31
AGI Development Tools / Re: The Plot [Pen Style] Thickens
« Last post by Kawa on April 03, 2026, 03:23:57 AM »Well, I guess I gotta eat my words now.
*nom*
*nom*
Recent Posts
32
AGI Development Tools / Re: The Plot [Pen Style] Thickens
« Last post by lskovlun on April 02, 2026, 06:25:38 PM »The date came and went.
33
AGI Development Tools / Re: The Plot [Pen Style] Thickens
« Last post by Kawa on March 26, 2026, 04:48:09 AM »One week later, there are multiple pen tables in ScummVM. Mark my words.
*My beleaguered manservant Mark hands me my dictionary*
*My beleaguered manservant Mark hands me my dictionary*
34
AGI Development Tools / Re: The Plot [Pen Style] Thickens
« Last post by lskovlun on March 25, 2026, 08:48:23 PM »I think there would be more than one table in ScummVM if this had a practical impact (sluicebox does lurk here, he sent me fan mail once). So no worries, is my take.
35
AGI Development Tools / Re: The Plot [Pen Style] Thickens
« Last post by Kawa on March 25, 2026, 08:56:43 AM »That's quite a find. Congratulations!
36
The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: Playing around with AI Image Conversion on Sierra titles
« Last post by Kawa on March 25, 2026, 08:53:19 AM »Your idea sounds pretty good, but I'd say if AI's involvement is that small you might as well leave those tweaks and checks to the user. I figure that could also help not make everyone's stuff look the same (1).
As for having the time and tools... FotoSketcher gives pretty good painterly results for free and has custom preset support. Color grading and other content tweaks can be done in anything from Paint.net to Photopea. It takes me more time to set up the original scenes and turn them into SCI backgrounds with priority screens and polygons, than it does to paintify them.
(1) Consider how you can pick out AI artwork so easily. Or the responses to DLSS5.
(2) haha you can type superscript digits all you want and they work in the preview but once they're stored... I hate this board's database settings I truly do XD
As for having the time and tools... FotoSketcher gives pretty good painterly results for free and has custom preset support. Color grading and other content tweaks can be done in anything from Paint.net to Photopea. It takes me more time to set up the original scenes and turn them into SCI backgrounds with priority screens and polygons, than it does to paintify them.
(1) Consider how you can pick out AI artwork so easily. Or the responses to DLSS5.
(2) haha you can type superscript digits all you want and they work in the preview but once they're stored... I hate this board's database settings I truly do XD
37
AGI Development Tools / The Plot [Pen Style] Thickens
« Last post by AGKorson on March 25, 2026, 03:18:30 AM »I'm almost ready to release the Beta version of WinAGI 3.0. Just a bit more code clean up and a few more tweaks on the Help file.
As part of working on the Help file, I've gone back to the decompiled code to make sure I have the most accurate information possible on AGI's resources, commands, and functions. I've discovered quite a few more bugs (mostly only noticeable in specific edge cases). But the one that really surprised me the most was the evolution of the Plot Styles.
It's well documented that the Plot command (0xFA) for pictures was added in version 2.411. In that initial version, the Plot Style command (0xF9) was ignored; using it in that version did nothing, and all plot commands drew as a single pixel.
In version 2.425, Sierra added support for the Plot Style command. But it came with three bugs:
In version 2.426 the pen reset bug was fixed, and the circle masks were refactored, but the circle 1 brush was still missing data. This affected the shape of circle 1.
In version 2.435, the brush placement error was fixed, but the circle 1 bug remained.
The circle 1 bug was fixed in version 2.439. The rest of the version 2 AGI releases all used the correct brush size and shape.
In version 3.002.086, the circle 1 brush data was changed again, but it was done incorrectly, resulting in the brush shape once again being incorrect.
The incorrect circle 1 brush remained the same for all version 3 releases.
It was a big surprise for me when I discovered all this- I had always assumed there was just one version of the plot brushes. But since most fan games probably are only ever run on modern interpreters (or are using the more common late v2 interpreters when using DOSBox) I guess it's not too surprising that this has not been noticed before.
I am now very curious to know if there are any older Sierra games that used the plot commands in the versions with different brushes; are there some that are being drawn incorrectly in modern interpreters when compared to their original release? I'm guessing there aren't that many Sierra games released that used the affected plot commands often enough for the error to be noticed.
Regardless, I do plan on adding the option to use the version-correct brush sizes when drawing and displaying pictures in WinAGI. It'll give a true representation of what pictures would look like if they are used in the original Sierra AGI version they are targeting.
As part of working on the Help file, I've gone back to the decompiled code to make sure I have the most accurate information possible on AGI's resources, commands, and functions. I've discovered quite a few more bugs (mostly only noticeable in specific edge cases). But the one that really surprised me the most was the evolution of the Plot Styles.
It's well documented that the Plot command (0xFA) for pictures was added in version 2.411. In that initial version, the Plot Style command (0xF9) was ignored; using it in that version did nothing, and all plot commands drew as a single pixel.
In version 2.425, Sierra added support for the Plot Style command. But it came with three bugs:
- The pen was not reset before drawing a picture; this meant that if another picture was drawn later, the starting pen would be the last value from the previous picture, not the default of solid circle of size zero.
- The algorithm to calculate the brush placement had an error which resulted in the larger brushes being off-center.
- The mask data for brush size 1 was missing the bottom row of data, so circle brush size 1 was not drawn correctly.
In version 2.426 the pen reset bug was fixed, and the circle masks were refactored, but the circle 1 brush was still missing data. This affected the shape of circle 1.
In version 2.435, the brush placement error was fixed, but the circle 1 bug remained.
