SCI Editors - beside SCICompanion/SCIStudio?

[ZvikaZ]

So you gave a 01-format dictionary to a 0 interpreter, and it doesn't completely lose its way over it?

Impressive if true.

I didn't try giving it to the *original* Sierra's SCI0 interpreter. I assume it will indeed crash, or go crazy...
I gave it to ScummVM, which already had code to support that mixed situation, because of Japanese PQ2 (it only issues a warning).

BTW,
I wander how did they made Japanese PQ2, as increasing the characters coding from 7 bits to 8 bits gives only 256 values (actually, less than that...)
Is it enough for Japanese?
Or did they made further hacks to use 16 bit encoding?

[ZvikaZ]

Here is what Cory Cole told me:

But he's wrong, isn't he? The interp grew to 1.5 times the size, and among other things the memory management was overhauled. You couldn't even start QfG2 under SCI0; it would run out of heap memory before getting anywhere (this happened in FreeSCI before the VM rewrite). Polygons were used in QfG2 - they don't exist in SCI0. And, most tellingly, the interp version number: 1.000.072.

I think he also confused SQ3 with SQ4, as SQ3 was released in 1989, before QFG2.

[lskovlun]

I wander how did they made Japanese PQ2, as increasing the characters coding from 7 bits to 8 bits gives only 256 values (actually, less than that...)
Is it enough for Japanese?
Or did they made further hacks to use 16 bit encoding?

There were national Japanese standards for the home computers in that market. All they had to do was implement that.

[Kawa]

Hmmhmm. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shift_JIS for example is a particularly likely method to encode Japanese. Characters are either one or two bytes.

SQ4 Japanese didn't do anything like that though, it just did its own 8-bit thing. And my SCI11+ has UTF-8.

[MusicallyInspired]

That note about Crowe fighting for SQ4 to be done in VGA first is interesting because Scott said that they were given a choice to use parser or not and they said parser. But then they forced them to do point & click, to which Scott said he and Mark weren't happy about. I wonder if the choice they were ACTUALLY given were "EGA with a parser" and "VGA without a parser."

[Charles]

I suspect they started making SQ4 in VGA with a parser. We know Sierra had a VGA Interpreter with a parser at one point, because the 1990 VGA Xmas demo has it ( http://sciprogramming.com/community/index.php?topic=27.0).

And SQ4 was first released in March 1991. Seems reasonable they started development on the same parser the Xmas demo used 3 months earlier.

[lskovlun]

I'd say that the choice to compile the parser in or out is largely a business decision. It's not like the choice affects the architecture of the rest of SCI much.

[MusicallyInspired]

No, that's what I'm saying. Maybe Ken/management decided they just didn't want a parser in VGA. And that that was the real decision they were giving Scott and Mark.

[Kawa]

I'd say that the choice to compile the parser in or out is largely a business decision. It's not like the choice affects the architecture of the rest of SCI much.

Besides the existence or inexistence of Said spec blocks in script resources. Though I think that was only in SCI11...

[lskovlun]

I'd say that the choice to compile the parser in or out is largely a business decision. It's not like the choice affects the architecture of the rest of SCI much.

Besides the existence or inexistence of Said spec blocks in script resources. Though I think that was only in SCI11...

True enough. I was thinking of SCI1 and the immediate effect of that decision.