SCI1.1 Print - Change default text display colours?

[MusicallyInspired]

I'm trying to alter the colours to my GUI. I've done all this perfectly but I cannot for some reason change the colours of the text or the background behind the text. It remains black for foreground and grey for background. I've looked through the Print class but I'm not seeing anything related to colours (and there's a lot of strangely named variables, like a million "theTheTheGModNum"'s). The printed text seems to ignore the colour settings I set for "back" and "colour" in the BorderWindow class.

[troflip]

Ha, that's funny. That was the *only* thing I could change when I was playing around with stuff. I changed the value of global159 in script 12.

Definitely feels like the SQ5 code was kind of hacked together... or rather, it had "decayed" over several iterations of games, with methods to change similar things spread out across different code.

[MusicallyInspired]

Ah nice. Also found where I could change the text colour. I can't find where the text button colours are handled, though.

Incidentally, the "buttons" in SQ5 are fairly boring compared to those of SCI0 and the like. They're not even real buttons, they're just text that highlights. Where could I go to change this behaviour? I'd also like to be able to line them up horizontally on the same line instead of vertically.

[troflip]

Well, you can use the message resource to set the color (and font)... or do you mean the highlight color? Or I guess the default color?

You could try to play around with the dialog editor (in dlgwindow.sc) to see if you can generate code that lines things up horizontally.

As for changing them to look like "real buttons"... you're on your own! Poke around and figure it out :-)

[Collector]

Definitely feels like the SQ5 code was kind of hacked together... or rather, it had "decayed" over several iterations of games, with methods to change similar things spread out across different code.

Don't forget that SQ5 was not developed in-house. Outside of Mark Crowe most of the developers would have been Dynamix developers. You could consider SQ5 a "learner project" to help Dynamix developers become familiar with SCI.

[MusicallyInspired]

Perhaps SQ5 wasn't the best choice to base the template game on? lol Maybe LSL6, keeping in trend with how Brian based his template games (SCI0 was based on LSL3, right? And his VGA SCI1 template game was based on LSL5 or LSL1VGA, can't recall). Also, if we based it on LSL6 to begin with we wouldn't be having these driver issues that we do now.

[troflip]

Oh, I'm sure LSL6 is just as messy. And I think there'd be a lot more work to do around fixing up the user interface, since I think it's less applicable to a typical adventure game than than SQ5's interface.

Which driver issues are you talking about?

[Cloudee1]

I was thinking KQ6, just because of the icon bar being a relatively standard set. Rather than trying to work backwards with the command etc in SQ5.

I tried to get the speedtest script from kq6 going in the template, looks like it sets the detail and game speed at game startup, but my first attempt failed miserably

[troflip]

I don't understand ... why would you need speedtest? Doesn't that set detail level/speed/whatever based on some performance measurements? I'm pretty sure we can just set it to max detail given today's hardware.

[MusicallyInspired]

The driver issues I'm talking about regarding AUDBLAST.DRV not working properly and producing noise.

[Cloudee1]

I don't understand ... why would you need speedtest? Doesn't that set detail level/speed/whatever based on some performance measurements? I'm pretty sure we can just set it to max detail given today's hardware.

Just for fun really. It is basically a black room prior to the title screen with a transparent actor. The actor is then moved from one point to another point and timed. Based off of the time then you are correct that the detail and speed are set.

[Collector]

I would guess that it would be easier to modify the the bar and the UI in general in LSL6 than to track down audio resources and driver incompatibilities. The burden of UI modifications might be something that could be partially shifted to the community.

[MusicallyInspired]

So is it the AUDBLAST.DRV from LSL6 that won't work or the one from SQ5? We switched interpreters with LSL6 right? But kept the SQ5 source. Could just go back to SQ5's interpreter, I suppose, or whichever AUDBLAST.DRV works. I'm speaking for keeping compatibility for older computers. I'd sacrifice 44100Khz audio for that.

EDIT: I'm speaking for myself, switching back. Not the template game for everybody. I'm not suggesting going back on what might have been a lot of work.

[troflip]

It's the LSL6 audblast.drv that doesn't work (is it a known issue with DOSBox or something?).

At any rate, the other audio drivers work, so it doesn't seem like this is actually a real problem. I can understand the need for different MIDI drivers working, since the instruments sound different. But for the audio drivers, isn't one as good as another?

[edit:] Oh, but it looks like the other drivers only support 8-bit sound?

[lskovlun]

Guys, the DoAudio kernel call has a subfunction for setting the output sample rate. I see that the template game doesn't call it - perhaps it is required? A number SCI32 and SCI1.1 games call it once on startup.... there are also functions for setting the number of bits/sample and mono/stereo (but those are not present in LSL6).