Messages

1

SCI Development Tools / Re: Sounder 0.5 - with many improvements

« on: April 20, 2023, 06:34:30 AM »

I have started looking at your feature request.
It's interesting to note that GM also has SysEx'es.
See https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm/blob/master/engines/sci/sound/drivers/midi.cpp#L802 (this function is called if using GM patch file).
I run it with debugger, for SQ6 (using GM) and the first MIDI command in the patch file is indeed a SysEx.

I assume that GM's SysEx'es are also interesting to keep, right?
Or only the MT32 SysEx'es are interesting?
Or maybe worse - make it configurable? (I feel that Sounder already has too many flags...)

2

SCI Development Tools / Dynamix resources?

« on: September 16, 2022, 02:24:58 AM »

Hi.
Hope it's on topic...

Are there any tools for Dynamix games resources hacking?
Any documentation?
Any interesting info?

3

SCI Development Tools / Re: Sounder 0.5 - with many improvements

« on: September 15, 2022, 03:39:43 PM »

Very nice work. I've said so elsewhere, but I'll say it again.

Is it possible for Dynamix games to be supported? They mostly use LZW compression in resources, and then SND file type, same as Sierra's (more or less).

Thanks!
I'm glad to hear that it's useful.

Regarding Dynamix games - well, if it's more or less like Sierra's .snd format, I'm willing to support it.

But I will need more information.
How do I extract the sound resources, of Willy Beamish, for example?
Can you refer me to some source describing its sound resources?
Document, or even a code.
Or maybe you can write the differences?

4

SCI Development Tools / Re: Sounder 0.5 - with many improvements

« on: September 06, 2022, 05:16:21 AM »

Created a stub page on the Wiki for it. You can fill in and update it as necessary.

http://sciwiki.sierrahelp.com//index.php?title=Sounder

Thanks, I've filled that page.

Also, I've issued version 0.5.1 with a minor bug fix.

5

Forum Support and Suggestions / Seeing send PMs?

« on: August 31, 2022, 04:31:02 PM »

I have sent a few personal messages - in the past, and recently.
But when I go to "Home »Community »Personal Messages »Sent Items" it says "No messages..."

Can something be done to show those messages? Maybe some configuration change?
If my old messages cannot be saved, at least I would like to see my new sent messages in the future.

6

The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: Playing around with AI Image Conversion on Sierra titles

« on: August 31, 2022, 04:26:39 PM »

That looks amazing!

Can you further explain how did you do that?

What are your next plans?

7

SCI Development Tools / Re: "Sounder" tool - alpha version is ready

« on: August 29, 2022, 06:31:28 PM »

You might want to make an entry on the Wiki. I can make a stub page that you can flesh out.

Good idea. Yes, please create that stub page.

8

SCI Development Tools / Sounder 0.5 - with many improvements

« on: August 29, 2022, 07:00:33 AM »

Hi.
Sounder version 0.5 is available. It includes many new features, improvements, and bug fixes.
Windows installer can be downloaded from: https://github.com/adventurebrew/re-quest/releases/latest/download/Sounder.Installer.exe
Or, if you prefer the Python source: https://github.com/adventurebrew/re-quest/tree/master/tools/sci/sounder

Read the User Guide (from the Help menu) for the detailed usage instructions.

Note
The Sounder source link has been changed from previous posts.

9

SCI Development Tools / Re: "Sounder" tool - alpha version is ready

« on: August 29, 2022, 07:00:06 AM »

404 from your link, but I found it on your repo.

Yeah, you're right. I've meanwhile moved all Sounder stuff to its own directory. Glad you found it anyway

10

AGI Development Tools / Re: AGI extended character support

« on: August 20, 2022, 06:04:31 PM »

When I wrote it, I assumed that this script will be used only for Hebrew.
Therefore that assertion.
You can locally delete from line 40 to line 50.
All that block tries to solve a problem that I think is irrelevant for French.

Later, I should add this behavior as optional, depending on user's argument, but don't wait for me...

Let's see if that improves the situation.

