The Dating Pool

[Kawa]

First public release! Here's a demo version that features the first day and its puzzle. It's probably pretty buggy, and in fact I had to remove some things just to make it not crash. If you feel like a challenge in figuring out why the removed things make it crash, just tell me. If you have any suggestions for content or style, please go ahead and tell me.

But now, with no further ado, you can get The Dating Pool - One Day Demo at http://helmet.kafuka.org/sci/catdate/

Screenshots
Just took these from the site linked above, lol.



Changes to New Years demo since Christmas
? Canister logic fixed
? Intro crash bug fixed
? Credits and post-demo slideshow amended

[OmerMor]

That was very fun! Cool game.

Few minor bugs:

• Text in the "About" screen is messed up.
• Took out broken canister; went to mechanic; got new canister; went back to car; another broken canister was there for me to take out.
• Description of the mechanic stated his name, even before he introduced himself.

[Kawa]

Took out broken canister; went to mechanic; got new canister; went back to car; another broken canister was there for me to take out.

Oh that's a serious one! I should've tested that more.

Okay, new build is up. I couldn't see anything wrong with the About window, but the respawning canister bug should be fixed now. I'll worry about the logic of the mechanic's name later.

[MusicallyInspired]

Nice and fun little demo! Graphics and animation are lovely. I threw the MT-32 driver in there from SQ5 and you'll be happy to know that the game sounds great with MUNT and, I expect, a real MT-32.

One other little bug, after I replaced the fuel canister, I went back to talk to the mechanic again and he gave me another new canister.

[Kawa]

One other little bug, after I replaced the fuel canister, I went back to talk to the mechanic again and he gave me another new canister.

I see the logic error there and have fixed this too. A new copy is up now with this and the other canister bug.

[OmerMor]

I couldn't see anything wrong with the About window

See attached picture.

BTW - it's Jeff Stephenson, not Jeph.

[Kawa]

Yup, that'd be a ScummVM difference, then. It's supposed to use a smaller font for the body copy there.

Relatedly, the dummied-out intro does not poison the well and cause a crash when the player character slams the door when running in ScummVM.

[lskovlun]

I'm not having any luck running this, with ScummVM or SSCI (see image).

ScummVM seems to think there is a problem with the resource map:

Code: [Select]

  Starting 'Sierra SCI Game'
The game in '/home/lars/dating-pool' seems to be unknown.
Please, report the following data to the ScummVM team along with name
of the game you tried to add and its version/language/etc.:
  {"resource.000", 0, "af28393cf5ae59e98203067f5eb87e2b", 987041},
  {"resource.map", 0, "becfb721cb27734a33d715cd068536e3", 1393},

WARNING: Error 6 occurred while reading invalid.8 from resource file RESOURCE.000: Unknown compression method!
WARNING: resMan: Failed to read invalid.8!
WARNING: SCI [SCI0, SCI01, SCI10, SCI11, SCI32] failed to instantiate engine: Game data not found (target 'dating-pool', path '/home/lars/dating-pool')!


[Kawa]

You're right, something did go wrong there. I put up a rebuilt copy.

[lskovlun]

Text in the "About" screen is messed up.

Yeah, this was a ScummVM bug. Fixed in HEAD.

[MusicallyInspired]

What are your problems with the intro scripting?

[Kawa]

What are your problems with the intro scripting?

In some setups, the roadside refuses to load and the game freezes at the end of the credits sequence. In another (leaving out the credits and going straight from the cartoon to the roadside) the game oopses when ego tries to speak after getting out of the car, but only in SSCI. In another (I think if I leave the skip feature in?) the same happens but with noise in the car door animation.

I found the SubtitledNarrator and SubtitledTalker, as used in the mechanic's closeup as well as the intro, caused problems when the window width was set to 320. Unfortunately, changing this only fixed the mechanic's closeup and didn't fix the intro at all.

It wasn't the new credits writing style that did it either -- reverting didn't fix shit.

If you feel like giving it a look, I can put up a copy with source included.

[troflip]

Checking back in quickly. I have to leave town again in a few days, so I won't be able to look at much until a week from now or so. If you find bugs, make sure you send me something to repro... from a quick read of this thread it sounds like there might have been some resource.map corruption or something. If you think that's something Companion did, I'd like to know what you were doing when it happened, and have a broken resource.map to inspect so I can try to diagnose.

Can't wait to try your game!

[lskovlun]

In some setups, the roadside refuses to load and the game freezes at the end of the credits sequence. In another (leaving out the credits and going straight from the cartoon to the roadside) the game oopses when ego tries to speak after getting out of the car, but only in SSCI. In another (I think if I leave the skip feature in?) the same happens but with noise in the car door animation.

There is one thing that comes to mind; you're placing the talkers in your room scripts. Don't do that, the scripts get unloaded when the room changes, leaving a dangling pointer to the now-defunct talker. Consider giving them their own script instead.

[Kawa]

There is one thing that comes to mind; you're placing the talkers in your room scripts. Don't do that, the scripts get unloaded when the room changes, leaving a dangling pointer to the now-defunct talker. Consider giving them their own script instead.

You may have a point. Thank you for this idea, I'll look into it.

Update: moved the two intro cutscene talkers from script 103 to 1003, changed findTalker and disposeCode accordingly. No difference. For the record, the Oops ends in error 4.