What are we working on?

[Nicktatorship]

So Hi, Nick here, newest member of the forums with all the unbridled energy paradoxically entwined by possibility that comes with it.

Who's about? What are you working on? Are you making a game? Making tools? Got some side-project in the works that completely unrelated to anything on the forums? Let's chat! Let's talk! Let's get stupidly excited!!


My current bit is carrying a notebook around with me, and plotting out a fresher look at my old AGI game, The Lost Planet, incorporating as much of the original concept as I can, while also trying to update and modernise (though still sticking with AGI of course). Some of the time is plotting story, planning rooms or gameplay elements, while also inching back into the world of AGI logic programming. Last night I redid the menu in a new logic file (using WinAGI instead of AGI Studio), being sure to actually document the logics and streamline where I was able.

Expecting that whatever I do short-term will be highly iterative - getting the framework of the game in place, structured well enough that I can redraw or restyle things later. It will mean reusing a lot of the original assets to begin with, but despite the much broader scope intended, hope it won't get too out of control.


Your turn! 

[Kawa]

The time is 03:06 AM and I just shut down my laptop after five hours of rendering a 30 frame animation for the full version of The Dating Pool. Tomorrow, or rather in a couple hours I will run a batch process I've prepared earlier to grade and palettize the frames and make a SEQ clip out of it with a relevant tool I made and released some time ago.

Then I will make another, most likely.

[MusicallyInspired]

I've got a little Star Wars SCI1 project going on. Whenever I get the inclination or a spare moment, anyway. I plan to use all manner of palette swapping/transitioning/cycling effects in any interesting way I can think up as the technique fascinates me. But first I need art (the slow part).

[troflip]

Plugging away on Cascade Quest. Today I worked on probably needless performance tuning, instead of what I should be doing (completing the story and puzzles).

[lance.ewing]

My current active projects:

• An AGI interpreter written in C#: It's also about learning C# because I didn't know it before starting out. I'm spending a lot of my spare time on this at the moment.
• When I finish the C# AGI interpreter, the plan is to help out with the Visual AGI IDE. I haven't yet contributed to this, but the C# AGI interpreter does make use of it's AGI Library, to which I have made some additions in my fork, such as LOGIC resource decoding.

AGI/SCI projects currently on hold:

• Continuing the work on Dr Zoltan's Java AGI interpreter/viewers. I moved a copy of this to my github account and started adding some AGI v1 support to the LOGIC, PICTURE and VIEW viewers.
• Investigating the content of original AGI and SCI game disk slack space. Originally the idea was to see if there was any original SCI source code but that goal kind of went away when Omer released the original SCI documentation and many examples of the original SCI syntax.
• Version of PICEDIT written in Java. This is already usable and available but I had many plans for taking it further.
• The Ruby Cast

AGI project ideas simmering away in my thoughts:

• Writing AGI interpreters in other computer languages. This would be mainly for learning those languages but would be good for keeping my AGI knowledge fresh.
• Building an AGI IDE in Javascript that uses an interface similar to Scratch with Visual Programming. Desktop apps written in Javascript are getting quite common these days, so the idea would support running standalone or on a website.
• An AGI-like interpreter for the VIC 20. If that proves difficult (due to its resources), I might switch the idea to the C64.

Projects unrelated to AGI or SCI:

• A VIC 20 emulator written in Java to run on desktop and Android. This currently doesn't have sound but the rest works quite well. I sometimes play old VIC 20 games on my phone using this.
• Building a VIC chip (MOS 6561) test board on a large breadboard. This is to experiment with some of the lower level behaviour of the video chip used in the VIC 20. I've got five of these video chips. Had an idea about mixing the video output of three of these together to see what would happen.
• Reversing the schematic of the VIC 20's video chip from photos of the silicon.
• Building a 4-bit home brew computer. I have all the components; just haven't put it all together yet.
• Participating in the annual Javascript 13K game contest (js13kames). I've entered it twice. This year I'm thinking about submitting a graphic adventure game. Will be a challenge.

[gumby]

Working on a first-person SCI 1.1 version of Zork.