Also, regarding the codepage conersion, well, that should be addressed. I'm not sure what codepage 435 and 858 are.
However, note that you should decide what codepage you want to use. Use whatever is easier for you.
As you can see from the comment in keyboard.cpp, I decided to use win1255 for Hebrew. As its name implies, it didn't even exist at the Dos era, it was invented later.

Anyway, the conersion there is from Unicode to the desired codepage. I'd recommend adding breakpoints and verify the behavior there with the debugger.

11

SCI Development Tools / Re: "Sounder" tool - alpha version is ready

« on: August 05, 2022, 11:36:55 AM »

Gladly:
https://github.com/adventurebrew/re-quest/blob/master/tools/sci/sounder.nsi

12

SCI Development Tools / Re: Convert SCI0 vocab to SCI1 vocab?

« on: August 05, 2022, 02:59:33 AM »

Nice. Having KQ4 converted to SCI01 would of course be of great help for VGA-ifing the game. Both sounds and vocab is a known issue for me. For Vocab I just used the file from the hacked Season Professional and added words manually to get the game to compile. That did not work to well. There is a lot of "bad said spec" messsages. For sounds I found one tool in this forum for converting, but it did not work out to well. I have attached the game, go to the fishermans pier, to hear a pretty bad version of his tune.

What is that tool you found in this forum? Is it 'Sounder'?
If so, I'd like to get (but probably on other thread, it's a little bit off topic here...) more details, in order to fix it.

EDIT
====
Also, please download an updated release: https://github.com/adventurebrew/re-quest/releases/latest/download/Sounder.Installer.exe

13

SCI Development Tools / Re: "Sounder" tool - alpha version is ready

« on: August 05, 2022, 02:54:09 AM »

1. I have issued a new release now, Eric, please try it. It has some more fixes and improvements.

2.

I noticed that you have an installer. I thought it was just a Python script. Is the installer a Python installer?

From the end user's perspective, 'Sounder' is a regular Windows program - it's installed with a regular installer, "next, next...", and then there's an icon in the desktop. When clicked, a window is opened and everything is done from there.

Behind the scenes, it's indeed a Python script. But it's packed with a tool called PyInstaller (problematic name - it has nothing to do with Windows installers, I'd called it 'PyCompiler', or 'PyPacker', if they asked me) which "hides" the Python stuff from the user, and creates an .exe file which loads everything.
In order to create a regular Windows installer (that installs the output of PyInstaller to the user's machine) I used NSIS.

If you're interested, that's my script that runs all this stuff: https://github.com/adventurebrew/re-quest/blob/master/tools/sci/compile.bat

14

SCI Development Tools / Re: "Sounder" tool - alpha version is ready

« on: August 04, 2022, 06:41:52 AM »

Great! Now I've just found that the sounds converted from SCI0 to SCI1 are not converted right, leading to notes playing in the wrong place!

To see what I'm talking about, I've put here a little program that tests SCI1 sounds. The menu has an option to play a sound, and you can input the resource number you want to play. I've included three sounds as an example. Please excuse the wrong instruments; that's just because the patch files are from the INN demo (at which point General MIDI was the standard).

I fixed few things.
Please take the updated release from the same link (https://github.com/adventurebrew/re-quest/releases/latest/download/Sounder.Installer.exe)

It still sounds a little bit weird in your program - maybe it's due to the patch files?

In sv.exe it sounds well. I checked in SCICompanion - it was very confusing - everything seemed messed up, and it didn't play. But then I realized that it recognized the game as SCI0 (and the sounds were saved as SCI1). When I forced it to change 'Sound format' to SCI1, it played fine.

So, maybe something is wrong with the test program? It seems to be based on SCI0 templates instead of SCI1.
Then I took sound.100 from SQ6 and tried to play it with sci1_sound_test, and it also didn't play well.

Lastly, just for fun, I tried taking sound files from SQ3 and play this sci1_sound_test, and it just got stuck.

15

SCI Development Tools / Re: "Sounder" tool - alpha version is ready

« on: August 03, 2022, 10:52:47 AM »

Okay, so I've tested it with LSL2 (1.002). The music tracks (those in the 100 range) all converted from SCI0 to SCI1 without error. However, some of the sounds would not convert.
For example: sound.005...

