Topics

1

SCI Development Tools / Message file comments

« on: April 28, 2025, 03:09:12 PM »

I've known about these for a while, but they are oddly disconnected from the rest of the message file, and so I couldn't figure out how to link message and comment (plus the comment text seemed to contain junk, which turned out to be the timestamp and an ID which isn't the usual N/V/C/S tuple). But I doubled down and figured it out. The ones from GK1 are especially informative. They even include timestamps (not shown in the message editor), so we can know what the developers were doing during crunch time. Example (room 210, the bookshop):

Code: [Select]

    noun = 11
    verb = 0
    case = 57
    seq = 12
    talker = 8
    offset = 25795
    refNoun = 0
    refVerb = 0
    refCond = 0
    refSeq = 0
    string = "Like I said.  Anyway, we shouldn\'t stand out here and gab; someone on the street might see us.  Let\'s go in back and talk." (total 124)
    comment = Container:
        text = POST:  Mosely turns and walks back into studio.  Gabriel follows automatically.  Fade to 220. (total 93)
        timestamp = 1993-11-11 16:37:56
        msgnum = 744


2

SCI Development Tools / New resource type discovered in SQ3 Mac

« on: April 09, 2025, 02:55:52 PM »

So I was looking at Sluicebox's newly released source, and discovered this innocuous comment:

Code: [Select]

                   // HACK: sq3-mac and hoyle2-mac have resources of type 0x8f (message)
                    // which are of course not message resources, so version detection throws.
                    // i don't know what they are, neither does scummvm.
                    // until i update MessageReader to detect and reject these, whatever they are,
                    // i'm just skipping attempting to parse messages from these two text games.
Intrigued, I took a look and I found that they are alternate views for some of the graphics, mostly but not quite black and white. About half of the views have corresponding "altviews"; so I'm guessing there must be some sort of conversion mechanism for the remainder. Now, as Kawa once said about 2-color graphics, they are a bit meh - but unlike the monochrome pics we discussed then, these views are often bigger than the originals. Compare:

3

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Early versions of LSL2 pics!

« on: November 25, 2023, 10:19:40 AM »

I stumbled across these in the source code archive that's known to everyone about now. They had been misplaced in one of the LSL1 folders, but wouldn't decode as AGI pictures - which I found odd, until it dawned on me that they were in fact SCI pictures! I'm still busy sorting out the differences to the final version (based on file sizes, most are minor), but here's one scene with big differences:

4

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Larry Scott's "new version" aka SCI01.

« on: October 22, 2023, 01:50:16 PM »

I seem to remember that there was a thread about Corey Cole drawing a blank when it came to SCI01, and I'm not finding it. Well, I managed to find this quote from him on the matter:

Major thanks are due co Larry Scott, who created a new version of the SCI interpreter which removed many of our space restrictions from individual "rooms". This game would probably not have been possible (or at least would have been far more painful to create) without his improvements!

But that's precisely what SCI01 is (or at least was, until ScummVM changed the versioning). Interestingly, it's never mentioned in the changelogs. It would seem to have been significant enough.

5

SCI Development Tools / Is it safe to patch this?

« on: September 17, 2023, 03:42:22 PM »

Another thing I've been thinking anout: Given a game, a patch and some saves, it should be possible to determine whether it is safe to apply that patch without breaking your saves, or determine how far you need to go back to do so safely. There's just one little extra piece of info you need from the savefile, which is easily added using Kawa's build environment.

Thoughts?

6

SCI Community How To's & Tutorials / Returning pairs of values in SCI

« on: September 16, 2023, 06:52:16 PM »

I have finally gotten around to writing this. Pairs arise in SCI in several contexts, both as x,y coordinates and as far text references, but in the stock SCI language there is no such thing as a pair. However, the PMachine can be coerced into returning pairs of values from functions. Since it is a hack, you need to stow the values away immediately (and in the right order), but it can be done. This bit of code was written for the original compiler, since the Companion compiler tends to get stuck in an animation loop trying to resize the messages window; I then hex-edited it to put my hack in place (in Companion you would simply use an asm directive) - the following shows the result of a later decompilation. I therefore haven't tested it with Companion, but I know that my original works:

Code: [Select]

;;; Sierra Script 1.0 - (do not remove this comment)
(script# 935)
(include sci.sh)

(public
RetPair 0
PairFst 1
PairSnd 2
)

(procedure (RetPair param1 param2)
(== param2 param2)
(return param1)
)

