Messages

1

SCI Syntax Help / Re: MachineSpeed syntax on real hardware

« on: May 03, 2024, 10:14:27 AM »

Why not simply have a speed test room. That's what Sierra did in most cases. It runs as the first room, does its job, and then passes control to a different room (such as a title screen).

2

SCI Community How To's & Tutorials / Re: Can you migrate LSL6 VGA's debug mode to LSL6 SVGA?

« on: April 29, 2024, 03:44:18 PM »

Is this the best reference for info on SCI32 right now? https://github.com/OmerMor/SCI32

I guess so. Nobody has written anything on the topic. Kawa had a blog entry on the SCI32 pic/priority thing, but I can't seem to find it.

3

SCI Syntax Help / Re: What's going on???? (emLEFT_BUTTON and emRIGHT_BUTTON)

« on: April 29, 2024, 03:50:15 AM »

The broader issue here is that modifiers is a bitfield. Which means AND, OR, XOR and so on. For the shift modifiers, you could do several things:

Test a single shift key and ignore the state of the other one:

Code: [Select]

(if (== (& (event modifiers:) emLEFT_SHIFT) emLEFT_SHIFT) ...)
or test both shift keys and see if just one of them is held:

Code: [Select]

(if (== (& (event modifiers:) emSHIFT) emLEFT_SHIFT) ...)
or test if any of the shift keys is pressed:

Code: [Select]

(if (!= (& (event modifiers:) emSHIFT) 0) ...)

4

SCI Community How To's & Tutorials / Re: Can you migrate LSL6 VGA's debug mode to LSL6 SVGA?

« on: April 27, 2024, 10:42:30 PM »

The debug versions had some extra kernel calls. There is a Priority kernel call which would show the priorities, but it's been commented out in the available source code. One problem is that SCI32 uses priority values that are much larger than in SCI16, making it harder to map them meaningfully to colors. And there was no control screen, so not much point in that.

5

SCI Community How To's & Tutorials / Re: Can you migrate LSL6 VGA's debug mode to LSL6 SVGA?

« on: April 27, 2024, 06:28:26 PM »

According to the wiki above and also this one, this game was not done in SCI32 (only LSL7 was or at least SCI3).

You're reading it wrong. LSL6 SVGA was very much SCI32. And it's ugly: The buttons are too big and their captions are poorly adjusted.

6

SCI Community How To's & Tutorials / Re: Can you migrate LSL6 VGA's debug mode to LSL6 SVGA?

« on: April 27, 2024, 03:05:46 PM »

...I am reminded yet again that the stock dialog boxes in SCI32 are ugly.

7

SCI Syntax Help / Re: QfGIV text wrap

« on: April 21, 2024, 01:00:59 PM »

The narrator is an object too, and has a talkWidth property.

8

SCI Syntax Help / Re: QfGIV text wrap

« on: April 20, 2024, 04:10:11 PM »

The talkWidth property on the Talker in question would seem to be it. I can't test just now.

9

AGI Development Tools / Re: The web version of AGILE (https://agi.sierra.games)

« on: April 13, 2024, 08:29:27 PM »

WebKit descends from KHTML. A teaching assistant I had at university worked on KHTML.

10

SCI Syntax Help / Re: Trying to sidestep the Restore Menu (SCI0)

« on: April 06, 2024, 02:27:29 PM »

The ScummVM save/load code is so full of odd cases that it's hard to say what goes wrong without actually trying it in the debugger.

11

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: 40 years ago (KQ1/GAL/AGI)

« on: April 03, 2024, 01:39:14 PM »

I don't know about the Apple II and PAL. The one I saw used a monitor, not a TV.

12

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: 40 years ago (KQ1/GAL/AGI)

« on: April 02, 2024, 03:49:27 PM »

Well, the Apple II connected to a TV as well and used the same composite color mode for that reason. The colors are even the same (but the order seems different?). Compare and contrast:

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-V0K83F7MyO0/UnR3SUz3PfI/AAAAAAAAAnc/KJjO7yOwlZMFhXXLCThFqc7gVtghjm6RACPcB/s1600/artifact16_640_comparison.png (PC, second column)
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gAkxNBt-M5M/YWMjJ_Q7tbI/AAAAAAAAL9E/dKeoBulMVuoUvpgwUseoFesm74MC8KdMQCLcBGAsYHQ/s560/Apple%2BDOS%2B3.3%2BAugust%2B1980%2BColor.png (Apple)

Both of those are from Nerdly Pleasures. The full articles are at:

http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2021/10/apple-ii-composite-artifact-color-ntsc.html
http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2013/11/ibm-pc-color-composite-graphics.html

And one more thing: That garish orange color was deliberately left out of the GAL color tables. You can't ask for it, at least not on the PC.

13

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: 40 years ago (KQ1/GAL/AGI)

« on: April 01, 2024, 01:28:10 PM »

I'm not sure what they are getting at with regards to the UK not "seeing" the game.

They could be referring to the composite color mode only working on NTSC devices. I've only seen it now after procuring the booter image and having DosBox emulate it. Back in the day I wondered what it was even for.
And indeed, the initial version did not support plain CGA. That came in the August 1984 release (see https://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-evolution-of-kings-quest.html )

14

SCI Development Tools / Re: View size limits

« on: March 27, 2024, 10:21:27 PM »

We had the SQ4 box sitting on a counter for a few weeḱs until we had the 486 to make it work. I had seen SQ4 on a friend's machine. It was very impressive at the time.

15

SCI Syntax Help / Re: Trying to sidestep the Restore Menu (SCI0)

« on: March 27, 2024, 04:40:43 AM »

It is possible to know which savegame is the most recent one, by the way. The last time saving came up (https://sciprogramming.com/community/index.php?topic=1902.0), I wrote some code:

Code: [Select]

(procedure (ShowIndices &tmp [slots 20] [names 400])
        (GetSaveFiles (gGame name?) @names @slots)
;       (SetDebug)
        (FormatPrint "%02d %02d %02d %02d %02d\n%02d %02d %02d %02d %02d\n%02d %02d %02d %02d %02d\n%02d %02d %02d %02d %02d"
                [slots 0]
                [slots 1]
                [slots 2]
                [slots 3]
                [slots 4]
                [slots 5]
                [slots 6]
                [slots 7]
                [slots 8]
                [slots 9]
                [slots 10]
                [slots 11]
                [slots 12]
                [slots 13]
                [slots 14]
                [slots 15]
                [slots 16]
                [slots 17]
                [slots 18]
                [slots 19])
)
The first entry in the slots array tells you the index of the most recent savegame (the one that appears at the top of the restore dialog).