SCI Development Tools / Re: Decompilation Archive

« on: November 18, 2019, 05:05:30 PM »

I've thought about that one before, and I figure that could be mitigated with a difficulty setting. Easy uses maxxed out stats, hard uses new-character stats, etc... with extra magic potions... maybe a little play-testing to find the right balance between hard and impossible.

Or, if you're working on the formulae/at the source level, simply redo the formulae without any reference to player stats. Find something reasonable/playable.

39

SCI Development Tools / Re: SCI01 Template Game

« on: September 17, 2019, 10:25:21 AM »

I assume there'd be a hint in the table view? A bunch of patches lying around would be the most likely.

40

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: What are we working on?

« on: September 09, 2019, 01:36:10 PM »

If this had been SCI1.0 you could have called the result SCIDHUVLFN.EXE, but I guess you are left with RESOURCES.000 or AwesomeDriver.DRV ...

41

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: What are we working on?

« on: August 30, 2019, 03:54:18 PM »

I don't know what Shivers 2 ran on but I know SCI32 is C++.

Shivers 2 used external (C++) DLLs for all the rooms, but was actually SCI32 underneath. They had a glue layer making the innards of the interpreter callable from the DLLs. Shivers 2 is one of the reasons why I don't believe for a minute that

But SCI needed to be recoded in order to get the Duck [movie] player into it. [Which is why it is in version 3 whereas the previous game in the Phantasmagoria series used version 2.]

here. It is much more likely that it was being rewritten because they needed to shoehorn that in. Some of the internal changes corroborate it.

42

SCI Syntax Help / Re: Loading External Scripts on the Fly?

« on: August 14, 2019, 02:00:49 AM »

Though, admittedly, from SCI01 on, the way heap was stored had been changed.

Let alone SCI1.1 (file format redesign) and SCI32 (complete memory manager redesign).

43

SCI Syntax Help / Re: Loading External Scripts on the Fly?

« on: August 12, 2019, 03:19:24 PM »

cramming things like the game's icon bar, control panel, and inventory

All of these will be required often to semi-often in normal use. There's a risk in not being able to pull them up if you're low on memory because their memory footprint was not accounted for earlier. What if you're prevented from saving/restoring/quitting? Putting up a death message? Using a critical object?

44

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: QA Hard Disk Archive

« on: July 27, 2019, 08:36:27 PM »

Sad that there wasn't any dev related stuff on the hard drive... otoh, we know most of it already.

45

SCI Development Tools / Re: Decompilation Archive

« on: July 14, 2019, 02:09:17 PM »

I wonder why the demos for GK1, QFG4, and PQ4 used SCI1.1 instead of SCI2? My guess is that the 32-bit engine was not yet ready to be used, so the designers used the older 16-bit engine during development, then ported it to SCi2 when the full games were completed.

Well, things like the polygon editor do not work in SCI2. If you try, you're told to use SCI16 (i.e. SCI1.1), so they definitely had to use it for some things. And we all know how buggy QfG4 was on release (we are getting script patches for the QfG4 bugs in ScummVM, but the number of patches is crazy).