What are we working on?

[Collector]

True.

[EricOakford]

I've been doing a little work on remaking Space Quest: The Lost Chapter in SCI01. With that engine, it could work as a hybrid of SQ3 and SQ4. It will have the parser, but may eventually also have VGA graphics (though the focus is on EGA for now).

I've got what I've done in a private Github repository.

[Collector]

Nice. I'll be interested in seeing the results. There is also the "Space Quest 0: Replicated" fan AGI game.

[daleks13]

Will there be speech pack for VGA Version ? And please fix the Stupid Squid puzzle.

[EricOakford]

Will there be speech pack for VGA Version ? And please fix the Stupid Squid puzzle.

No speech pack, since the VGA version will still have the parser. That requires the Seasoned Professional VGA interpreter.

That squid puzzle will definitely be fixed in pretty much the same way the root monster puzzle was in SQ2VGA.

[EricOakford]

For SQ:TLC and R44Q, I'll be doing animated talkers.

The dialog will be modeless, meaning the characters will move their mouths while the text is on-screen, so as not to interrupt the flow of events. QFG1EGA and Conquests of Camelot did just that. QFG2 fleshed it out further.

R44Q will just have a standard "talk to" command. This will not require separate script states for each line of text.

A better example for SQ:TLC is with Wilco Interactive, the hidden in-game hint service. You'll be able to ask him about anything, and the game will check an array for a matching said spec. If there's a match, he says the appropriate response. That's exactly how LB1 and QFG2 did things.

[doomlazer]

I'm familiar with SQ:TLC, but not R44Q - I see it was originally in Dutch. Do you plan to support both languages? I'm not sure how translations in SCI work, do they have to be separate versions for each language or is there a mechanism to toggle between them?

[Kawa]

In SCI01 I suppose you can use the multilingual Print and such, and give it "text like this%Dtekst zoals dit", but of course %D isn't a recognized language separator so you might as well just pretend it's English or German and use %G.

Somewhat relevant blog post: https://helmet.kafuka.org/logopending/2019/03/08/sci01-1-multilanguage-games-and-telephone-country-codes/ (yes the blog post uses # for its split point and the above example uses %, this is because one is SQ4 in French and the other is SQ3 in German.)

[EricOakford]

In SCI01 I suppose you can use the multilingual Print and such, and give it "text like this%Dtekst zoals dit", but of course %D isn't a recognized language separator so you might as well just pretend it's English or German and use %G.

Somewhat relevant blog post: https://helmet.kafuka.org/logopending/2019/03/08/sci01-1-multilanguage-games-and-telephone-country-codes/ (yes the blog post uses # for its split point and the above example uses %, this is because one is SQ4 in French and the other is SQ3 in German.)

Unfortunately, The Seasoned Professional's interpreter (which is being used here) does not support this feature. A translation will probably require a separate version.

I'll try to make things easier by moving strings into Text resources later on.

I've actually managed to get the animated talkers working properly, thanks to a little thing called sub-scripts.

My main obstacle will be the graphics. The AGI rooms are too claustrophobic for Ego.

[EricOakford]

I know I've got a full plate already with projects, but one more I've got my eye on is to adapt QFG4 1/2 into SCI.

I'll likely remove the QFG title from the game, leaving only the subtitle (which I did in the status line). There will also be a content advisory (like Disney+) at the beginning of the game, as well as a setting in the control panel to adjust the mature content. I get how polarizing the game is, and the ability to make it less offensive will help.

I actually already extracted the original's data files using QuickBMS and its AGS script. The MIDI files can be imported into SCI sound resources, and the compiled room files have all the strings as plain text in them, which I can bring over to message resources. The only issue will be the graphics, which are stored in acsprset.spr. If only ScummVM supported pre-2.5 games...

But I should probably focus on testing the QFG1VGA upgrade to completion first.

[Kawa]

as well as a setting in the control panel to adjust the mature content.

If you would like to see how I did that exact thing in The Dating Pool I'll be happy to share the relevant code with you.

[EricOakford]

as well as a setting in the control panel to adjust the mature content.

If you would like to see how I did that exact thing in The Dating Pool I'll be happy to share the relevant code with you.

No thanks, I've already done that as a new slider, and it seems to work okay.

[Kawa]

Except it's more than just the slider. I have things change to reflect the new setting, on the fly.

[gumby]

For the first time, I was able to do a complete play-through of Zork end-to-end.  Still have a lot to do, but the game is winnable 

[Kawa]

Congratulations on that!