AGInfo 1.40 (MS-DOS, with C source)

[Threepwang]

AGInfo 1.40 (MS-DOS, with C source)
http://pdd.if-legends.org/sierra/aginfo.zip



A utility that detects the AGI interpreter version, as well as the game version. Also detects a large number of corrupted game versions. Probably most useful for game collectors to find out whether they have a rare (i.e. undetected) game in their hands.

Copyleft 1999,2001-2003 by Paul David Doherty <agi@pdd.de>.

*I wanted to introduce you to a handy little tool that seems to be forgotten by everyone. This tool is extremely easy to use. You just have to put the files in the main directory of the game and launch AGINFO.EXE via DOSBox.

*Here is the reference page: http://pdd.if-legends.org/

 

[Collector]

I am aware of it, but have since been using my own tool written in C# that detects game, game version and interpreter version for both AGI and SCI games.

[Threepwang]

Hi Collector! Oh, your tool looks great  Can you give me the link?

However, I'm glad I unearthed this tool, I don't like the work of a passionate programmer to be lost in the mists of time.

[Collector]

I have never released it before as it has been a work in progress and then worked good enough for most of my purposes, so I didn't get back to it. A lot of it I would do differently if I were to start it over, now. There are a couple of things that I had wanted to add, but didn't get to, like borrowing a feature from Gumby's SCI version detector, retrieving all of the interpreter flags used in SCI's RESOURCE.CFG and having it automatically determining the game's main exe for the tool's preview in DOSBox. I could include AGILE for the AGI games. Perhaps I should take up development of it again.

Here it is in its current state. Let me know if you encounter any issues.

[lance.ewing]

Does your tool support more AGI games that the scummvm auto detection? Or are you saying above that you'd incorporate the logic from AGILE for the AGI games? I wasn't certain what you meant.

For AGILE, I basically used a scaled down version of the data in scummvm for game detection. I ripped out all the non PC platforms for now, as AGILE doesn't yet have support for those. I can add detection of them in when it is able to support them. So currently AGILE should detect any original PC AGI game that scummvm can detect, and also any AGI fanmade game that scummvm can detect. I'd be keen to know if there is a more complete set of data so we can cross reference it with what I have in AGILE.

(I'm 100% certain that not every AGI fanmade game will work in AGILE though, as I haven't added some of the non-standard features yet)

[Collector]

It does borrow the hash tables from ScummVM, but probes the interpreter for version info and looks for VERSION files (SCI) and *.QA (AGI) and or readme files for game version. I have added to the hash table for games not  in the tables. If a game is not recognized it will report the hash so it can easily be added to the tables.

What I meant by adding the AGILE is just the binary as a means to preview the selected game on the fly, not so much as incorporating its code. It currently does that with DOSBox, but the interpreter/launcher/bat needs to be specified. When I was still working on it I was thinking about having the tool automatically determine the file to launch in DOSBox. With AGILE I would only need to pass the game's path as an argument to AGILE to launch it.

[Threepwang]

I just tested on the AGI 1.1A version of Space Quest 1 and it works perfectly!



You should continue developing your tool. It is simple and practical. An excellent revealer.

 Thank you very much, Collector

[Collector]

I have added a "Tools" subdirectory to the binary. This contains a copy of Agile and DOSBox ECE with Munt. If the tool detects an AGI game the preview feature will launch the game in Agile. If SCI it looks for the name of the interpreter and reads the RESOURCE.CFG to check the sound driver. It will write a dosbox.conf accordingly and launch the game in DOSBox ECE.

The last piece that I would like to add is for it to get all of the interpreter's flags to list. I have been playing with Gumby's GetConfigTokens from his SCI Version Detector. His tool dumps the flags into one column of a dataview and any embedded notes about a given flag in a second column. For my tool I need to have it output to a string, possibly with flag and note separated by a tab. on the same line. I have managed to git it to output the area with the flags, but flags and notes jumbled up and with some extra junk. His tool uses some RegEx to sort the output of the ReadAllBytes. My next day off I'll look into it some more, but RegEx is not my strong suit.