Author Topic: Fragments of the original AGI specs and interpreter code  (Read 25638 times)

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Offline Threepwang

Re: Fragments of the original AGI specs and interpreter code
« Reply #30 on: September 28, 2022, 03:03:14 AM »
This is information that I think is complementary. About Space Quest 2, version 2.0C game interprete 2.917 and 2.915 were never released. I have searched for a very long time without ever finding an answer so far. See this blog: https://www.goodolddays.net/game/id%2C435/Space-Quest-II-Vohauls-Revenge.html

"We don't really have version 2.0C nor was it ever available."

I take this opportunity to salute the memorable work of @NewRisingSun. I keep all your patches as references. Thank you very much.
« Last Edit: September 28, 2022, 09:20:44 PM by Threepwang »

Offline lance.ewing

Re: Fragments of the original AGI specs and interpreter code
« Reply #31 on: October 08, 2022, 03:48:16 AM »
Is Space Quest II Version 2.0D 720K where the AGI interpreter source code fragments mentioned earlier originally came from? I remember asking the question of where it came from but can't remember if it was answered.

Six years later and I've finally been able to see and verify this myself. Back in 2016, I was living in the UK, and my original SQ2 disks were stored in a box on the other side of the world. I now have my original disks again, and they are version 2.0D. Today I dumped a disk image of both disks and can confirm that one of them has the original AGI interpreter source code fragments on it.

I think I bought SQ2 in 1989, and it wasn't long after that that I started trying to work out the game formats. Can't believe I didn't see this AGI interpreter source code back then. I guess I was looking specifically at the data files themselves and didn't think to look at the disk sectors.

Offline lance.ewing

Re: Fragments of the original AGI specs and interpreter code
« Reply #32 on: October 12, 2022, 11:55:38 PM »
I was looking over the AGI interpreter source code on the SQ2 original disks again, as you do, and started thinking about the contributors mentioned in the change history comments. Obviously Jeff Stephenson is the biggest contributor, according to the comments, but two other people are mentioned.

JAS = Jeff Stephenson

The other two sets of initials mentioned are DCI and PMK.

I did a double take when I saw PMK. Surely it couldn't be Peter M Kelly?!  ;D 

The only candidate that I can find is Paul Krasno. He is listed as an Interpreter/Development System developer for King's Quest 4. The four developers listed in the AGI version are: Jeff Stephenson, Robert Heitman, Chris Iden, and Paul Krasno. I don't think Paul is mentioned in the credits for any other game. I assume his middle initial is M then.

And I assume that DCI is Chris Iden, and that he goes by his middle name.

As far as I can see, the earliest date mentioned in a change history comment is 17/02/87 from JAS, and the latest is "87 Sept pmk". The early date probably reflects when they started keeping a change history comment in the files, and the later date might be close to when the source code was copied onto the master disk used for SQ2. The AGI interpreter file on the SQ2 2.0D original disks is dated 18th March 1988.

Offline Collector

Re: Fragments of the original AGI specs and interpreter code
« Reply #33 on: October 13, 2022, 07:25:45 AM »
I doubt that it could be. Beside being a fad developer, Peter is from Aus. BTW, he joined this board a while back during your absence, but has not posted here for some time.
KQII Remake Pic

Offline lance.ewing

Re: Fragments of the original AGI specs and interpreter code
« Reply #34 on: October 13, 2022, 03:19:42 PM »
Yes, I was joking about it being Peter Kelly. I just thought it was amusing that there was someone at SOL with the same initials  ;D

Yeah, I remember when Peter joined. You'll see in the posts that I welcomed him at the time. I think we were chatting about some new ideas he had for AGI.

Offline pmkelly

Re: Fragments of the original AGI specs and interpreter code
« Reply #35 on: October 28, 2022, 09:17:52 AM »
Huh, I only check in on this forum very occasionally and happened to just notice this post!

I can confirm it wasn't me, I was only 7 years old at that time :) I would have absolutely *loved* to have worked there back in the day.

Offline lance.ewing

Re: Fragments of the original AGI specs and interpreter code
« Reply #36 on: October 29, 2022, 06:54:50 PM »
I can confirm it wasn't me, I was only 7 years old at that time :) I would have absolutely *loved* to have worked there back in the day.

Yeah, Sierra was also where I wanted to work "when I grow up". I guess that might have been true for most of us, assuming we were still at school when we were introduced to these games. Sadly things had moved on by the time I was out of school and University.

The best time to work there would have been between 1983-1989, the AGI years  ;D. Nothing against SCI, obviously, but by that stage, the teams had started to become fairly big, so gone were the days when only a few people worked on each game. I think it was quite cool that people like the MacNeill brothers created Goldrush, and the Murry siblings created Manhunter. I'm sure the Ewing brothers could have created something back then  ;D.

Offline lance.ewing

Re: Fragments of the original AGI specs and interpreter code
« Reply #37 on: November 06, 2022, 08:46:53 PM »
Back to the topic of original AGI interpreter code fragments, I have noticed that one of the KQ3 original game disks also has fragments of AGI interpreter source code on it. Nowhere near as much as the SQ2 2.0D 720K disk 1 though, but it is a fairly continuous run of several files, mainly ASM code. I can see a couple of overlaps, e.g. the IOBJSBRS.ASM file, but apart from that, it is mostly new, and mostly Hercules graphics related ASM code (e.g. HOBJSBRS.ASM, HGRAPHX.ASM and HJMPTBL.ASM), which I think was missing from the code extracted from the SQ2 disk.

