Topics

31

SCI Syntax Help / Interface overhaul/stripdown (like Myst)

« on: August 05, 2017, 06:23:56 PM »

I know this is a big question, but I'm trying to basically replicate a Myst-like experience with the following functionality:

• First person perspective/no Ego
• Single-icon cursor interaction (for both movement and manipulating objects, so no selectable verbs)
• Dynamic cursor VIEW changing depending on what it's hovering over (for looking left/right/up/etc)
• No Iconbar
• No Print message boxes (or text of any kind)

Not initializing Ego is easy enough. I also checked out in the documentation on how to create instance objects of background elements out of Polygons, which I'm planning to use for the look left/right/up/etc hotspots on each PICTURE (I was going to use CONTROL colours initially, but this way seems more elegant). My first question is how do I....er....handle pEvents so I can determine what a mouseclick does on certain polygons? I obviously don't want them to display text so verbs are out of the question, I just need some kind of functionality to test for the player input and change rooms/manipulate objects as necessary for each scene. I could have done this easily enough in SCI0 but SCI1.1 seems so much more complex and I can't quite convert the Studio Script code to Sierra Script. Any help is welcome.

32

Everything-Else / VBlank - Shakedown: Hawaii AMA

« on: July 13, 2017, 04:56:21 PM »

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/6n44hf/developer_of_retro_city_rampage_shakedown_hawaii/

Not really Sierra-related, but Brian is doing an AMA for his new game Hawaii: Shakedown. I jokingly asked when SCI Studio VGA was coming. He ignored it.

33

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / ScummVM ready for 32-bit SCI testing

« on: April 29, 2017, 12:22:17 PM »

ScummVM has announced that their latest daily builds apparently can handle the following 32-bit SCI games:

* Gabriel Knight
* Gabriel Knight 2
* King's Quest VII
* King's Questions
* Leisure Suit Larry 6 (hi-res)
* Phantasmagoria
* Police Quest 4
* Shivers
* Space Quest 6
* Torin's Passage

It also says that some changes might affect older SCI games as well. I'd say it's about time. I haven't tried it yet, though.

34

Everything-Else / BriPro's RCR Sequel

« on: December 19, 2016, 01:55:36 AM »

His next endeavour is looking good. SNES-style this time. Shakedown: Hawaii.

35

Everything-Else / Interplay GOG Sale

« on: September 26, 2016, 10:38:00 AM »

Anyone who's a fan of Interplay games, jump on GOG and get their "Back To School" sale. You can get the entire lot for $30 down from $300. Apparently Interplay is selling all its assets so these probably won't be around anymore at least not for quite a long time possibly. Highly recommend you pick it up. And since it's GOG you don't need anything like Steam to play it. Just download and go! Yours forever.

Classics like Star Trek 25th Anniversary, Judgment Rites, Starfleet Academy, Freespace, Toonstruck, Redneck Rampage, Jagged Alliance, Earthworm Jim, MDK, Kingpin, and tons more.

https://www.gog.com/promo/20160926_back_to_school_sale_interplay_byob

36

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Humble Sierra Bundle

« on: August 30, 2016, 06:37:47 PM »

https://www.humblebundle.com/sierra-bundle

All Steam keys.

For the $1 tier you get:

-Space Quest Collection
-Phantasmagoria 1 & 2
-Police Quest Collection
-Shiftlings

For "Pay the average tier" (currently $11.99):
-Arcanum
-TimeShift
-Quest For Glory Collection
-Gabriel Knight Trilogy (doesn't include the remake)

$15 or more tier:
-Caesar 3 & 4
-Geometry Wars 3
-King's Quest Collection (1-7 Not available on the Steam store anymore!)
-Velocity 2X

$20 Top Tier:
-King's Quest 2015: The Complete Collection  (this won't redeem on your account if you already own some but not all of the episodes...lame I know)

37

Everything-Else / Retro City Rampage on yet another platform

« on: August 25, 2016, 10:58:56 PM »

Seems that RCR is getting another port release this time on a retail disc for the PS4. Overkill? Maybe. Cool anyway? Sure. It's nice to see he's still busy after abandoning SCI Stuido, though. You'd think it'd be about time to come up with a new game though? lol I think he's going for most ported game on the most platforms record.

http://vblank.com/store.php

38

SCI Development Tools / OPL timbre tool for Windows/Mac/Linux

« on: June 15, 2016, 10:21:51 AM »

A guy on VOGONS released this program to create patches for Adlib, for those that care about supporting Adlib in your games. I haven't even tried it yet and it doesn't yet support the INS/BNK format (that the DOS-based Insmaker uses), but he says more format support is coming. But even so, in the meantime it looks interesting to play around with. I've also asked him what the chances are of support Sierra's patch format directly. That would cut some corners.

http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=48513

39

SCI Development Tools / Tools for 8-bit art (GrafX 2)

« on: April 19, 2016, 11:48:24 AM »

The video Omer posted in the other thread with Mark Ferrari giving a discussion on 8-bit art is quite inspiring and I'm sure we all wish we could attain his level of talent with backgrounds. While it's easy to find a copy of Deluxe Paint II if you do a quick search, and as versatile as it is, there are some limitations with being stuck in DOS. For one thing there is no support for modern formats and resolution constraints etc. The program Mark himself uses (Pro Motion) has a free version but it's very limited (not least of the non-free features being pixel precise drawing).

