Topics

1

SCI Development Tools / Everybody drop everything and see this (100% SCI decompiled sources!)

« on: July 05, 2023, 08:32:22 AM »

Sluicebox, a ScummVM developer, has created his own SCI decompiler that now can 100% decompile scripts (including blocks of code that up until now have currently fallen back to assembly) and also added commented annotations within the source to describe what each object is and what it does. It also puts strings from messages as inline comments so you can more easily see what's going on at a glance. I can't wait to play with this later tonight!

https://www.benshoof.org/blog/sci-scripts

Here's OneShortEye's video which just broke the news. SluiceBox has been working very closely with the Sierra speedrunning community to diagnose certain exploit behaviour etc. This is wonderful news!!

NOTE: He doesn't supply the decompiler itself, but he has shared all of the 100% complete decompiled sources for every version of every SCI game that he could get his hands on. He didn't create his decompiler in C++ so it's not compatible with SCI Companion, at least in its current state. But maybe we can convince him to release the source anyway and someone brave enough can adapt it . There are a few other caveats he goes over in the article as well. One namely being that there might be a couple bugs that won't compile but could be fixed by going over the code. There was also something he said about a holdover bug from Sierra's original compiler.

Maybe! If SCI Companion fully supports the game, then it can compile most scripts. You may need to fix a Sierra bug or two, or make some other adjustments to make SCI Companion happy. My goal is to show what's really going on in the scripts, bugs and all.

2

Mega Tokyo SCI Archive / KQ1 Remake view discovery..

« on: September 14, 2002, 04:14:51 PM »

maybe somebody already discovered this...maybe not...

but a while ago i discovered something with the KQ remake. i took the views of the Roger Wilco EGO from SQ4EGA and put them in the KQ1 Remake directory and it worked! and not only that, it even uses the diagnal loops in the view to look like ur walkn diagnally when u press 9,7,1, or 3 on the NumPad. only problem is u cant see his head when he stands still cuz of the difference in the way the sprites were made (SQ4EGA has his headmoving around so its in a different loop). but it was interesting to see that the KQ remake supported diagnal views that Sierra (for some reason) never bothered to take advantage of.

3

Mega Tokyo SCI Archive / SCI 1.1 & 32 dumper...

« on: September 14, 2002, 01:51:07 PM »

ok it extracts....but it says in the readme that all extracted resources doesn't contain plain-file header so none of the files work in any games. if it cant read anything wats the point of the dumper?

i cant even get viewedit to open the views....is there a difference in format? or is it the same problem?

is there any plans to fix this? (if it can be fixed)

4

SCI Development Tools / Yamaha FB-01/IMF sound tools

« on: March 06, 2023, 01:43:29 PM »

I've written two programs to deal with patch banks for SCI0 and SCI1 games that support the Yamaha FB-01/IBM Music Feature Card. These work similarly to NRS's Bnk2Pat, Pat2Bnk, and Syx2Pat which works with Adlib and MT-32 patch banks. Now we have tools for the FB-01 as well! For those who don't know, the FB-01/IMF is an FM synth generator module/card similar to Adlib but works in a different way. Only the early Sierra games support it (up to QFG2 and KQ5). I've written these tools because I'm trying to support the FB-01 for Doan's Betrayed Alliance Book 1 and Book 2 games since they're both made in SCI0.

SCI2FB
Converts SCI FB-01/IMF patch bank resources to the FB-01's sysex bank file for use with the FB-01 (or an emulator) and software so you can capture the instruments from Sierra games
https://github.com/MusicallyInspired/SCI2FB

FB2SCI
Converts two FB-01 sysex bank files into one SCI patch bank resource file. You can create custom banks for custom SCI games (or even Sierra SC0/SCI1 games that don't have official FB-01/IMF support).
https://github.com/MusicallyInspired/FB2SCI

I'm going to make an update to FB2SCI so that you can create a SCI patch resource with only one bank instead of two if you want (early games like KQ4, PQ2, and LSL2 only have one bank of 48 instrument voices instead of two banks with 96 total). But for now it can only create a 2-bank patch file.

EDIT: Here's a thread from 3 years ago that talked about the potential for this for SCI games up to SCI1.1 as long as we had instrument patch files for each game. Now we can.
https://sciprogramming.com/community/index.php?topic=1882

And here's another thread where we were talking about this TEN years ago! Better late than never, right? 
https://sciprogramming.com/community/index.php?topic=746.0

5

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / SQ2 Root Monster Maze Gauntlet - EXTENDED EDITION

« on: October 13, 2021, 07:59:27 PM »

So for this year's Space Quest Olympics (in honour of Scott Murphy on his birthday) headed by Troels Pleimert (aka the Space Quest Historian), I decided to work on a surprise for the final event of the stream. I extended the root monster maze gauntlet to the west of the main maze screen and stripped out the rest of the game. It starts you right at the beginning of the maze, it gives you a "Checkpoint!" text when you get to the final archway, and when you return all the way to the beginning (after having reached Checkpoint) it will tell you your time. So if you'd like to give it a go yourself, have at it. Here's the download.

