SCI mysteries

[troflip]

Another mystery: In SQ5's findTalker in Main.sc, for the narrator case we have:

Code: [Select]

                (case 99
                    (if (== gModNum 666)
                        ScriptID(666 1)
                    )(else
                        gSQ5Narrator
                    )
                )

So if we're in room 666, then it uses export 1 from that room, instead of the narrator. There is no room 666 that shipped with the game though...

[MusicallyInspired]

Here's an SCI mystery that nobody ever seems to give thought to, myself included...

Just WHO in the world WAS that guy who created SCI Viewer? He popped up on the Janitorial Times (before the great resurgence), threw this tool at us, made a couple adjustments, completely disappeared, and then returned years later to tell us that the source was lost when inquiring minds were wondering about it before vanishing again. There's no name anywhere. Not in the program or the forum or anything. No way to contact him. His forum name was "sci viewer" or something simple like that. And all this time he hasn't bothered to come forward to contribute anything since, or even let us know why he bothered in the first place, or to take credit and let us thank him for his great efforts. Seriously, in one fell swoop he comes out of nowhere, creates a tool that delves into pretty much EVERY worthwhile Sierra game from AGI and beyond all in a much faster way than anybody else ever did and in a more effective way than any other tool made has, and then disappears off the face of the earth. I take it for granted but it has provided us with so much information and fun. I'm really curious about who this person was.

The original thread on the JT: http://www.spacequest.net/index.php/topic/145-sci-resource-viewer-beta-testers-wanted/?hl=viewer

[lance.ewing]

I must say that I'm really impressed with that tool. It seems to be able to load just about any SCI game that is out there. I don't know who created it, but I had thought that that was because I wasn't around at the time that it was released. I had assumed that you all knew who had created it. If it is none of you, then I have no idea.

[troflip]

I must say, SCI Viewer has been pretty indispensable for validating that I'm writing out the data correctly, and for all sorts of other tasks.

Maybe it was made by someone who worked at Sierra back in the day! I had assumed that other folks knew who he was...

[lance.ewing]

And it's not just SCI games. It seems to be able to load and display all the AGI games as well!  Donald Duck's Playground, KQ1, KQ4AGI, Gold Rush, Manhunter 2, etc., the whole range.

It's a one-stop-shop for all your AGI & SCI viewing needs.

[lance.ewing]

There is a claim on this page (translated with Google translate) that he prefers to remain anonymous:

http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=pt&u=http://www.tolledo.net/artigoV1/1/making-of-da-traducao-do-jogo-kings-quest-vi-em-portugues.html&prev=search

This seems a little strange though. I don't see any problem with a data viewer for a game. There must be more to the mystery than this. He can't have been worried about the backlash that a viewer tool would result in. Think about AGIStudio, WinAGI, SCI Companion and SCI Studio. Those tools have gone far beyond being viewers. Surely SCI Viewer has no reason to fear. Troflip's theory might be closer to the mark, although the comments by the author suggest that he was unfamiliar with aspects of some games and was trying to track down such games to test with. One of his comments says: "As far as I was able to find on the internet, the "Conquest" game uses SCI 1.0.", which seems like a strange comment if it were coming from an ex-Sierra employee.

[MusicallyInspired]

There is a claim on this page (translated with Google translate) that he prefers to remain anonymous:

http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=pt&u=http://www.tolledo.net/artigoV1/1/making-of-da-traducao-do-jogo-kings-quest-vi-em-portugues.html&prev=search

Fascinating. This is the only other area of the internet I've even seen him mentioned.

This seems a little strange though. I don't see any problem with a data viewer for a game. There must be more to the mystery than this. He can't have been worried about the backlash that a viewer tool would result in. Think about AGIStudio, WinAGI, SCI Companion and SCI Studio. Those tools have gone far beyond being viewers. Surely SCI Viewer has no reason to fear. Troflip's theory might be closer to the mark, although the comments by the author suggest that he was unfamiliar with aspects of some games and was trying to track down such games to test with. One of his comments says: "As far as I was able to find on the internet, the "Conquest" game uses SCI 1.0.", which seems like a strange comment if it were coming from an ex-Sierra employee.

Strange...but effective to throw everyone off maybe...

[troflip]

Well, even a Sierra employee wouldn't be expected to know about ALL the games that were shipped. Admittedly, it's a far-fetched theory.

The SV.exe resources have some dialogs that are marked as Russian (see attached). They aren't in Russian, but they are tagged with that locale. Anyway, that might suggest the guy was Russian (or at least was developing on a Windows machine switched to Russian), though his English seemed pretty good in the forums.

[lance.ewing]

That's quite interesting. Its unlikely for that locale to be in there by chance.

It was certainly a significant investment of his own time, so he was obviously a big fan. That adds to the mystery as to why nothing more was heard from him. You'd think he'd be hanging out on this forum.

Why announce it on spacequest.net? Is there anything specific to that site that might provide some clues? Does it simply imply that he was a Space Quest fan?

[lance.ewing]

Anyway, that might suggest the guy was Russian (or at least was developing on a Windows machine switched to Russian), though his English seemed pretty good in the forums.

Yeah, the English seems very good, but reading back over his posts, there are some indications that English isn't his first language, e.g.:

"and spend the eternity trying to guess what the problem was."

"Seems to be the one of a kind (and hard to find these days). "

"A few people asked to add a support for Yamaha FB-01"

...and a few other small grammatical slips and unusual turns of phrase like that.

[MusicallyInspired]

At the time, the JT was all but abandoned with all but a few people still checking it out every now and then. I recommended this forum to him more than once (when it was still scicommunity.com, before the 2-year silence period and it returned as sciprogramming.com), but he never acknowledged it. I haven't seen him on any other forums. Perhaps he was avoiding places with a lot of traffic. Given the popularity of his tool, it's possible that's why he went dark.

It makes sense if he's Russian, this wouldn't be the first time there were Sierra resource tools developed from that region. IIRC, there was an entire Russian AGI development software and interpreter written for DOS.

[Collector]

He created an account on the Wiki to link to a new version. I did have the opportunity to ask him if he still had the source but he said that he did not. Too bad as I would have liked to update the GUI to add support for a few things like bulk extraction/exporting and a few interface tweaks.

[OmerMor]

My guess: he's a member of a Russian game translation group. These groups often develop their own tools for extraction, modification and embedding of game resources.

[troflip]

Not a super big mystery, but most SCI1.1 games contain a Conversation class that appears to let you queue up a bunch of messages to be displayed in sequence. However, the Messager class already has this functionality, so it seems a bit superfluous (except it would allow you to queue up messages that are from different tuples)

In SQ5 and LSL6, at least, it is unused. KQ6 uses it extensively (but again, it looks like the Message class would serve just as well).

Hmm, actually now that I think about it, it would let you split a sequence of messages into multiple parts, and execute code between each (whereas if you used the MEssager functionality, the messages would be displayed in sequence without any chance to intervene).

[lskovlun]

Lance wondered earlier what other internal debug code might exist in the games.
I've found this text in 900.MSG in the demo of Slater & Charlie go Camping:

Code: [Select]

Making your game.  Please wait...
Can't fine one or more of the following files: gamedata.res oldroom.sc.
Can't find oldRoom.sc file.
Can't find game.sh file.
No!  I've changed my mind.
Do you really want to quit?
Yes, I want to quit. 
I've only had a quick glance, but there doesn't seem to be code that references these strings, so it's hard to tell what they may have been used for.
It does look like something to do with reading or generating SCI code. Does anybody have the full game to check?