Messages

1

SCI Development Tools / Re: Copyright state with games created in SCICompanion

« on: February 09, 2026, 01:05:00 PM »

No, it uses a VM like Sierra did to run the byte code generated by SCI Companion (with some extra functionality to support things like coroutines).

I did explore using c# for the scripting a while back, but I abandoned it. I forget why.

2

SCI Development Tools / Re: Copyright state with games created in SCICompanion

« on: February 04, 2026, 05:44:21 PM »

Do your builds run on MSDOS?

They run in the Unity engine, which requires a modern system, so no.

3

SCI Development Tools / Re: Copyright state with games created in SCICompanion

« on: February 02, 2026, 08:08:36 PM »

Hi guys,
What is the accepted/legal practice for distributing original games made with SCICompanion? If you bundle with the drivers like mt32.drv etc and the sciv.exe would this breach copyright? I'm not sure who now holds the copyright for the drivers files and sciv.exe?

Your game should still on on scummvm. Not sure what licenses are around that? Can you ship it with a commercial product?

4

SCI Development Tools / Re: Copyright state with games created in SCICompanion

« on: February 02, 2026, 08:06:14 PM »

My stuff is pretty significantly different at this point, that I'm not worried. The resource formats for pics/views are similar, the engine is very different.

5

SCI Syntax Help / Re: solitary vaules in QfGIV changeStage switch statement

« on: January 09, 2026, 07:11:17 PM »

If this is SCI Companion, the success case seems correct anyway. The value of a section of code is the last thing in that code, so 6 in this case. There should be 7 params, because the if statement resolves to a single param.

Not sure if it's "defined" what the value of a condition expression will be if there is no else, but it seems like it will always be the result of the last acc value that was branched on, 0.

6

SCI Syntax Help / Re: solitary vaules in QfGIV changeStage switch statement

« on: January 09, 2026, 12:11:59 PM »

I'm more curious what the original source code looked like that ended up compiling to that. Do any of the games that have had the original code released (there are a few I think, like maybe one of the LSLs?) have logic like that?

7

SCI Syntax Help / Re: SCI1.1 File::readString first byte

« on: October 26, 2025, 01:16:02 PM »

The size represents the size of the buffer you're writing these characters into, not the amount of characters to read. This helps mitigate buffer overflow errors.

Given that strings must be null-terminated, there needs to be room for the trailing 0x00.

8

SCI Syntax Help / Re: SCI Tetris

« on: October 21, 2025, 01:10:52 PM »

The problem is in SCI Companion's compiler, nothing about the templates is wrong. Use my fork and it should work.

Did I ever pull that change into the main branch of SCI Companion? Do you have a link to the change?

9

SCI Syntax Help / Re: SCI Tetris

« on: October 20, 2025, 06:22:48 PM »

Can you stick some Prints in there that print the value of t? Something in that block of code must be corrupting it, which would suggest that incorrect byte code is being generated when compiled.

What interpreter version are you running it on? Are you sure the compiler is generating the byte code for that version?
What happens if you run it using scummvm?

10

SCI Syntax Help / Re: SCI Tetris

« on: October 20, 2025, 01:09:37 PM »

That code looks fine, all the array accesses are within the bounds of the arrays. Are you sure it's stuck there?

11

SCI Syntax Help / Re: SCI0: Issues implementing Trite Phrase Menu item

« on: November 05, 2024, 05:27:19 PM »

I don't have the "echo SPACE" syntax as it does not like it. I'm not sure if its needed?

It was a comment in the snippet of code Lars posted... See the semicolon? So it wasn't included.
So was x: -1...

So the equivalent to

Code: [Select]

(User
                        alterEgo                        (= ego egoObj),
                        blocks                  FALSE,
                ;       echo                            SPACEBAR,
                ;       x                                       -1,
                        y                                       150,
  )

would be

Code: [Select]

(User alterEgo: gEgo blocks: FALSE y: 150)

12

SCI Development Tools / Re: View size limits

« on: March 28, 2024, 11:04:04 AM »

Resource size limit is some multiple of two I think. I forget the specifics.

I'd say the problem might be the dithering pattern in your cel. Unless 16-color cels are encoded in four bits per pixel (thus two pixels per byte), dithering patterns will not compress well with run-length encoding. But what do I know? I'm more about 256-color SCI.

You are correct - dithering will totally break compression in SCI0 views.

13

Mega Tokyo SCI Archive / Sound woes - timing is all off

« on: October 24, 2004, 01:21:20 AM »

Hi,
I'm using Soundbox to convert midi files to resources that SCIStudio can use.  I find that when playing the game, the timing of the music is all off... the notes sound jumbled.  Even notes on the same track.

It sounds fine in Soundbox.  I've tried midi files from several different sources, and all have the same problem.

I notice that sciv.exe uses 100% CPU when running (at any point in the game, not just when music is playing).  I'm wondering if that is affecting the timing of the notes?
Should sciv.exe be using 100% CPU?

14

Everything-Else / Re: ChatGPT is WRONG!

« on: May 13, 2023, 12:17:39 PM »

I'm not sure, I've never used that.

15

Everything-Else / Re: ChatGPT is WRONG!

« on: May 11, 2023, 10:41:59 PM »

ChatGPT is surprisingly good and writing small bits of code, I know a "non programmer" who uses it a lot to write little editor scripts for Unity. It would take him 10x longer to code it himself than it takes for him to give ChatGPT the right prompt.

But because there's so little information online about AGI/SCI, it doesn't seem like ChatGPT could do anything useful with it.