The circle 1 bug was fixed in version 2.439. The rest of the version 2 AGI releases all used the correct brush size and shape.
In version 3.002.086, the circle 1 brush data was changed again, but it was done incorrectly, resulting in the brush shape once again being incorrect.
The incorrect circle 1 brush remained the same for all version 3 releases.
It was a big surprise for me when I discovered all this- I had always assumed there was just one version of the plot brushes. But since most fan games probably are only ever run on modern interpreters (or are using the more common late v2 interpreters when using DOSBox) I guess it's not too surprising that this has not been noticed before.
I am now very curious to know if there are any older Sierra games that used the plot commands in the versions with different brushes; are there some that are being drawn incorrectly in modern interpreters when compared to their original release? I'm guessing there aren't that many Sierra games released that used the affected plot commands often enough for the error to be noticed.
Regardless, I do plan on adding the option to use the version-correct brush sizes when drawing and displaying pictures in WinAGI. It'll give a true representation of what pictures would look like if they are used in the original Sierra AGI version they are targeting.
38
The Games and other Sierra Adventure stuff / Re: Playing around with AI Image Conversion on Sierra titles
« Last post by pmkelly on March 24, 2026, 11:31:36 PM »I'd actually be interested in seeing how things go from the other way around - e.g. taking a photo of a real location and then generating a 256-color or 16-color image for use as a background in a game, with adjustments made as necessary to ensure things like walk paths and item hotspots are of a suitable size. Could be very useful for making fan games, replicating the style & charm of the originals. And I don't expect it would be too technically difficult; AI's involvement would be minimal here, basically just deciding what tweaks to make to the downsampled image, and ensuring stylistic consistency between all the images in an area/game.
Also FWIW I agree with Collector's point about AI & art for existing pieces, though I think these tools are promising for new games, esp. fan stuff like AGI/SCI where most of us simply don't have access to the time/resources/talent required to make a high quality game all by ourselves.
Also FWIW I agree with Collector's point about AI & art for existing pieces, though I think these tools are promising for new games, esp. fan stuff like AGI/SCI where most of us simply don't have access to the time/resources/talent required to make a high quality game all by ourselves.
39
SCI Development Tools / Re: Script issues with QFG1VGA
« Last post by Leshy on February 28, 2026, 03:16:43 PM »Edit: Yup, it's me, I'm the idiot.
I may have just tracked down the reason EricOakford's decompiled scripts were not working correctly for me. In the folder where I installed them, I forgot to delete the .SCR (and .HEP) files from the default install. So the game's default patch files were overriding the newly-compiled scripts and of course not playing nice.
I realised that it was completely strange that the game would crash on the 'purchase' action for some vendors, but not for others. That meant the source of the crash couldn't be on some shared function, there had to be something affecting specifically these rooms' scripts and... oh God don't tell me I forgot the patch files... I forgot the patch files. Yup, works now.
Don't mind me, I'll be having the Dragon's Breath now.
(On the upside, chances of a Dutch translation have increased.)
I may have just tracked down the reason EricOakford's decompiled scripts were not working correctly for me. In the folder where I installed them, I forgot to delete the .SCR (and .HEP) files from the default install. So the game's default patch files were overriding the newly-compiled scripts and of course not playing nice.
I realised that it was completely strange that the game would crash on the 'purchase' action for some vendors, but not for others. That meant the source of the crash couldn't be on some shared function, there had to be something affecting specifically these rooms' scripts and... oh God don't tell me I forgot the patch files... I forgot the patch files. Yup, works now.
Don't mind me, I'll be having the Dragon's Breath now.
(On the upside, chances of a Dutch translation have increased.)
40
SCI Development Tools / Re: SCI01 Template Game
« Last post by robbo007 on February 27, 2026, 01:59:11 PM »Hi,
So I've been testing the SCI01 template EGA and the VGA one. I've found some issues. I'm Not sure if this is normal behaviour or I need to configure SC a little more?
1. When creating a new room from the menu in SCI Companion 3.2.4 (Kawa under Windows 10) it seems to use the SCI0 naming convention like gEgo, instance Rm and gXXXXXX etc.
2. When creating a new room its auto added to the game.ini but under the scripts explorer menu its not shown. Its only shown under the Scripts quick links. (The VGA SCI01 template does not have this issue)
3. When converting the template not use patch files, if I delete individual resource files like font.001 from the root game directory the template does not work. (The VGA SCI01 template does not have this issue)
4. When ever creating a new room these Warning appear:
Thanks,
So I've been testing the SCI01 template EGA and the VGA one. I've found some issues. I'm Not sure if this is normal behaviour or I need to configure SC a little more?
1. When creating a new room from the menu in SCI Companion 3.2.4 (Kawa under Windows 10) it seems to use the SCI0 naming convention like gEgo, instance Rm and gXXXXXX etc.
2. When creating a new room its auto added to the game.ini but under the scripts explorer menu its not shown. Its only shown under the Scripts quick links. (The VGA SCI01 template does not have this issue)
3. When converting the template not use patch files, if I delete individual resource files like font.001 from the root game directory the template does not work. (The VGA SCI01 template does not have this issue)
4. When ever creating a new room these Warning appear:
Code: [Select]
Warning: (sci2.sh) Duplicate defines: 'TRUE' Line: 4, col: 12
Warning: (sci2.sh) Duplicate defines: 'FALSE' Line: 5, col: 13
Warning: (system.sh) Duplicate defines: 'NULL' Line: 343, col: 12
Warning: (system.sh) Duplicate defines: 'notUpd' Line: 366, col: 14
Warning: (system.sh) Duplicate defines: 'fixPriOn' Line: 368, col: 16
Thanks,
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