[Kawa]

Rendered the other FMV clip as I said I would. Somehow, a clip that's ten frames longer than the other one took three hours less. Made a cutscene version of the player's apartment (read: the back wall and ceiling aren't slanted and things aren't scaled weirdly for perspective reasons), and have been considering every now and then to try and port SSCI to SDL or something.

I probably won't. Too much ASM to rewrite.

The other idea I have regarding SSCI is to give it another pass and standardize the variable types; instead of void KFoo(word* args) {...} (or void KFoo(args) argList; {...} as it used to be) it'd be something like, well, void KFoo(kernelArg args) {...} or maybe even straight-up KERNEL(Foo) {...} see if I don't. Stuff like that, at any rate.

[AGKorson]

I'm working on a new release of WinAGI. It's got a lot of improvements and bug fixes. Most of the big changes are done (I am still working on an improvement to line editing in the Picture Editor), so hopefully only a few more days of testing, then I'll build and release a beta.

I've decided I need to to something with all the old disk-based games I have - a bunch of Sierra titles, all the AD&D/SSI Goldbox games, a bunch of Microprose games, and others. Hopefully the disks haven't died yet. I was able to get a 5.25 drive USB adaptor, so with that attached to the last system I had with a built-in 3.5 drive, I should be able to capture all the disk images. Maybe this will inspire to play some of them again...

I need to learn C# as well. Once I'm done with WinAGI, I think I'll jump in and see how hard it is for an old dog to learn these fancy new tricks.

I am also trying to get more experience with java because I recently bought a Mazda, and I discovered on the user forums that it's pretty easy to write custom apps for the entertainment system - IF you know java. I wrote a speedometer/clock app, but haven't gotten enough courage to upload it to the car yet. This project's been back-burnered until WinAGI is done.

[Kawa]

Today I worked on the soundtrack for The Dating Pool. I found a pack of CC MIDI files, picked out the stuff I could use, and mutilated it all into something that'd sound good on MT-32 and your average Windows 7 setup alike.

So here's a full recording featuring part of the Nurykabe MIDI 01 pack by Morusque, and five songs from three H-games that are already in the demo.

You'll notice that "Alhor's Theme" (actually track 2 from Nineteen) has an extra track now to go with the improved instrumentation. Had the silly thing set to channel 1.

It wasn't until I checked the waveform view while trimming the ends that I noticed a couple tracks are particularly loud, almost all of them the old H-game rip songs. Tomorrow, I'll adjust them to better match the Nurykabe songs.

The time right now is 23:53, I'm off to sleep read pony stories in bed, then sleep.

[troflip]

2 days ago I implemented arbitrary rotation support for sprites.

Today I'm implementing scaling, but with linear filtering that remaps the resulting colors to my fixed palette.

[MusicallyInspired]

I love your work, Phil.

[Kawa]

You're a damn cheater, Phil.

[troflip]

You're a damn cheater, Phil.

Scaling is mostly working. I feel bad for you calling me a cheater though, so I present this gif of the scaling in action - but using the dithered colors, so it's legit. It's still doing linear filtering (so it looks much better than Sierra's scaling which does point sampling) and remapping to the undithered colors, but then they are re-dithered as they are presented on screen.

Still some work to do on the scaling, the image is jiggling around more than it should and I think I can fix that.

[OmerMor]

Very nice!

[spiffythedog]

I'm in the final stages of releasing a couple of fan patches (in a similar vein to the SQ1VGA 2.1 patch) for the AGI versions of Space Quest I and II.

Several enhancements and minor bug fixes have been made for both games, as well as the implementation of a few previously unused assets (mostly sound effects and animation loops). No doubt the first thing you'll notice is that Roger's hair is now blonde, and he is wearing his usual standardized uniform (white vest and pants, purple undershirt, black boots, grey badge/patch on left breast):

PS: If anyone owns a copy of v1.0X of SQ1 and hooks me up the relevant logic file, I just might be able to reinsert the Ken Williams Easter egg that was removed in all subsequent versions of the game.