Messages

1

Mega Tokyo AGI Archive / Re:NAGI Source Release

« on: April 22, 2002, 07:17:10 AM »

I have cleaned up the code more now, it's available at http://www.elite.za.net/stuff/nagi_src_linux.tar.gz  This code base should work under windoze still.  All the files have been stripped of the carriage returns, these caused problems.  I also removed stuff that I found to be irrelavant: CVS dirs, tools dir, etc.  Most of my changes were to get it running on Linux, but I did some others to remove warnings: initialize some vars, add some const's.  I also removed some -W's from the Makefile.

Removing the setenv's from initialise.c got some sound, but it sounded better with none. I will look at it further.  I just want Linux people to have something to work with as soon as possible.

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Mega Tokyo AGI Archive / Re:NAGI Source Release

« on: April 21, 2002, 04:48:44 AM »

Hi, I'm back.  The NAGI source release is what I needed for motivation.  However I think that it mark the end of anymore possible development on AGIL.

Since I recieved notice of the source release.  I've downloaded it, and started work on a Linux port.  So far it works with AGI 2 PC games and AMIGA games.  The sound does not appear to work yet, and AGI 3 games don't work because (I guess) the file search routines don't work.

I've emailed the modified (messy) source and binary to Nick, hopefully he will put it up (will you?), because I don't appear to have web space anymore.

I am still far from understanding the workings of NAGI, and a complete Linux port is still far from done, at least from me.  But I intend to work on it until at least I am happy with it.

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Mega Tokyo AGI Archive / AGI handling of Illegal positions

« on: December 01, 2001, 02:19:36 AM »

Can anybody help?

I'm writing yet another effort at an AGI implementation for Linux.  I looked at other efforts, Sarien, etc. and was not pleased with what I saw.  I thought about working on those, but my programming skills are rusty, and I realised that I would never understand the stuff unless I worked through it from nothing.

I have a little working so far, and am facing problems with the AGI logics positioning view objects in illegal positions, ie. above the horizon, on unconditional barriers, etc.  I can think of ways around this, but if somebody knows how Sierra's AGI solved this problem it would be greatly helpful.

Any replies would be appreciated

     RaDIaT1oN

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Mega Tokyo AGI Archive / Re: question about AGI-games

« on: January 08, 2002, 10:00:28 PM »

Similar to me.  I once started writing a lemmings clone for Linux in C++, but my hdd failed.  For school I wrote (what I think) is quite a cool program in Turbo Pascal.  But AGIL is my first real and public project.  I never published anything else.

I should use save the add.to.pic info in my savegames, at the moment I dump the graphics buffers which is why the saves are so large.  The next release will have multislot savegames, and these will include a discription.  Also I have no idea how the graphics buffers were arranged in the original interpreter, I would think something more like Sarien. I thought of doing something like that, but my hugh graphics buffers were just easier to implement.  

Does NAGI have any inline assembler?  The temptation to use asm is overwhelming, but I resist in the intrest of portability.

If this is your first real projects, it's damn excelent.  And dissassembling stuff aswell.  I will try this sometime.  I want to remake Monezuma's Revenge.  But this will be far simpler than AGI, It's just one .COM file (but it does some bad things.)

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Mega Tokyo AGI Archive / Re: question about AGI-games

« on: January 08, 2002, 02:54:11 AM »

Sorry, Nailhead.  Note that I said MOST.  When I started writing AGIL I was better with Pascal than C, but Pascal has irritating limitations, like no type casting.  Also (mine) objects to pointer arithmetic.  Also no portable.  Also nobody else would even look at the code.

Nick, AGIL has a simple savegame thing, but it's not good at all.  Just dumps everything I could think of to a file (250k).  I also have no idea how the savegames in the original worked, no the script size thing does nothing, and the savegame just saves a list of resources loaded at the time the game is saved, the restore function loads these. I realize that this breaks some things, like when unloading resources all more recently resources loaded are supposed to be freed, but in AGIL they aren't.  There really aren't memory limitations like this on modern PC's anyway.  I doubt that you could learn anything from my code, the only advantage over NAGI is that it runs in Linux. You can get an generic snprintf() implementation that works on mingw32, but I don't know about the license, that is why I'm not using it.  AGIL just uses sprintf in 'doze and DOS. If you define a universal savegame format I will do my best to implement it, but I might need an explanation of the script, and any other stuff left out of the spec.

Chris, when I started writing AGIL I was seriously rusty at C, you don't want to even see some of the code I wrote.  Didn't make it into any releases.

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Mega Tokyo AGI Archive / Re: question about AGI-games

« on: January 06, 2002, 02:22:09 AM »

Chris: Linux is a free Unix like operating system.  You have internet access, and therefore a choice: You can download it.  What I meant is stear clear of Micro$oft compilers, using GCC under DJGPP (DOS), mingw32 (Windoze) is fine (but not posix compliant, gives me some trouble.)

