No-Shirt Developer(s)

[CTxCB]

If what you're looking for is VGA + text parser, I think there are some Sierra games that have that. Or if not, there are certainly some SCI1 Sierra games whose interpreters still have parser support built in, but it was never actually used in a game. Unfortunately, the interpreter that the SCI1.1 template game is matched with (from LSL6) does not have a built in parser. So I think you'd need to decompile an SCI1 game whose interpreter has parser support, and make a new template game based off that. A lot of work.

Re-creating the text parser in script would be possible, but also a significant amount of work and you wouldn't be able to leverage any of SCI Companion's vocab editing support.

Finally, if all you care about is having the easy of bitmapped graphics (but are ok if they are just EGA) with parser support, then you can just use SCI0 and the  "import bitmap to pic" function of SCI Companion, which converts bitmaps into vector commands to generate a pic. A number of fanmade SCI0 games use this...

Yeah... For the type of game I'm trying to do, I think I'll stick with SCI0.

[MusicallyInspired]

The only post SCI0 game that has a parser of any kind is Larry 7. AGS, on the other hand, can do it.

And no, SCI0 only supports 16 colours, unlike other games like Accolade's adventures (Altered Destiny, Les Manley) that could draw from a 64-colour palette (enhanced EGA).

[Kawa]

Wasn't Larry 7's parser mostly an "enter verb" deal? Hardly a "parser", really.

[MusicallyInspired]

Don't know. Never played it. I just hear everybody say it has a parser and they loved it. At any rate, I did say a parser "of any kind".

[OmerMor]

There's one Sierra "game" that is both VGA and supports a true parser: the 1990 christmas card VGA demo.
Back in the day, some guys from mega-tokyo managed to enable that parser.
I wrote about it here:
http://sciprogramming.com/community/index.php?topic=27.msg46

If you want VGA + parser, this is your best bet.

Would be interesting to try editing it with SCI Companion. We had no such tool back then.

[Kawa]

Don't know. Never played it. I just hear everybody say it has a parser and they loved it. At any rate, I did say a parser "of any kind".

I checked. It was. And then I whipped up a small POC where the template game's Custom verb throws up an EditPrint that it then responds to.

So yeah, not a "parser". Single words, y'all.

There's one Sierra "game" that is both VGA and supports a true parser: the 1990 christmas card VGA demo.

Not only that, it had a functional menu bar, too! User won't decompile but I have the rest right here.

[OmerMor]

The demo crashes on decompilation of script 996.
The demo + patches (downloadable from the post I mentioned) is fully decompilable.

[Kawa]

The demo crashes on decompilation of script 996.
The demo + patches (downloadable from the post I mentioned) is fully decompilable.

I see what you did there.

This is crashy as hell. I never expected to see DOSBox say "reboot requested" in a broken font.

[MusicallyInspired]

I forgot all about that!

[CTxCB]

So... I have an rough idea of what I want my game to be now. So, other than creating something based upon the template... How should I approach making a game in SCI1.1? As somebody who hasn't made a SCI Game before, is there anything I should try and approach first? Also, one thing I'm wondering, and the main reason I'm thinking about switching to a Leisuire Suit Larry Point-&-Click / Parser style is... Can I play video files in SCI? I have kind of a great idea for an opening to the game, and I feel it'd be hard to do such a thing without a video file as an intro. If so, are there limitations to playing video? If I was to make .AVI Video in 320x200 Size, what would be the best frame rate and bitrate for SCI Companion (If I can)?

[Kawa]

Unless you limit yourself to playing in ScummVM, you can't use AVI files. At all. If you use the interpreter from King's Quest 6, you can use SEQ files, though.

First thing to approach for the game itself: familiarize yo'self with the scripting language, the engine, and all that stuff. Implement some basic mini puzzles like finding a key and using it on a locked door.

As the video thing demonstrates, ideas are great but oftentimes you'll have to throw one particular thing or another out the window because you or the engine can't handle something that grand.

[CTxCB]

Unless you limit yourself to playing in ScummVM, you can't use AVI files. At all. If you use the interpreter from King's Quest 6, you can use SEQ files, though.

First thing to approach for the game itself: familiarize yo'self with the scripting language, the engine, and all that stuff. Implement some basic mini puzzles like finding a key and using it on a locked door.

As the video thing demonstrates, ideas are great but oftentimes you'll have to throw one particular thing or another out the window because you or the engine can't handle something that grand.

My idea for the opening of my game is CCTV-Style Footage. Nothing advanced, but I feel it adds "realism" to the scenes that follow. You COULD do something like that purely with views or the like, but I feel it'd be a waste of resources to do something as simple as that... But also using so many resources could be intensive on the engine, based on the fact that lots of views which are screen sized are being loaded back to back. How do .SEQ Files work in King's Quest 6?

[Kawa]

CCTV footage, hmm? I'm reminded of this introduction scene from LB2. First two screenshots are unaltered, third has a little camera overlay that I whipped up for demonstrative purposes.

KQ6's intro is dynamically picked depending on what the Platform kernel call says it's running on. If it's Windows, it plays the entire introduction cartoon as a single AVI file. If it's DOS, it plays those parts where there's little animation with views on pictures, and the rest as a series of SEQ clips, which are not entirely unlike Autodesk Animator FLIC files. So practically speaking it loads the picture with the decorative letterbox border, draws the "once upon a time" as regular text, all that, and then during the conversation between Alexander and Valanice every time only Alex's mouth moves and/or the lights flicker in the background, it's views. All the sounds and music in the cartoon are regular SCI sounds too. The SEQs on the other hand are for things like Valanice approaching, Alexander shifting, Valanice turning back, dramatic pans around the room, and much of the ship scene.

[CTxCB]

CCTV footage, hmm? I'm reminded of this introduction scene from LB2. First two screenshots are unaltered, third has a little camera overlay that I whipped up for demonstrative purposes.

KQ6's intro is dynamically picked depending on what the Platform kernel call says it's running on. If it's Windows, it plays the entire introduction cartoon as a single AVI file. If it's DOS, it plays those parts where there's little animation with views on pictures, and the rest as a series of SEQ clips, which are not entirely unlike Autodesk Animator FLIC files. So practically speaking it loads the picture with the decorative letterbox border, draws the "once upon a time" as regular text, all that, and then during the conversation between Alexander and Valanice every time only Alex's mouth moves and/or the lights flicker in the background, it's views. All the sounds and music in the cartoon are regular SCI sounds too. The SEQs on the other hand are for things like Valanice approaching, Alexander shifting, Valanice turning back, dramatic pans around the room, and much of the ship scene.

My inspiration is this; Notice: Monochrome Color + Noise, Scanlines, Timecode, Location Identifier, and Date Identifier. It's still going to be Sierra-Styled, but I want to maintain as much as this "realism" as I can. Can .SEQs be overlaid above other .SEQs, or over a background? Because I feel as if the background stuff needs to be one thing, and then the things above another. What is the best way to approach this?

[Kawa]

There's not enough resolution for proper noise, and the scanlines would be tricky (for resolution purposes at least) but not necessarily impossible. Other than that, there's nothing stopping you. Again, having great ideas is one thing but sometimes you have to step back.

You can only play one SEQ at a time and I think they might be colorkeyed but I'm not sure.

Practically speaking, the scene could be something like this, where the scanlines, as part of the background picture, have high priority, and the labels are separate views with even higher priority. Any views in the scene proper would be automatically drawn behind the lines, but I'd suggest having them relatively dark so there's lots of highly-compressible areas if they're also relatively large.