Author Topic: SCI Companion V3 - alpha build notes/bugs/feature requests  (Read 393423 times)

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Offline Collector

Re: SCI Companion V3 - alpha build notes/bugs/feature requests
« Reply #60 on: June 15, 2015, 07:20:28 PM »
I can see how that would be useful for editing old Sierra games, but for new stuff it seems to make more sense to use square pixels (even Scumm and DosBOX use square pixels by default, right?). And honestly, I'm so used to playing/seeing the Sierra games "squished" that they look weird when they're not squished.

It is not that DOSBox purposely uses square pixels. With render set to 2x or 3x it is only doubling or tripling the exact same number of X and Y pixels of the original display. This gives it its unnaturally swished aspect over what it was intended to have. It is the sole reason that both DOSBox and ScummVM have the aspect correction option, to give it the same aspect for which the original artists created their graphics.

As noted, it may not make that much difference for new game development, but it is a real obstacle when working with original resources. Just for display having DOSBox set to use aspect correction is enough, but it would be great if the drawing canvases and any polygon tools had a switchable view. I don't know how difficult this would be to implement.
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Offline lskovlun

Re: SCI Companion V3 - alpha build notes/bugs/feature requests
« Reply #61 on: June 15, 2015, 07:42:43 PM »
I've updated the SCI Companion at the download link. Should be version 3.0.0.3 now. Release notes in the first post of this thread.

The download is much bigger because it includes debug symbols. If someone has a debugger and can repro the "Add AFter" cel crash and give me a stack trace, that would be much appreciate!!
One problem with that is that simply switching to the Debug configuration in MSVC swaps some parts of the standard library (e.g. STL) to more fault-tolerant versions, so things that crash in the Release configuration do not necessarily do so in the Debug configuration. It should be possible to configure this, but I couldn't tell you how; I don't use MSVC myself.

Offline Cloudee1

Re: SCI Companion V3 - alpha build notes/bugs/feature requests
« Reply #62 on: June 15, 2015, 07:54:32 PM »
I've updated the SCI Companion at the download link. Should be version 3.0.0.3 now. Release notes in the first post of this thread.

The download is much bigger because it includes debug symbols. If someone has a debugger and can repro the "Add AFter" cel crash and give me a stack trace, that would be much appreciate!!

For me, the add after crash disappeared with 3.0.0.2. I was still using .1 when I mistakenly reported it a few posts ago. I struck it out once I was using the current version and it was gone as well as unattached the image of the error message I got. Is anyone else still seeing this behavior?
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Offline troflip

Re: SCI Companion V3 - alpha build notes/bugs/feature requests
« Reply #63 on: June 15, 2015, 07:59:29 PM »
One problem with that is that simply switching to the Debug configuration in MSVC swaps some parts of the standard library (e.g. STL) to more fault-tolerant versions, so things that crash in the Release configuration do not necessarily do so in the Debug configuration. It should be possible to configure this, but I couldn't tell you how; I don't use MSVC myself.

Oh, it's a still a "release build", it just has symbol information for debugging. So it should be possible to get a stack trace with function names (assuming they haven't been inlined).
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Offline troflip

Re: SCI Companion V3 - alpha build notes/bugs/feature requests
« Reply #64 on: June 15, 2015, 08:32:24 PM »
It is not that DOSBox purposely uses square pixels. With render set to 2x or 3x it is only doubling or tripling the exact same number of X and Y pixels of the original display. This gives it its unnaturally swished aspect over what it was intended to have. It is the sole reason that both DOSBox and ScummVM have the aspect correction option, to give it the same aspect for which the original artists created their graphics.

As noted, it may not make that much difference for new game development, but it is a real obstacle when working with original resources. Just for display having DOSBox set to use aspect correction is enough, but it would be great if the drawing canvases and any polygon tools had a switchable view. I don't know how difficult this would be to implement.

I agree it would be nice. I know DOSBox/Scumm isn't "purposely" using a 1x1 aspect ratio. If you correct for aspect ratio, things look blurry (in Scumm, at least - which is expected when you're scaling hard-edged "pixel perfect" graphics by fractional amounts. Presumably that's why it's not the default setting?).   I can look into it for SCI Companion, but I don't think it would be a trivial change. The code is currently setup for integer zoom levels, changing it to floating point might be a bit destabilizing (i.e. a lot of bugs could come out of it).

[edit:] Ok, I looked into it. No promises, but it looked easier than I had anticipated. In the pic editor, at least, it was pretty trivial to implement.
« Last Edit: June 15, 2015, 10:00:18 PM by troflip »
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Offline Collector

Re: SCI Companion V3 - alpha build notes/bugs/feature requests
« Reply #65 on: June 16, 2015, 01:34:58 AM »
The pic editor would be the main thing to have aspect correction. It will be great if you can do it, but I would have thought that it wound not be trivial. What about the polygon tools?
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Offline troflip

Re: SCI Companion V3 - alpha build notes/bugs/feature requests
« Reply #66 on: June 16, 2015, 01:37:56 AM »
What "polygon tools" are you talking about?
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Offline Collector

Re: SCI Companion V3 - alpha build notes/bugs/feature requests
« Reply #67 on: June 16, 2015, 03:04:12 AM »
I haven't had a chance to play much with the pic editor yet, but looking closer at it I guess you only have an ellipse tool and since I don't see a way to constrained to a circle I guess it is a moot point. A lot of Graphics programs will force their ellipse tool to a circle when the control key is held and a rectangle tool to a square, etc. Such tools might be less useful for raster than vector.