Code: [Select]

C:\SCICompanion\Sierra\LSL2\original_sounds\sound.005 SCI0
Device FB_01 uses [{'ch': 1, 'voices': 8}]
Device ADLIB uses [{'ch': 1, 'voices': 8}]
Device PC_JR uses [{'ch': 1, 'voices': 8}]
Device SPEAKER uses [{'ch': 1, 'voices': 8}]
Device MT_32 uses [{'ch': 2, 'voices': 0}]
Midi length: 1.9 seconds
SAVE SCI1: Ignoring device FB_01, doesn't have a SCI1 counterpart
SAVE SCI1+: Adding GM device, as duplication of MT-32
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "sounder.py", line 873, in <module>
  File "gooey\python_bindings\gooey_decorator.py", line 134, in <lambda>
  File "sounder.py", line 860, in main
  File "sounder.py", line 617, in save_sci1
KeyError: 1
[12824] Failed to execute script 'sounder' due to unhandled exception!

Sounds 7 and 12 have the same issue.

And I tested the 1988 Christmas Card, for converting from early SCI0 to newer SCI0...

Code: [Select]

C:\SCICompanion\Sierra\demos\88xmas\original_sounds\sound.001 SCI0_EARLY
Device PC_JR uses [{'ch': 1, 'voices': 0}, {'ch': 11, 'voices': 0}, {'ch': 12, 'voices': 0}]
Device SPEAKER uses [{'ch': 1, 'voices': 0}]
Device MT_32 uses [{'ch': 1, 'voices': 0}, {'ch': 2, 'voices': 1}, {'ch': 3, 'voices': 1}, {'ch': 4, 'voices': 6}, {'ch': 10, 'voices': 0}, {'ch': 11, 'voices': 0}, {'ch': 12, 'voices': 0}]
Device ADLIB uses [{'ch': 2, 'voices': 1}, {'ch': 3, 'voices': 1}, {'ch': 4, 'voices': 6}]
Device CONTROL_CHANNEL uses [{'ch': 10, 'voices': 0}]
Midi length: 67.0 seconds
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "sounder.py", line 873, in <module>
  File "gooey\python_bindings\gooey_decorator.py", line 134, in <lambda>
  File "sounder.py", line 857, in main
  File "sounder.py", line 450, in save_sci0
  File "sounder.py", line 450, in <listcomp>
TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for -: 'dict' and 'int'
[4636] Failed to execute script 'sounder' due to unhandled exception!

None of the sounds would convert at all. However, all of them do convert to SCI1.

Then tested KQ4, converting the SCI0 sounds to SCI1...

Code: [Select]

C:\SCICompanion\Sierra\KQ4\original_sounds\sound.007 SCI0
Device PC_JR uses [{'ch': 1, 'voices': 0}, {'ch': 11, 'voices': 0}, {'ch': 12, 'voices': 0}]
Device SPEAKER uses [{'ch': 1, 'voices': 0}]
Device MT_32 uses [{'ch': 2, 'voices': 8}]
Device FB_01 uses [{'ch': 2, 'voices': 8}]
Device ADLIB uses [{'ch': 2, 'voices': 8}]
Midi length: 6.6 seconds
SAVE SCI1: Ignoring device FB_01, doesn't have a SCI1 counterpart
SAVE SCI1+: Adding GM device, as duplication of MT-32
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "sounder.py", line 873, in <module>
  File "gooey\python_bindings\gooey_decorator.py", line 134, in <lambda>
  File "sounder.py", line 860, in main
  File "sounder.py", line 617, in save_sci1
KeyError: 10
[15684] Failed to execute script 'sounder' due to unhandled exception!

Sounds 12, 14, 20, 22, 34, 36, 38, 47, 50, 57, 64, 104, and 203 have similar issues.

Thanks for the detailed report!
I don't have LSL2, but thanks to your finding I've done several fixes, I assume they will help there as well.

Permanent link to the latest release: https://github.com/adventurebrew/re-quest/releases/latest/download/Sounder.Installer.exe

It also contains:

• Internal converter, so digital sample can be in any file (even video - it will just take the audio stream)
• The "Play device" selection is updated to show only the relevant devices every time "input files" or "input version" are changed