One of the guys in the Q&A told Mark about another 8-bit program that does almost everything Pro Motion and Deluxe Paint can do. It's an open source program called GrafX. There is the generally stable 2.4 version and the newer 2.5 version with more features but is not entirely stable (yet). When used in conjunction with DP you can get pretty much exactly the same results. Mark seemed to ignore the comment and just kept championing for Pro Motion and Joseph Huckaby's new program which has yet to come out (the latter of which I am looking forward to, and I hope it will be free). Anyway, GrafX 2 is designed to mimic Deluxe Paint's interface but in SDL. It's fairly easy to use and does most of what DP did. It lacks some features like flood-filling gradients (you need to use the rectangle tool with stencils to fill in irregular shapes) and also lacks contour gradient filling, which is something else Mark talked about, where the fill can detect the edges of the irregular shape and flood fill the gradient in relation to them.

I recommend checking it out. It works with modern formats, as I said, DP's formats, the conventional Microsoft PAL format for manipulating palettes (SCI Companion and SCI Viewer both export to this format), works in layers and animation, and has gradient tools and color cycling previews. I've been experimenting with it for a while now and I'm willing to help with some questions on how to achieve certain effects in GrafX 2 (or Deluxe Paint as well, for that matter) and tasks if anyone decides to attempt to do an image like Mark did or even your own way. The principles of moving around and manipulating colour values in the palette is the same.

I'll try to put together some ideas for tutorials as well. Is there anything fancy with palettes and backgrounds that anyone's wondered about accomplishing? Any ideas?

40

SCI Syntax Help / Check if an object is disposed?

« on: April 04, 2016, 04:51:57 PM »

I have several Actors in a sequence one by one moving to the same destination on the horizon and when they reach that point they are disposed. I already have code to handle this and it works great. However, Before the last few Actors reach the destination the scene changes and at that point I want the code to dispose of objects that aren't already disposed yet. Is there a way to check if an object is already disposed and if it isn't dispose it?

Right now I just have the code that disposes each Actor as it reaches its destination and I also have another block of code that just disposes all of them (whether they are disposed or not) when the scene changes. This works, but I guess I'd just like a more elegant way to code this so that I'm not repeating actions.

41

SCI Syntax Help / Passing 'self' or 'super' through a procedure

« on: April 03, 2016, 11:46:00 PM »

Two questions:

1) If I use 'self' in a procedure to trigger a caller, will that send it back to wherever the procedure was called from?
2) What if I want to choose which caller specifically that I want to call from a procedure (rmScript or a custom script)? Can I name it outright when used and pass it into the procedure as a param variable?

42

SCI Syntax Help / SCI1.1 Messager/Printing

« on: April 03, 2016, 03:12:50 AM »

So getting used to the new way of Printing. It's quite different from SCI0 where you could just Print directly whatever you wanted. Now we gotta use this Messager class. Which is neat. However,...

1) Is there any way to throw a timer on the message being printed? I tried "cue: 3" figuring that a value would be a delay but it disappears instantly. Not sure what the purpose of cue would be.
2) What about changing the font for a specific message window?
3) Title text on the message window?

43

SCI Syntax Help / Changing an Actor's scale without moving

« on: April 02, 2016, 12:40:35 PM »

How does one go about changing the scale of an object while it's standing in place? I've tried manipulating the scaleX and scaleY properties of my Actor, but it does nothing. Do those properties even do what I'm expecting them to do? Do I have to use the horizon scaler instead and change the near and far distance variables dynamically to do what I want? I don't see why I'd have to if I can just manipulate that property manually. Is this even right? I threw this in my doit method:

Code: [Select]

(if (== scaleAnimate TRUE)
(actorShrink
scaleX: (- (actorShrink scaleX?) 1)
scaleY: (- (actorShrink scaleY?) 1)
)
)

I'm assuming the '?' there requests the value of that property, correct? Still getting the hang of Sierra SCI syntax.

44

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / King's Quest VI - New Ending

« on: February 20, 2016, 03:49:49 AM »

Here's what I've been messing with the past few days.

45

SCI Syntax Help / Trigger script state after sound is finish playing

« on: February 19, 2016, 11:28:50 PM »

I forget how to do this. Do I just add "self" or whatever script is supposed to be triggering on the end of "play:"? Is this even a thing?