SCI studio VGA key to fix for QG4?

[bcrt2000]

I was thinking about this so i decided to come to the forums and ask about it... maybe the author of SCI studio could answer this... once SCI Studio VGA comes out, wouldnt it be possible to eliminate the timer bugs in QG4 by modifying the scripts?

[Chris Cromer]

Modifying scripts isn't possible with SCI Studio and it won't be possible with SCI Studio VGA either. I don't want to get into a heated discussion of why it should or shouldn't be able to so let's just drop it here.

[Rono]

Yeah, brt2000, I've already been in that movie
I asked the exact same question, a while ago... it didn't get much results, except for proving me wrong...
It just not possible to decode SCI scripts in a way that will yield any satisfactory results. If such a thing was possible, I would volenteer to help write it!
sorry...

[Brian Provinciano]

I've done things like mods for LSL1 VGA to bypass copyprotection. However, it involves reverse engineering the script which needs to be modified and possibly linked scripts, and then recreating them yourself. You can't simply use SCI Studio for this though. I needed to use custom tools which, since they aren't for game _creation_, haven't been touched up or released.

[Rono]

Hmm, bri, bypassing copyprotections is called "Cracking"... which is a bit different than fixing bugs... fixing bugs is a bit trickier than that, even for expirienced crackers...
BTW, bcrt2000, must chances are that the timer bugs you're refering too are not script related, but probably originate in the SCI interpreter... you could try your luck with one of the non-sierra interpreters, like FreeSCI, if you could wait for one that handles VGA SCI games...

[Nick Sonneveld]

y'sure?  I always assumed the timing was done in scripts.  ie: seeing how long a delay took during initialisation and doing some loops later on.

- Nick

[Brian Provinciano]

It's not ordinary cracking. Recreating the scripts to bypass the copy protection would be the same idea as recreating them to fix timer bugs. The timer bugs should all be script related and fixable. I've actually done a lot more than bypass the copy protection on LSL1 VGA. I recoded the entire class system and more. I plan on releasing a full VGA demo in the near future. I released some mostly complete ones many many months ago to some people, but they used some of the existing stuff like the original toolbar and stuff.