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Everything-Else / Re: A Curious Facebook Suggestion
« Last post by AGKorson on November 26, 2023, 11:07:54 AM »
Also the OBJECT file- how could I forget that? Beginning with version 2.411 (including all v3 interpreters), the OBJECT file is encrypted with 'Avis Durgan'.
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The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: GAL (KQ1) extractor and decompiler
« Last post by lskovlun on November 25, 2023, 06:16:55 PM »
So I might as well post my newest SYSDEFS and GAMEDEFS here...
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The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: Early versions of LSL2 pics!
« Last post by Kawa on November 25, 2023, 02:41:53 PM »
I freakin' love SV-CLI.
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The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: Early versions of LSL2 pics!
« Last post by lskovlun on November 25, 2023, 02:40:07 PM »
Unfortunately, many of the differences amount to filling/outlining of the control screen. I have a whole set of difference images now. The difference you mentioned for PIC.083/PIC.093 is interesting; it seems they must have renumbered that resource at some point, because the difference between early PIC.083 and final PIC.083 is precisely that. Another interesting one I thought was this. Larry is positioned differently, so you can see his bald spot. One file was truncated, and had to be rescued with a manually inserted termination marker.

BTW, I used this tool for the work.
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I also played around with importing pictures from the ADL games, the importing involving converting the ADL picture codes to the relevant AGI ones. The first issue there was that the picture resolution is different. Those games were originally for the Apple II, so the width of the picture was 140 rather than 160. The height of the pictures appear to be 160 rather than 168. So after importing the picture into PICEDIT, it is slightly smaller than the available AGI picture area.

The second issue is that the fill tool works differently. ADL pictures support 22 "colours", where a lot of those colours are actually made up from alternating two of the real colours. This is a bit like some of the fills that the early 16 colour SCI games had. The available ADL colours are listed on page 18 and 19 of the following manual for the Tablet Graphics tool that Ken Williams wrote in 1980:

https://www.mocagh.org/sierra/tabletgraphics.pdf

And the same list of colours appears within one of the screens of "The Artist" tool that I mentioned earlier in this topic. "The Artist" appears to be a continuation of Ken's tool, with Warren Schwader taking over the programming.

So my import had to pick an AGI colour, one of the 16, that was closest to each of the 22. It doesn't really work, because some of the ADL pictures use different shades of certain colours that end up being the same colour in the import. It looks ugly to be honest, so I'm not certain it will be useful.

Unless someone wanted to get a head start on a project to port one of the ADL games to AGI. Don't think it would be Time Zone though, as that game allegedly has around 1400 pictures!! Not sure how we'd support that in an AGI game that is limited to 256.
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I have attached some comparison pictures between a GAL imported picture (i.e. imported into the PICEDIT branch I was working on) and the corresponding AGI picture from the AGI version of the game. I have done this for PICTURE 6 and PICTURE 23. The GAL picture in each case is not exactly as it would have appeared in the original KQ booter versions but rather what it looks like when converted to the equivalent AGI picture codes.

The visual screens look almost the same. In the case of PICTURE 6 at the top, there are only a few pixels different, where there is a white pixel in the GAL picture that shouldn't be white. Now this obviously isn't what it looked like in the original booter version of the game, so it suggests that the GAL line or fill algorithm is slightly different. When comparing the picture commands for the GAL vs AGI versions, the AGI version usually has additional fill commands to fill in these white pixels that shouldn't be there. This suggests that the pictures were converted to the AGI format and then touched up afterwards. You'll notice that they missed one pixel in the upper middle part of the picture though, as it is still white in the AGI version.

The visual screen for PICTURE 23 really does look identical. The GAL picture on the right is how it appears in my PICEDIT app after being imported, so the end result, at least as far as the visual screen goes, appears to be identical in this case.

Where things get very different though is in the priority screens. For starters, the most distant priority colour, i.e. the one at the back, is blue in the case of GAL but red in the case of AGI. The red, cyan and green priority colours in GAL are just normal priority band colours and don't appear to have special meaning.