Nick: It has been said that V only works in NAGI,  after making 2 small changes to AGIL is runs fine.  The first was to add "V" to the list of AGI prefixes, this I can easily fix to look for *dir.  The bigger problem is that the messages (in the logic files) are excrypted with "Avis Durgan", when writing AGIL I assumed that whould be the case, but found that in sierra's games the messages in AGI3 games were not excrypted (maybe not all games).  How does your interpreter determine whether the messages are encrypted or not?  (If it is possible that games have some messages encrypted, but not all, this would possibly explain some strange behaviour in Gold Rush!)

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Mega Tokyo AGI Archive / Re: question about AGI-games

« on: January 06, 2002, 01:09:14 AM »

I would recommend getting Linux or FreeBSD.

If you are stranded with 'doze you can get Mingw32: http://www.libsdl.org/Xmingw32/
It's a free (sort of) unix like environment with a C compiler for 'doze, what the 'doze port of AGIL is compiled in.
For DOS you can get DJGPP: http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/  More native DOS like, but also gcc (GNU C compiler).

I don't recommend using Micro$oft anything.  But C++ if you have to.

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Mega Tokyo AGI Archive / Re: question about AGI-games

« on: January 06, 2002, 12:52:15 AM »

I'll take a bet NAGI is written in C.  Most serious programs are.

Nick, will you ever release source code for NAGI, for a Linux port maybe?  I want to play AGI games on linux, but Sarien just didn't cit it, I couldn't finish Space Quest (1.1A).  So I started working on my own, AGIL, available at http://www.elite.za.net/.  It's functional, but NAGI looks cooler (haven't used it, don't have 'doze).

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Mega Tokyo AGI Archive / Re: question about AGI-games

« on: January 04, 2002, 02:30:53 AM »

I don't think that there is a limit on size (in bytes of game data.)  The biggest AGI games I've seen are about 2 Megs, but logic/picture/sound resources can grow large. I haven't dissassembled the original interpreters but I think that these are referenced with short integers, therefore the resources will not exceed 0xFFFF (64 K) bytes.
You also know that you are limited to 16 vols, and each is referenced with a 5 nybble directory entry, so no vols can really be much larger than 0xFFFFF (1 Meg) bytes long.

Doing my calculations going on the 64K resource size limit (which may not be true) Games are limited to 66M, but the 16 vols at 1Meg each obviously limits to 16Meg.

Let me know if this is incorrect.

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Mega Tokyo AGI Archive / Re: New release of AGIL.

« on: January 09, 2002, 10:53:13 PM »

I know the problem, same problem with the X version (Linux, windowed).  The problem is first that I didn't write the Windoze (SDL) graphics driver, and also that it is already very slow.  If you know about SDL you can look at it.
I may when I have time, also as I have said before doing 'doze stuff is a problem for me.

Anyone knowing about Xlib is also welcome to fix the X11 driver.

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Mega Tokyo AGI Archive / New release of AGIL.

« on: January 07, 2002, 03:27:26 AM »

New release of AGIL released.  Check it out at http://www.elite.za.net/

This one has sound support, except in DOS. And a Windoze port.
It runs "V" in Linux, but appears to crash the 'doze version on my 'doze box.
I don't know why, maybe a memory thing?

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Mega Tokyo AGI Archive / Re: What's a good interpreter for winNT?

« on: January 11, 2002, 02:10:18 AM »

Thanks for the nice comments.

The next release of AGIL is practically ready, just need to fix that keyboard stuff.  This is a problem, because it works on the only 'doze box I have access to (Windoze95 on Pentium133, my old box, also has no sound).

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Mega Tokyo AGI Archive / Re: What's a good interpreter for winNT?

« on: January 10, 2002, 10:01:15 PM »

Excuse me: AGIL is only just beginning to exist.  The project is like just over a month old.  I think it's working damn well so far.

It has come to my attention that the cursor keys actually do work on some systems, but not on all.  I really don't understant SDL's key handling API. I would think it was broken, but some programs actually do work.

Do the keypad cursor keys work?  They do on all systems I have tried.  I will add some translation code in the next release (soon) that will translate the cursor block to the keypad. (Unless I figure out how SDL is supposed to work.)

The next release also has item selection in the inventory screen and Multi-slot saved games!
(And some bug fixes)

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Mega Tokyo AGI Archive / Re: AGI restart.game command

« on: January 13, 2002, 01:25:49 AM »

The AGI spec says that flag 6 is a set by the restart.game command.

So restart.game resets flags and vars to 0 unloads all resources sets a few flags and vars to their initial values, and also sets flag 6, to that logic.0 knows not to show the intro sequence (or whatever) again.

It may also be as you say, but I don't think so.  I'll decompile the logics from Larry to see.

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Mega Tokyo AGI Archive / AGI restart.game command

« on: January 12, 2002, 03:01:41 AM »

I've implemented the restart.game command in, what will be, the next release of AGIL.  However this command does not seem to work as it should.  It displays the "Press ENTER to restart..." message box, and restarts the game if enter is pressed. (As I understood the command to work.)

In Larry, however, when you die, they screw a new head on, etc. then the lift takes you to the top of the screen, and restart.game is executed, bringing up the message box.  How is restart.game supposed to know whether or not do display the messagebox? It takes no args, according to the spec.