And here's a link to the stream on YT which featured each event from each SQ game (this year's theme was Speedrunner's Delight). The new root maze is the final event at the end:

6

AGI Syntax Help / Global Variables/Flags Possible?

« on: October 12, 2021, 01:21:01 AM »

I've tried setting variables and flags but they don't persist between rooms. I even tried setting them in LOGIC 0 but that doesn't do anything different. Is this even possible? I mean, it's gotta be right? Is there some special way to define them maybe? I can't find any information on this anywhere. I'm trying to reference games but it's not entirely clear. They're setting flags and variables all over the place and checking them in different rooms and it seems to work fine there...I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

7

SCI Development Tools / Set channel properties for Sound resources in Companion?

« on: May 25, 2021, 07:10:16 PM »

I may have brought this up before, I don't remember. I discovered while streaming today that Companion doesn't seem to have the ability to alter channel properties on Sound resources. Mainly the "Initial Voices" value. This is important for Adlib because if it's not set no notes will be played at all. Ravi's SoundBox program can set this but it's only compatible with SCI0 Sound resources, which makes it unhelpful for SCI1+ games.

What the Initial Voices value does is set the polyphony limit for the channel it's set on. I think Adlib has a maximum limit of 8 voices across all Adlib channels total. I think some stereo OPL drivers (sndblast?) ignore this and have a higher polyphony limit but I'd like to be able to to support the original mono adl.drv driver too.

Unless Companion already supports this and I've missed it lol. The source for SoundBox is freely available so I'm going to take a look at it later tonight too.

8

SCI Development Tools / SCI Companion Pic Editor saving bug?

« on: April 22, 2021, 01:00:01 AM »

So I was creating a Picture resource for KQ2SCI on stream yesterday and towards the end I decided to test it. I saved it and loaded up the game and half my work wasn't showing up. The commands were all there in the Pic, but it wasn't working. I tried closing the Pic and reopening it and...it was all messed up. Most of my work was lost and only some of it persisted in being saved. Since I was streaming, though, I had all the commands listed on video so I painstakingly went through the video frame by frame and reimplemented each draw tool command from the draw command list on the video. That took ages. And then....it got even worse. Commands I didn't even make started garbling the screen in the Visual, Priority, and Control screens alike.

I narrowed the problem down to the Pen tool using the randomized pattern (specifically size 2). So I figure something isn't saving right when it comes to that specific draw command. It recorded two of the pen tool draw commands fine, but by the third it randomly decided to turn on the Visual tool and start painting on coordinates that aren't even on the picture (like in the thousands) and randomly appearing in a bunch of places on the screen and the entire rest of the picture ended up being corrupted. I had to remove the Randomized Pen Pattern tool commands entirely and it saved just fine.

This may be something we're already aware of I don't know. Now that I've run into it like this, though, I do remember running into it in the past and remembered trying to avoid using the randomized pattern pen tool. I've used it on other pictures in KQ2SCI, but with those I used SCI Studio to draw the pictures way back when. So I guess I'll have to use Studio sometimes for those details. I haven't nailed down exactly how or why it's corrupting but I intend to do further testing and experimenting with the SCI Pic resource file specs closeby.

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The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / KQ2SCI in development again - Live on Stream!

« on: April 05, 2021, 07:16:51 PM »

Many years ago I started development of a King's Quest II SCI remake in Sierra's SCI0 engine/interpreter with fanmade tools (such as Brian Provinciano's original SCI Studio and later Phil Fortier's SCI Companion). Specifically in the style of Sierra's King's Quest I remake (EGA graphics with mouse, parser, and MIDI music support). I stopped working on it long ago but had a thought on how I could continue development. I posted around asking for input on whether streaming myself developing it would be of interest to anyone. It got a decent response on Twitter so I decided to go ahead with it. I'll be starting tomorrow morning (Tue, Apr 6) at 9am CST and go for a couple hours. I'm not sure what the schedule will be going forward. Tue mornings work for me but most of the time evenings are better. I will likely stream again on Thursdays or Fridays during the day or towards the evening as those are my days off. Possibly even Sat or Sun evenings. We'll see how it goes. I've also got other music projects going on (that I won't stream) which I'll have to work around.

If you're interested, give my Twitch channel a follow so you can get notified right away when I go live: http://twitch.tv/musicallyinspired

It'll also be backed up on my YouTube channel as well if you miss it and the VOD before it gets removed from Twitch.

10

SCI Community News / SCUMMVM SCI Engine "HiRes Upscale" Support Mod

« on: January 25, 2021, 09:20:57 AM »

An amazing individual named Myles Johnston has release a modded ScummVM that supports graphics asset replacement at up to 4x the resolution for the SCI engine. Effectively rendering ESRGAN AI upscaling (prerendered of course) usable in ScummVM. He's released a build of ScummVM and his own alternate build of SCI Companion. Here's an example video he made:



He's also got something going for SCI0 games (this will make VGA-ifying SCI0 EGA games a whole lot quicker):



This obviously will kill all colour cycling, but this is only the beginning. If enough people get in on this perhaps colour cycling can be simulated somehow in a 32-bit colour high resolution environment with special mapping files or colour flags or something.

