Adding a room to Quest for Glory 1 (VGA)

[richruss691]

I tried re-importing the assets into QfG1 and there were no invisible frames. so far so good. I then adjusted the offset of each cel to align with the background image. This is when the invisible frames start to occur. So I adjusted the offset on the test game and now there are invisible cels in that game too. It seems to be a problem with changing the offset.

[richruss691]

I was not able to figure out why my frames where disappearing but I did figure out that it was related to adjusting the offset. I was able to adjust the positions of the frames in GIMP before importing. now all the frames show up and in the right location. Now the entire end game sequence has been restored, except for music. I can't get the music to play. I think I might leave that for further down the road.

[richruss691]

I think I've figured out why the sound won't play. It looks like the sound resource 99 is defective; it has two channel 11 and no channel 10. Does anyone know a way to change one of the channel 11 to channel 10?

[MusicallyInspired]

That's....bizarre. It would need to be converted to MIDI first, edited in a standard MIDI sequencer, and then converted back. And it might not be converted back in exactly the same way it used to be. Another option is to possibly hex-edit it and change the bytes that designate which channels are which since SOUND resources have basically standard MIDI data with just new header information. Understanding the MIDI file format specification might make that the most effective route to go as with the currently available conversion tools to MIDI aren't perfect.

[lskovlun]

This is the channel list for song 99 as included in my QFG1VGA (from GOG); the ScummVM console window was just barely big enough to screenshot, but I can't see any problems of the sort you describe? But it is clear that some devices have only channel 10, some have both 10 and 11, and some have neither. Which device driver is your SSCI set up to use? You might want to try a different one. What's not working, what do you expect to happen?

Of course, the file could still be bugged in other ways (I can't see from the code that it was used at all? so maybe it was meant for a different SCI version).

[richruss691]

MusicallyInspired, thank you for your suggestions. Where can I find utilities to convert from snd to midi? In the tools section of this forum I could only find a tool to convert from midi to snd and that looks like it only works for sci0. I couldn't find a way to do it in scicompaion, though it looks like it can import directly from midi. maybe I'm missing something? Do you know a good website for learning the midi file structure so I can try the direct hex editing?

lskovlun, it is odd that scummvm shows something different from scicompanion. I don't use scummvm so I don't know how to get to that debug screen and can't verify that my copy shows the same thing. I am using the gog version too, though. My copy may be corrupted. May I ask, does your copy play any music through the end game sequence in scummvm?
Room 600, the first part of the endgame sequence, does have code that looks like it should play sound 99. Room 602, the second part of the endgame sequence, originally didn't have any code to play any sound but I have added a lot to the script for that room including code to play sound 99. I know the code works because it will play other sound resources using the same code.
Sound 99 doesn't play in either room 600 or 602. I'm pretty sure at least my copy is a bad resource.

[lskovlun]

I have to admit I didn't look at the SCI Companion screen. So there's two issues here: The channel numbers are off by one in comparing ScummVM with Companion, this is purely aesthetic as long as you account for it. The second issue is that the MIDI streams corresponding to each channel are not necessarily the same for every hardware device. You can see this if you pay close attention to where the check marks are in Companion; the two tracks labeled 11 are never active at the same time on the same device. Similarly, channel number 10 is listed at most once in ScummVM per hardware device, but there's one version of it for Adlib/SoundBlaster and one for Tandy/CMS, as can be seen from the offsets. The curious thing is that there is only a control channel (15/16) present for MT-32 (the same one as for all the others).

I don't think this is the bug you're looking for ... unless your setup is an MT-32 or an MT-32 emulator.
In that case, could you try Adlib/SB instead and see if that works?

[richruss691]

that's good information, thank you. I am using adlib and i went in and turned on all channels for all devices to make sure. it only lets me turn on one of the channel 11 at a time though

[MusicallyInspired]

MusicallyInspired, thank you for your suggestions. Where can I find utilities to convert from snd to midi? In the tools section of this forum I could only find a tool to convert from midi to snd and that looks like it only works for sci0. I couldn't find a way to do it in scicompaion, though it looks like it can import directly from midi. maybe I'm missing something? Do you know a good website for learning the midi file structure so I can try the direct hex editing?

Check the tool NRS posted in this thread. This will convert SCI sound resources to standard MIDI. Take note of the flags you must pass as command line parameters to convert the proper data (Adlib, MT-32, PC Speaker, or all, etc).

Check this and this out for MIDI file specs.

[richruss691]

awesome, thanks! I'll check those out

[richruss691]

I used snd2mid to convert the snd file to  midi. It produced a file that windows media player played without difficulty but anvil studio won't open. when i try to open it in anvil, it tells me to import it like a wav file. what could be the issue there i wonder?

[richruss691]

then I exported a snd that I know works in-game and converted it to midi. It loads into anvil and plays without incident. I am now quite convinced there is something wrong with sound 99. Is there a way to repair midi files?

[richruss691]

I was able to find a program called MidiQuickFix that could load it. using that I could change one of the channel 11 to channel 10 (actually channel 10 and now channel 9 in the midi format). It loads into anvil and plays real nice! I then imported the repaired midi into the game and it plays now. Unfortunately, the cue points were not preserved so i'll have to go in and rebuild those. I hope it's not too much trouble. Thank you MusicallyInspired, I'm not sure I would have ever found that converter without your help. Can anyone direct me to some good instructions on the cue points, please? the info in the scicompanion docs is pretty sparse. it says they can be used to trigger events but it doesn't say how to do it. Also i'd like to know if they can be used to specify start and stop points in the music. If anyone can direct me to this info, it would be greatly appreciated.

[OmerMor]

I didn't have time to check for differences, but you can find all the versions of qfg1ega that I have (including for different systems) in this Google Drive folder:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KlY9ywIX-w54lhaq8AqUfdyzPHnWSmZt?usp=sharing

Maybe they have a better version of the sound 99 resource.

[richruss691]

Thank you OmerMor, that's a good idea. I was going to try importing from the ega release if i couldn't get the one in vga to work. they seem nearly identical, just different instruments it sounds like. I did get the vga version working though, cue points are now restored, so I won't need to. now I need to figure out cue points, I think they will be the key to syncing the end sequence to the song. I'm thinking of releasing a video of all the stuff i've done to the game so far. If I do i'll start another thread in the games section of this forum. I might try to get that done today