Kind of makes me want to complete an exhaustive search of all the remaining permutations of original AGI game disks. This would have to include not only every AGI game, but also every released version of every AGI game, including all disks of both the 360K and 720K versions of each game version. Not sure how many disks that will end up being, but probably quite a few I would imagine.

(Edit: Not sure if this concept of deleted file content remaining behind on the master floppy disk applies to other systems, such as Amiga, Atari, Apple, etc, but might be worth looking there are well)
« Last Edit: November 06, 2022, 08:50:27 PM by lance.ewing »

Offline OmerMor

Re: Fragments of the original AGI specs and interpreter code
« Reply #38 on: November 07, 2022, 03:15:54 PM »
Cool find Lance!
I really wish you'd be able to extend your search to all versions in all the platforms...   :)

Offline Threepwang

Re: Fragments of the original AGI specs and interpreter code
« Reply #39 on: November 14, 2022, 10:40:10 PM »

Six years later and I've finally been able to see and verify this myself. Back in 2016, I was living in the UK, and my original SQ2 disks were stored in a box on the other side of the world. I now have my original disks again, and they are version 2.0D. Today I dumped a disk image of both disks and can confirm that one of them has the original AGI interpreter source code fragments on it.

I think I bought SQ2 in 1989, and it wasn't long after that that I started trying to work out the game formats. Can't believe I didn't see this AGI interpreter source code back then. I guess I was looking specifically at the data files themselves and didn't think to look at the disk sectors.

Hi lance.ewing!

I thought I had version 2.0D, but no, it's version 2.0F. So the most common one.  :-\ Could you give me a copy of your 2.0D version, because I plan to translate this game into French and I like to have all the existing versions to compare them. An installed version if possible, as I don't have a floppy drive. It would be very kind of you.  :)

One curious thing is that the GOG version uses the Interpreter 2.917 of version 2.0C. While it is version 2.0F.

You know what they say about Sierra heroes: "There Can Be Only One".
My best.
« Last Edit: November 14, 2022, 11:08:03 PM by Threepwang »

Offline lance.ewing

Re: Fragments of the original AGI specs and interpreter code
« Reply #40 on: November 14, 2022, 10:53:58 PM »
Hi Threepwang! Well, not sure how common knowledge this is, but most of the Sierra game versions are available on archive.org, including version 2.0D of Space Quest 2. My disks unfortunately had some bad sectors, but the archive.org disk images seem to be good.

Let me find the links...

https://archive.org/details/002579-SpaceQuest2VohaulsRevenge

You can download the two disks by going to these URLs:

https://archive.org/download/002579-SpaceQuest2VohaulsRevenge/002579_space_quest_2.7z/002579_space_quest_2%2Fdisk1.img
https://archive.org/download/002579-SpaceQuest2VohaulsRevenge/002579_space_quest_2.7z/002579_space_quest_2%2Fdisk2.img

No idea who put them there.

I found no less than three different versions of KQ4 AGI on archive.org (2.0, 2.2, and 2.3), and that used to be the rare AGI game! It allowed be to test my "skip the starting question" patch in AGILE. I confirmed the patch worked in all three of those KQ4 AGI versions.

Edit: You can copy the individual files out of the disk images using dosbox. Simply mount the disk images as drives, e.g. imgmount a c:\disks\sq2_disk01.img -t floppy
« Last Edit: November 14, 2022, 10:56:46 PM by lance.ewing »

Offline Threepwang

Re: Fragments of the original AGI specs and interpreter code
« Reply #41 on: November 14, 2022, 11:58:26 PM »
Hi Threepwang! Well, not sure how common knowledge this is, but most of the Sierra game versions are available on archive.org, including version 2.0D of Space Quest 2. My disks unfortunately had some bad sectors, but the archive.org disk images seem to be good.

Let me find the links...

https://archive.org/details/002579-SpaceQuest2VohaulsRevenge

You can download the two disks by going to these URLs:

https://archive.org/download/002579-SpaceQuest2VohaulsRevenge/002579_space_quest_2.7z/002579_space_quest_2%2Fdisk1.img
https://archive.org/download/002579-SpaceQuest2VohaulsRevenge/002579_space_quest_2.7z/002579_space_quest_2%2Fdisk2.img

No idea who put them there.

I found no less than three different versions of KQ4 AGI on archive.org (2.0, 2.2, and 2.3), and that used to be the rare AGI game! It allowed be to test my "skip the starting question" patch in AGILE. I confirmed the patch worked in all three of those KQ4 AGI versions.

Edit: You can copy the individual files out of the disk images using dosbox. Simply mount the disk images as drives, e.g. imgmount a c:\disks\sq2_disk01.img -t floppy

Oh that's great, thanks for responding so quickly. OK, that's a wrap!  ;)

Can you confirm that version 2.0C cannot be found? Because I'm still in doubt.


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