EQ1-CDR and PQ2PnC

[doomlazer]

I'd like to announce that my friend Threepwang has just completed his restoration and French translation of Eco Quest 1 CD!

The CD release of EQ1 added some amazing voice acting to a beautiful undersea adventure, but it's riddled with bugs, palette issues, and scaled down graphics. We worked closely together for over nine months to fix every bug, transition, missing/broken message, and restore the original floppy pics & views. It's been throughly tested in both DOSBox and ScummVM and should objectively be the best possible way to experience the game. An English version of the restoration can be downloaded here.

Also nearing completion is my friend Pakolmo's Point n Click conversion and Spanish translation of Police Quest 2.

This is a complete conversion of PQ2 allowing it to be played entirely with a mouse! Several game mechanics have been reworked to support the new control scheme such as the driving, phone and computer interfaces. The Spanish patch is complete, but the English version is wrapping up testing and may still contain Spanish text in some places.

It's been a pleasure working with both Threepwang and Pakolmo on these ambitious projects. I look forward to the next collaboration and many thanks to them both!

[Collector]

Guess I'll have to get this and add it to the Version Tool.

[doomlazer]

Both games use a patch folder instead of a diff patch, so I'm not sure that they would technically register as different versions.

Also, I forgot to mention that PQ2PnC is not supported in DOSBox. It's ScummVM only because of heap issues with the additional overhead.

[Collector]

I've set flags for certain hashes for releases with the same hash, but are significantly different, like different localizations. For these releases, when the tool encounters one of the flagged hashes, it looks for other files to differentiate which release it is, like checking the readme for the language. It would be a simple matter to have it look for the existence of a file that is unique to your patch.

As to ScummVM, there are a number of fan AGI games that fail in DOSBox with the original interpreter as well as non-PC releases that may only run in ScummVM or other modern interpreter or emulator. The app's toolbox already includes some. DOSBox ECE for DOS games, AGILE is the tool's default for AGI games, and WineVDM for Win16 games/installers. And I include AppleWin for the early Apple games. At some point I might incorporate ScummVM into the tool. I would not include it with the tool, but have it interface with the user's previously installed SVM.

[doomlazer]

It would be a simple matter to have it look for the existence of a file that is unique to your patch.

For EQ1, the 180.scr file should have a unique md5 for French and English if you want to distinguish between the two versions.

For PQ2PnC script.950 would be good to use. That script doesn't exist in the retail game and is different for the English and Spanish versions.

[Collector]

Currently, I don't check the MD5 of the secondary files, just for their existence or content. I could, but so far it has not been necessary. If one of your patch files has not been included in any previous patch, its presence in the patch folder should be enough. If I have to, can check the MD5.

[doomlazer]

In that case, 104.aud would be unique to the EQ1 restoration patch. For PQ2, script.950 is unique to the PnC game. Neither exist in the retail versions of those games.

Probably no need to distinguish between the language versions. Thank you!