Possible new version of SCI Companion

[Collector]

Should be able to get that effect with use of a mask.

[MusicallyInspired]

Ah thank you!

[lskovlun]

Yeah, you enter them manually. I had to guess until I found the correct values. Though, if you know the exact value of the beginning of each row of colours it would be easier, plus you can see easily which sequence of colour gradients are meant to be cycled. That would suggest to me that that information is not embedded in the palette file but manually set in the scripts somehow?

Indeed. These are kernel calls that the scripts call (in a doit method of a view or a room) manually on each cycle. There is also a kernel call that loads an entirely new palette.

EDIT: Just searching through SQ5's resources, I noticed that there are a couple of all white palettes (except for the 0 and 255 entries which are black). Perhaps the fade to black/white transitions are done by gradually fading the colour values of one palette to their counterpart values in another palette.

This is a new feature in SCI 1.1, unfortunately (troflip isn't targeting that as I understand it?). Another new feature in SCI1.1 is that palette resources can contain smaller ranges of colors; in SCI1 all palettes contain 256 colors. The new format is much easier to work with from a collaboration point of view (and also coding). I guess SV just shows the resource as if it contained all the colors. Yes, and color 0 and 255 have special status in SCI.

[troflip]

This is a new feature in SCI 1.1, unfortunately (troflip isn't targeting that as I understand it?).

I plan to, but I'm focusing on SCI1.0 first, I guess?

This shows the feature set as it is currently:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11vR1Yu_go9ttglAxQdnfw4BWhSdg1Z-fZLgiJT_-9L4/edit?usp=sharing

Another new feature in SCI1.1 is that palette resources can contain smaller ranges of colors; in SCI1 all palettes contain 256 colors. The new format is much easier to work with from a collaboration point of view (and also coding). I guess SV just shows the resource as if it contained all the colors. Yes, and color 0 and 255 have special status in SCI.

Isn't this really just a difference in the format in which is it saved, to save some space? SCI1 always saves 256 colors, but some of them are marked with '0' in the 4 unused byte of the color entry, indicating they are unused. Whereas SCI1.1 resource have the ability to save a range of palette colors if the used entries are contiguous. Functionally it seems identical, just a more efficient storage format.

What special status do 0 and 255 have? 0 is always black, and 255 is always white?

[MusicallyInspired]

255 is definitely not always white. Half the palettes in SQ5 have 255 as black. Not sure why, though.

[troflip]

255 is definitely not always white. Half the palettes in SQ5 have 255 as black. Not sure why, though.

Are you using SCI Viewer? It shows many of them as black, but they are marked as "unused" in the actual palette. SCI Companion will show which ones are used vs unused (I think SCI Studio VGA showed this too). I can't find any which are used and not white for index 255.

[MusicallyInspired]

Ah. No, SCI Viewer doesn't show which are used and which aren't. But you're probably right on. Maybe it's something old used for the black and white cursors? I do recall the 3-colour cursors (black, white, and grey) from some SCI1 games would quickly fade the grey parts to black and back and forth. Probably the work of palette transitioning, while the white portions stay white (colour 255)? Maybe they're just plain used by the interpreter for debug windows and such. Text, windows, etc. I don't know.

[troflip]

Looks like 255 is supposed to be transparent. By default, that will be white. But if a pic is drawn on top of another pic, the parts with 255 show through (judging from pic 175, which I think goes on top of pic 75)

[MusicallyInspired]

Ah that makes sense.

[JRedant]

I'm just recalling my New Years Resolution of using SCI on my resume to help land a job.

I am looking forward to a working version of this!

[troflip]

I finally got around to putting the project (Visual Studio 2013) on github, here is the link:

https://github.com/icefallgames/SCICompanion

I haven't yet checked if I can sync and build from another machine (i.e. there might be files missing), but the source code is all there.

Things are still in a very beta phase, of course. I'll probably be submitted changes every few days.

[MusicallyInspired]

[Collector]

It is not MFC dependent is it?

[troflip]

It is, it's always used MFC for the UI

[Collector]

The reason that I asked is that the use of MFC rules out the use of the Express version of VS.