Messages

76

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

« on: May 27, 2021, 07:02:27 PM »

Thankfully, it seems that setting the "initial voices" flag on each channel is handled right in the header of each sound resource (which makes sense) so it is probably easy enough to add this functionality to Companion for SCI0 resources anyway. I'm checking out the source to see how Companion handles SCI1 sound resources to see if I can find where(/if) it sets this flag there...

EDIT: Kawa, I'm trying to open your Companion fork source in Visual Studio but it's giving me errors saying it can't find any DIALOGs. Any idea what's going on there? I don't have much experience working with MFC program stuff...

77

SCI Syntax Help / Re: Status line vertical size

« on: May 26, 2021, 08:53:15 PM »

I remember fiddling with setport but for some reason I thought some of this stuff was hardcoded or at least predisposed to be set up that way, seeing as all Pictures are a set height.

78

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.

79

SCI Syntax Help / Re: Status line vertical size

« on: May 25, 2021, 07:04:12 PM »

Oh nice. I was wondering if this was possible.

80

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: PQ1 (agi): Hebrew translation - finished

« on: May 21, 2021, 04:40:07 PM »

Oh wow!

81

AGI Syntax Help / Re: Need help adding text to parser

« on: May 20, 2021, 04:38:53 PM »

Unfortunately, the input line is not accessible in AGI through commands. The input line buffer is actually maintained in memory at the end of the code segment, just before the main memory heap - it's part of the data overlay, agidata.ovl.

But there are no commands that let you interact directly with that buffer. The get.string command uses a different buffer.

You might be able to fake it by changing the input prompt to include 'ask about', and then get input as usual. This might be a start:

Code: [Select]

if (controller(c49) {
  set.string(inputPrompt, ">ask about ");
  cancel.line();
  accept.input();
  set(f123);
}
I did a quick test of this and it works. When you test for 'said' input, you can check the flag; if it's set, you can respond appropriately. Then reset your input prompt (and the flag). You will also need to make sure you put the check for this flag before any other said tests to avoid unwanted results.

A limitation of this approach is that you can't backspace over 'ask about', because it's part of the input prompt. It might be possible to work around that too, but I'd have to think about it some more.

Would this solution work with the Hercules Monochrome driver that displays a pop-up input dialogue like SCI does?

82

SCI Development Tools / Re: SCI Companion Pic Editor saving bug?

« on: April 29, 2021, 09:03:24 AM »

Ah sorry I misunderstood ad I skimmed (I skim way too much). Oh well it's done now.

83

SCI Development Tools / Re: SCI Companion Pic Editor saving bug?

« on: April 28, 2021, 05:38:40 PM »

Dang. So I might as well just redraw them from scratch then. But I still have the coordinates so if I redraw them in the same coordinates with the latest build it should be fine? Sweet. Thanks for helping to tackle this, guys! I really appreciate it.

I've tested this by redrawing all the commands and it did indeed work! Eureka!

84

SCI Development Tools / Re: SCI Companion Pic Editor saving bug?

« on: April 28, 2021, 08:52:36 AM »

I have the draw commands saved in a clipboard file because there's no other way for me to save it. No matter what build of Companion I paste them into, it looks fine until I save it to a file and open it (again, doesn't matter what build). And it's always corrupted.

I used InsideClipboard to save the data and load it again so I can paste it into the Pic editor because there was no other way for me to preserve the draw commands intact.

85

SCI Development Tools / Re: SCI Companion Pic Editor saving bug?

« on: April 27, 2021, 11:41:41 PM »

That meshes with my fruitless attempts to reproduce the bug. So any build from 2018 onwards should be good.

Then why does your recent Jan 19 2021 build with the Picture drawing GIF animation export feature still have the bug?

86

SCI Development Tools / Re: SCI Companion Pic Editor saving bug?

« on: April 24, 2021, 09:47:40 AM »

I'm using one of Kawa's builds from October 2018. Using a later build does the same thing though. And I recall this still being an issue way back before Companion 3 came out.

pic_hopefully.016 is the full corrupted image.
pic16_grass_test.016 was my attempt to save just the grass data with the random pattern pen tool. Same corruption.

87

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.

88

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: What are we working on?

« on: April 13, 2021, 07:17:46 PM »

Try fading to dark gray instead of outright black like the original does.

89

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: What are we working on?

« on: April 10, 2021, 11:01:33 PM »

Cooooool

90

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

« on: April 06, 2021, 02:34:30 PM »

Here's the VOD!