Change Script from Phantasmagoria 1

[Pakolmo]

Hello! 

I am trying to change the script and heap 0 from Phantasmagoria 1 because I want that the game shows the subtitles (msg) down the screen when it play the videos.

I don't know how do it. Please, Help me!

[MusicallyInspired]

That's....no small task you're asking. Why don't you start with SCI basics before tackling something so big? Then when you have a firm grasp on how it works, it'll look less like Greek to you.

[Collector]

Also, Phantasmagoria is SCI2 and Companion is limited to SCI1.1. Not sure what you might be able to do with the language flag in the CFG file and TraduSCI.

[MusicallyInspired]

Actually, IIRC, troflip made some changes so that SCI2 scripts will compile now. It's just not "supported".

[Collector]

I thought it was just the beginnings of graphics support, but I was not paying that much attention since there was not going to be full support for it. Getting SCI1.1 is a pretty big deal in and of itself. Any SCI2 support is icing in the cake.

[Pakolmo]

Thank you very much, it is a beginning.

Scicompanion is wonderful.

Do you know the sentence to call a msg in a script file?

[Kawa]

In SCI11 at least it's (gMessager say: nounNum verbNum caseNum 0 self) or something like that, but that first word may be different and it won't include anything about placement. I think it's basically the same in SCI2 but on the other hand Phantasmagoria may well do its own thing to display those msg lines.

[troflip]

I managed to get a lot of things working with SCI2 (enough that I thought someone should be able to make a game with it - with difficulty), but yeah, it's all "at your own risk" and not very tested. I know I tried Phantasmagoria because the screenshots of it look familiar, but I also remember there were a few slightly different flavors of SCI2, and I focused mainly on making sure SQ6, GK, and KQ7 sort of worked.

Do you know the sentence to call a msg in a script file?

For SCI1.1:
http://scicompanion.com/Documentation/Classes/Messager.html

I'm not sure if SCI2's class library is different, or what the messager variable would be called in a decompilation. But basically it's an instance to which you send a "say" method, and it does the necessary kernel calls to display the message box on a screen.

The kernel call is Message:
http://scicompanion.com/Documentation/Kernels/Message.html
which will get you the raw text, and then you can display it how you want.

[Collector]

What about the decompiler? Will it work for SCI2?

[troflip]

Assuming I apply the right list of kernel names, sure. I think The only decompiler changes needed for SCI2 were to handle the _file_ and _line_ debug opcodes.

For some reason everyone has this idea that the compiler/decompiler is a big hurdle to move between SCI versions. In reality, it's almost identical across all SCI versions (the only big change is the split between heap/script resources between SCI1 and SCI1.1, but that's independent of the compiler/decompiler code). It's all the other stuff that was a pain (pics, views, sound, audio).

[Collector]

Do you know what the difference is with CSC script files in SCI3 games?

[troflip]

I don't know what CSC files are. But... SCI32 is 32-bit (I think?), and "16-bitness" is pervasive throughout SCI Companion when it comes to scripts, so it would probably be a lot of work to get Companion working with SCI32 stuff (if that's what you're getting at).

[Collector]

The SCI32 games' scripts have a CSC extension. The attached are samples from Lighthouse, RAMA, Phantasmagoria 2 and LSL7. Not suggesting that you do anything with them, just thought you might be interested in looking at them.

[Pakolmo]

Show msg at screen in videos was wrong idea. I think is better change the VMD videos for MPG subtitled videos.

I saw the sintaxis is: (PlayVMD 0 {1.vmd})

And for the MPG is:  (ShowMovie 1 0 {1.MPG})

But I have problems to recompile the scripts.

[Kawa]

I was not aware MPG was a thing that was supported.