Here are his builds of ScummVM and SCI Companion (which is needed for some reason, I don't know what yet apparently it batch dumps View cels into individual files) plus his tutorial video:

ScummVM X
SCI Companion X

GitHub:
https://github.com/MiLO83/scummvmx
https://github.com/MiLO83/SCICompanionX



EDIT: Here's his Readme file:

Code: [Select]

This is a Demonstration Alpha, v0.832 I suppose.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
SCUMMVMx SCI Engine HiRes Support Mod!

This mod loads .png files from the Launcher defined "Extra" folder.
It does not come with any replacement graphics or games.

Files must be exactly 4x their original size.
They should be true color and not paletted.

They should be named as follows (Case-Sensitive / Non-0-Padded):
pic.#.png
view.#.#.#.png

The original graphics can be dumped with my custom ALSO modified version of SCICompanion,
"SCICompanionX", this "X" version batch dumps views as individual cels instead of sprite sheets.
Individual Cel format is required by the HiRes Mod, and trust me exporting individual cels with
the original SCICompanion could take WEEKS of careful clicking.

Simply open your game in SCICompanionX, and in the top menu go to Tools->Extract all resources..
You will likely want to only "Generate bitmaps for pics" and "Generate bitmaps for views",
Un-checking the other options.

Currently Pics are exported as .bmp, you will need to scale them somehow to 4x and save as
unpaletted true color .png. Views are however dumped as .png but will crash the game if not
scaled exactly 4x.

ANY GRAPHIC NOT EXACLY 4X THE ORIGINAL WILL LOOK GARBLED OR CRASH THE GAME.

I enjoy "CupScale", but only because I don't have the time to program and redo the Art by hand in Photoshop.
I have also heard great things about GigaPixel AI.

KNOWN BUGS :
Some untested games may not work, for instance "QFG - Shadows of Darkness" (Sorry ;|)

[READ EDIT] Also, I found that in QFG3 some replaced graphics remain pixilated due to the game scaling them,
This is simply the current status of the HiRes Alpha, I am trying to fix this problem evenings after working
on other work projects 9-5. I have to track down where in the code needs fixing, fixing it shouldn't be difficult,
it's just finding the routine that needs modification in the code somewhere which is a bit of code reading.
Most likely its in a file I haven't actually read yet. [EDIT/IGNORE : THIS IS WHAT'S FIXED IN THIS VERSION!!! :)]

Please feel free to track me down (Myles Johnston aka MiLO83) on YouTube / Discord / Facebook with
Questions, Positive Comments, Help, Bug Reports, Etc.

Again this is not yet finished or polished, people seem to want to try it themselves before 100% compatibility.

https://github.com/MiLO83/scummvmx
https://github.com/MiLO83/SCICompanionX

  - Myles Johnston

11

SCI Development Tools / Batch export vector draw commands one by one

« on: October 10, 2020, 11:17:56 PM »

Is there a command line tool or something anywhere that will take SCI0 Picture resources and export each draw command step in frames? I'm trying to basically make an animated GIF of a Picture resource drawing from beginning to end. Is there any easy way to do this besides copying and pasting each frame from the Pic editor or capturing SCI Decoder drawing Pictures from DOSBox?

12

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / The Legend of ZCI

« on: October 08, 2020, 10:53:36 PM »

Just felt like doing these paintovers of the original SCI0 template game Ego sprite tonight. (they're animated, click on them)

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The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Longstanding ScummvM missing SCI1.0 sound feature finally implemented

« on: September 12, 2020, 11:50:55 PM »

I'm happy to report that due to a bug ticket I filed 3 weeks ago, ScummVM will now allow the "Prefer digital sound effects" checkbox in the engine tab menu for SCI1.0 games to actually function. That is, beforehand enabling or disabling this option would make no difference and all SCI1.0 games would output digital sound regardless. It worked fine for SCI0 and SCI1.1 games, but SCI1.0 was strangely ignored in the code checks (it specifically initially only checked for SCI0 and SCI1.1 games). I stated this years and years ago on the ScummVM forums and I'm surprised it still hadn't been known or addressed until now. I had been using DOSBox all this time and just wasn't aware. I was fiddling with ScummVM again recently and noticed it. So it's finally fixed. Hooray!

14

SCI Development Tools / MIDI Editor (Possibly a better tool than Anvil Studio?)

« on: September 06, 2020, 09:26:57 AM »

Stumbled upon this tool yesterday. I've never liked Anvil Studio and I was happy to discover another free alternative called MIDI Editor. https://midieditor.org/

It also shows some helpful information about the MIDI file and its channels/tracks/etc. I haven't tried really using it yet but the interface and display sold me.

15

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / King's Quest VI AGI

« on: June 04, 2020, 01:17:52 AM »

The dude that made this 7 or so years ago recently found his source again and is finishing this. He's been releasing video updates, here is the latest!