(procedure (PairFst)
)

(procedure (PairSnd &tmp temp0)
(asm
pprev   
sst      temp0
lat      temp0
ret     
)
)
You can then do things like:

Code: [Select]

(procedure (WhosAPair)
        (RetPair {Larry} {Patti}))

(procedure (FarTextPair)
        (RetPair "This is a far text string"))
and retrieve the results with

Code: [Select]

                       (WhosAPair)
                        (= el1 (PairFst))
                        (= el2 (PairSnd))
                        (Printf "Pair (%s, %s)" el1 el2)
                        (FarTextPair)
                        (= el1 (PairFst))
                        (= el2 (PairSnd))
                        (Printf el1 el2)
I'd like to make the retrieval a bit neater, but that'll have to wait.

EDIT:  :'( this does not work in SSCI. Figures. But I consider that a bug in SSCI.

7

Mega Tokyo SCI Archive / Sound samples in SQ3?

« on: December 30, 2003, 01:15:35 PM »

Hi all,

The FreeSCI team has just discovered several sound samples present even in the PC version of SQ3, the longest of which is sound.100 - it seems that Sierra simply forgot to remove them.
Sound.100 is used when Roger opens his eyes in the intro. And the best? The latest CVS snapshot of FreeSCI actually plays this bit of sound, if you massage it just right. As always, it's
tricky because of the bugs.

Lars

8

Mega Tokyo SCI Archive / Documentation for the new SCI Studio?

« on: February 27, 2003, 11:18:58 AM »

Brian,

I was wondering how much of the documentation for SS will be done when the program comes out? It seems reasonable to assume "relatively little" since you've spent a lot of time coding.

Lars

9

Mega Tokyo SCI Archive / Multiple controllable egos in SCI

« on: August 25, 2002, 02:16:14 PM »

For your information, I'm working on support for multiple egos, as in Maniac Mansion. Most of it is already finished, so I can switch between them either by using the script code or an on-screen button, I can place the egos in the same or different rooms, and so on. There are still some things missing though: For one thing, I want to  have an ego continue to walk when I switch away from him, which is non-trivial. I'll let you know when it's completely done.

Lars

10

Mega Tokyo SCI Archive / Tip: Debugging graphics problems in SCI

« on: August 09, 2002, 09:30:49 AM »

This tip will probably be most useful in the last phases of game development. If you put the following code in your game, you will be able to switch between the visual, priority and control maps at run-time. You can use it to debug problems with actors not appearing behind things when they should and other similar problems.

Code: [Select]

(local theMap = 1)


and in your handleEvent:

Code: [Select]

(if(Said('show'))
           Show(= theMap (Print("Select the map to display:"
                          #button "Visual" 1
                          #button "Priority" 2
                          #button "Control" 4
                          #button "Cancel" theMap))))

11

SCI Development Tools / Wolfenstein 3D fizzlefade (SCI-related)

« on: May 05, 2021, 01:38:33 PM »

So today I learned why Sierra's DISSOLVE algorithm (aka dpOPEN_CHECKBOARD) works. Shame on me for not realizing earlier, but I'm not a graphics guy. It is described here in terms of Wolfenstein 3D, but it is easy to see that it is the same thing.

https://fabiensanglard.net/fizzlefade/index.php

12

SCI Development Tools / SCI1 interp with parser

« on: April 07, 2019, 09:43:59 PM »

Sluicebox, who has written a large number of script patches for ScummVM, has uncovered SCI versions from the SCI1 timeframe with a parser! For Amiga, unfortunately  but they are later than what was previously thought to exist. Also, 16-color graphics (I guess?).

https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm/pull/1578

13

Everything-Else / Telltale Games are shutting down

« on: September 21, 2018, 08:09:30 PM »

Not SCI related, but Carl Muckenhoupt ended up with Telltale in case you missed it. His SCI Decoder was so very influential back in 1999 when I got started on SCI. And now they're closing.

 

14

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Bits and pieces of SCUMM being revealed...

« on: March 24, 2016, 07:08:55 AM »

Aric Wilmunder is getting ready to publish some of the old SCUMM documentation on his site at http://wilmunder.com/Arics_World/Games.html
Cue the inevitable comparisons  There is even talk of code.

15

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / SCI32 Shirt

« on: February 27, 2016, 07:43:35 PM »

Putting it here, just because. For those who haven't seen it yet:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10206928157020660&set=a.1755697530478.2094731.1180140987&type=3&theater