The quest for custom SCI1 picture resources

[stateofpsychosis]

oh really?

wow, i didn't expect sq2 to be AGI since it's text input and from the 80's

are you sure you're not talking about the remake?

I mean the original

if it was AGI i'm super surprised

[Collector]

AGI is the older engine that SCI replaced. It was Sierra's main development engine from the original King's Quest to the Manhunter games. As primitive as it seems now, it was ground breaking at the time. IBM commissioned the game from Sierra to showcase the expanded capabilities of their new PCjr. It had a parser interface and with a PCjr or Tandy it had a three voice with noise channel sound capabilities. From the very start AGI was designed to be portable and many AGI games were made available for other platforms. Sierra took advantage of any capabilities that those other platforms had, so Apple games had better music.

King's Quest 4 was the first SCI game and Sierra co-developed the game in both AGI and SCI. SCI was much more advanced than AGI with EGA graphics and full soundcard support.

For a more complete discussion on the differences between AGI and SCI see this thread: http://sierrahelp.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3965

You can see a list of the Si8erra AGI games here: http://agiwiki.sierrahelp.com/index.php?title=Sierra_Game_List

You can see a list of the Sierra SCI games here: http://sciwiki.sierrahelp.com/index.php?title=Sierra_Game_List

[stateofpsychosis]

ohhh... lol
nm I'm just being a ditz

I was thinking about AGS when you said AGI lol

[MusicallyInspired]

So I just realized that the SCI Studio VGA's SCI1 Pic editor has greyed out buttons for importing bitmaps and setting custom priority line positions (as well as rectangle and ellipse tools). I don't know how I missed this. None of them really work, though. I tried making a test build after enabling the buttons but the import function is seriously messed up. It puts a bunch of garbage on the picture instead of the actual image. I don't know if it's actually trying to draw it (SCI Companion style) or put the actual bitmap into the picture SCI1 style. I'm investigating what pushing this Import Bitmap window actually does and why it's screwing up....

I just wish I knew more about this. I notice that a few of the functions in Studio VGA fall back to SCI0 defaults even though there are SCI1 functions present. This could just be a matter of pointing events to the right function or adding a conditional statement somewhere in the source. Or it could be as easy as adding a simple flag or something somewhere. BC++ has a function to display "forms" of windows using its libraries that generate Windows(TM)-style...er...windows. Along with menus, tooltips, buttons, etc. You can look at all the buttons, edit their sizes, what they display, etc it's all very intuitive and point & click and you can go to the source for the function call that happens when a certain event takes place (like clicking on a button). This is all very interesting, I just wish I knew more about BC++.

[MusicallyInspired]

Ok, I sort of got it working. I successfully imported a bitmap with the picture editor, but it created a series of strange drawing commands instead of the EXT: Draw Bitmap command that you see when you open a previously created SCI1 pic resource. However, the palette was all wrong. There doesn't seem to be a way to edit the palette of a SCI1 picture resource (the palette tools just use the default SCI0 palette system, more that Brian's meant to complete somehow obviously). Also, the program crashed when I tried to look at the list of draw commands. I haven't tried saving yet.

Step by step...

[MusicallyInspired]

My attempts to save a customized Pic resource have failed (unsurprisingly). According to SCI Studio, I can successfully "save" a Picture resource (though the colours are all messed up), but each time I try to open it again the colours get a different mixture of "messed up". One of two possibilities, actually. So the only real thing stopping this up is proper palette support.

Then again, I tried to use my custom Pic resource in a game and the game would simply freeze (music, cursor, everything) once it got to that resource. SCI Viewer doesn't even recognize the format. It seems to understand that it's a Pic resource (probably from the extension? Or maybe the header) but it doesn't display an image. I'm combing through my new customized Pic resource now with a hex editor noting differences with official resources to see what I can see.

[Collector]

Perhaps some of the vector stuff was intended to have it be able to work with both SCI0 and SCI1 games, though most likely leftover from the previous version of Studio. Have you determined the status of the compiler?

[MusicallyInspired]

I was wondering that myself. Yet it doesn't work in EGA either. Probably just straight up unfinished all around.

You mean the Script compiler? Haven't looked at it yet, no.

[Aftertaste]

I am actually working on this, https://code.google.com/p/sci-palette-convertor/ the first step is to get the palette's down, pretty sure i am close, this should convert any palette FotoSCIhop extracts, and sv.exe extracts, if anyone has a palette file this will not load, please send it to me.

Erp, this program converts the *.pal files FotoSCIhop extracts from *.p56 and *.v56 into a Microsoft RIFF palette that you can use in corel to alter the *.v56 and *p56 files with FotoSCIhop.

[MusicallyInspired]

I'm confused. Where's the download?

[Collector]

It is just the code. You either need to download each file or use SVN to create a local copy. If you don't have VS installed let me know and I can give you a binary. Keep in mind that at this point it is only the beginning of an SCI library.