You'll also notice that black is used for water in the GAL picture but cyan is used in AGI.

Another thing that is fairly obvious is that the priority band division must be different, since the same objects, e.g. the trees, log, rock, are using different priority colours despite being placed in exactly the same part of the screen. This isn't surprising, given that red, cyan and green are used as normal priority colours, so there are more colours to cover the screen.

The other big difference is that the GAL picture doesn't have any "block" control lines drawn. I have seen in some of the GAL pictures that they use the white colour as a block line, in the places where an AGI picture might use the black control line. This seems to be used quite rarely though, and it makes me think that the block control lines must be placed into the picture using a different mechanism, and not generally part of the picture itself. But, as I say, some pictures do use white for a block line, meaning that white must have that meaning in GAL, i.e. the same meaning as blank in AGI.

I think that covers all the obvious differences. It is due to these priority screen differences that a tool like PICEDIT or WinAGI can't really support importing a GAL picture. It could import the visual screen and get very close, but the imported priority screen would not be compatible with AGI v1/2/3. I wondered whether the priority colours could be changed on import, but I think that would get very tricky to get right, since the tool would be making guesses about whether the base of the object is at ground level or not. You'll notice from the PICTURE 23 example that in one case, there is an object that is light green in the GAL picture but split between two different colours in the AGI picture (light cyan and light red). This shows that when they were touching up the converted image for the AGI version of KQ1, they must have decided that they needed to change the priority colour partway up that object. Not sure why yet, but it does suggest a manual conversion of the priority screen rather than automated. Maybe they automated it to some degree, but as I say, it would be difficult to get right.

And the absence of the control lines would certainly be an issue as well.
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The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: Early versions of LSL2 pics!
« Last post by Kawa on November 25, 2023, 10:32:29 AM »
Nice find. That it was misplaced explains why I didn't find it two years ago when I went through unused assets in LSL2 and 3.

Here's my findings, minus yours:
Code: [Select]
view.000 A chunk of wall with "yo is here muther fucker" on it. ID implies it's an item.
view.199 A closeup on a jowblob.
view.256 A kid skateboarding and wiping out. Also a jet plane for some reason. ID places him in LA.
view.317 The lady from the title screen (809 vTitleHenchette) but fully lit and animated. ID places her on the ship.
view.805 Larry getting a jowblob from Kalalau?
view.814 Larry working on a computer.
view.900 Some sort of timed device.
view.901-904 Various rectangles of different colors, cycling through the entire CGA palette.
view.905 A flame and... something.
view.906 Someone opening a window and throwing up?
view.998 A black rectangle.
view.999 System UI view intended for message dialogue boxes.

pic.083 Dr. Nonookee's throme room (093) but with different materials.
pic.175 Kalalau's closeup (099) but with a different background and 200% more obnoxious eye makeup.
pic.700 The copy protection (010) but in gray. The photos are black.
pic.901 Possibly a boss key thing.

sound.018 Short drum riff?
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The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Early versions of LSL2 pics!
« Last post by lskovlun 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:
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Everything-Else / Re: A Curious Facebook Suggestion
« Last post by AGKorson on November 24, 2023, 09:50:25 PM »
Compression in AGI v3 came in two flavors, a version of LZW for logics, sounds and views, and a special compression (that converted 8 bit color values into 4 bit nibbles[ since only 4 bits are used to define colors]).  AGI v3 can read both compressed and uncompressed resources, as determined by the header (if uncompressed file size in header was equal to compressed size, AGI assumes no compression). When loading a logic, if the resource is compressed, AGI assumes the message section is NOT encrypted. If the logic is NOT compressed, then the same decryption as in v2 (using Avis Durgan) is applied.
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Everything-Else / Re: A Curious Facebook Suggestion
« Last post by Kawa on November 24, 2023, 05:31:07 PM »
There's an "Avis Durgan" literal in AGIDATA.OVL in my copies of KQ4 and MH1+2 for what it's worth :shrug:
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