Which brings to mind, you still have the list showing each step in drawing the pic. How useful is this for a raster based pic? Would a simple undo stack make more sense? Obviously you would want it for SCI0 vector pics. Perhaps hiding it based on the resource version?
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Offline troflip

Re: SCI Companion V3 - alpha build notes/bugs/feature requests
« Reply #68 on: June 16, 2015, 04:22:51 AM »
I haven't had a chance to play much with the pic editor yet, but looking closer at it I guess you only have an ellipse tool and since I don't see a way to constrained to a circle I guess it is a moot point. A lot of Graphics programs will force their ellipse tool to a circle when the control key is held and a rectangle tool to a square, etc. Such tools might be less useful for raster than vector.

Which brings to mind, you still have the list showing each step in drawing the pic. How useful is this for a raster based pic? Would a simple undo stack make more sense? Obviously you would want it for SCI0 vector pics. Perhaps hiding it based on the resource version?

Holding shift down snaps the ellipse to a circle in the pic editor. I see your point, you'd want it still to look like circle despite the aspect ratio, right?

The VGA pics aren't completely raster-based. They still support lines and fills for all three screens. The vector tools are rarely used for the visual screen, but are necessary for the priority and control screens. But I agree having the vector commands as the "focus" of the pic editor could be confusing to someone starting out. It might be a reasonable idea to hide the command pane (well, it would be replaced with the path-finding polygon list), and maybe the position slider at the bottom of the pic. There is already an undo stack (all resources support that).
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Offline MusicallyInspired

Re: SCI Companion V3 - alpha build notes/bugs/feature requests
« Reply #69 on: June 16, 2015, 11:21:31 AM »
Perhaps hold CTRL as well as SHIFT to make the ellipse tool constrain to a perfect circle in a 4:3 aspect rectangular pixel resolution?

EDIT: Another small request: the ability to zoom in and out with the scrollwheel when editing Views and Pictures.
« Last Edit: June 16, 2015, 11:46:06 AM by MusicallyInspired »
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Offline troflip

Re: SCI Companion V3 - alpha build notes/bugs/feature requests
« Reply #70 on: June 16, 2015, 12:11:27 PM »
EDIT: Another small request: the ability to zoom in and out with the scrollwheel when editing Views and Pictures.

That functionality already exists. Hold down the ctrl-key while using the scrollwheel.
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Offline MusicallyInspired

Re: SCI Companion V3 - alpha build notes/bugs/feature requests
« Reply #71 on: June 16, 2015, 12:13:32 PM »
Oh! Sorry! Thanks.

Is there some kind of a list somewhere (or can there be) of the updated kernel functions in SCI1.1 and what they do? I'm trying to do a screen transition and it's not working with DrawPic and the new SCI1.1 transitions. Never mind, but a runthrough of some kernel functions would still be welcome.
« Last Edit: June 16, 2015, 12:23:43 PM by MusicallyInspired »
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Offline troflip

Re: SCI Companion V3 - alpha build notes/bugs/feature requests
« Reply #72 on: June 16, 2015, 12:32:47 PM »
You can glean some insight from the ScummVM code or by looking at usage. But yes, this is kind of documentation is work that needs to be done!

I think screen transitions in SCI1.1 are usually done by setting the style property on the Rm instance.

Code: [Select]
(define dpOPEN_HCENTER 0)   // horizontally open from center
(define dpOPEN_VCENTER 1)   // vertically open from center
(define dpOPEN_RIGHT 2)   // open from right
(define dpOPEN_LEFT 3)   // open from left
(define dpOPEN_BOTTOM 4)   // open from bottom
(define dpOPEN_TOP 5)   // open from top
(define dpOPEN_EDGECENTER 6)   // open from edges to center
(define dpOPEN_CENTEREDGE 7)   // open from center to edges
(define dpOPEN_CHECKBOARD 8)   // open random checkboard
(define dpOPEN_PIXELATION    9)
(define dpOPEN_FADEPALETTE    10)
(define dpOPEN_SCROLL_RIGHT  11)
(define dpOPEN_SCROLL_LEFT    12)
(define dpOPEN_SCROLL_UP      13)
(define dpOPEN_SCROLL_DOWN    14)
(define dpOPEN_NO_TRANSITION    100)

(define dpANIMATION_BLACKOUT    $8000)
« Last Edit: June 16, 2015, 12:37:14 PM by troflip »
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Offline Cloudee1

Re: SCI Companion V3 - alpha build notes/bugs/feature requests
« Reply #73 on: June 16, 2015, 12:36:39 PM »
Feature Request:

Click on a point on the view screen of a pic resource, and it highlight the color and position of the color in the picture's displayed palette.
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Offline troflip

Re: SCI Companion V3 - alpha build notes/bugs/feature requests
« Reply #74 on: June 16, 2015, 12:38:26 PM »
Feature Request:

Click on a point on the view screen of a pic resource, and it highlight the color and position of the color in the picture's displayed palette.

This info is in the status bar when you hover over a pixel. Is that sufficient? What's the scenario where this is useful?
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