Author Topic: Source Release of SCI Companion?  (Read 31144 times)

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Offline Cryptonomic

Source Release of SCI Companion?
« on: November 25, 2010, 07:51:33 AM »
It looks like SCI Studio was open source. Is that the case for SCI Companion? I'm guessing not since I can't find a reference to it, but I figured I'd ask. There's a lot of neat stuff in the Companion but I also think it could benefit from a few updates. (I'm also wondering if a .NET conversion is worthwhile.)

If the tool isn't open source, is there a reason why not to anyone's knowledge? Is the author still around? It looks like the tool hasn't been updated in awhile. (June 13 2007, according to the site.)

If not, it looks like a better bet is to take the source of SCI Studio and start from there.



Offline Cryptonomic

Re: Source Release of SCI Companion?
« Reply #1 on: November 25, 2010, 08:13:32 AM »
Ah ha! Never mind, answered my own question based on a few other threads here.

So the guy who wrote SCI Companion apparently never made the source available. As far as I'm concerned then SCI Companion should be dead to the community. You can't improve upon it and therefore it will stagnate for lack of ability to implement new ideas.

The source is there for SCI Studio although it's an ungodly mess in some ways. I see there was an attempt to recreate it -- and that source was put on SourceForge. However, it's basically just the same application with a few changes. So it seems like SCI Studio (both EGA and VGA) are the way to go if there need to be improvements.

It's a pity that the SCI tools are in such disarray because I think they do offer a great counterbalance to the complexities of something like AGS. Personally I find the SCI-EGA games a lot crisper than the "realistic-ish" backgrounds of the VGA games.

Offline MusicallyInspired

Re: Source Release of SCI Companion?
« Reply #2 on: November 25, 2010, 11:28:52 AM »
Don't knock Companion, it's far better than Studio in many ways and it's a LOT less buggy. I use it for the bulk of my SCI editing. The only reason I even use Studio anymore is to compile my scripts because for some reason whenever Companion compiles ScummVM gets a stack overflow whenever you launch the game in question. Not that I write games specifically for ScummVM, but it's nice to have compatibility on all fronts.

Studio may be open source but nobody's done anything with it since Brian left and since troflip created Companion. So Companion is still the better tool, in my opinion. Still waiting for someone with some know-how to improve on the source for Studio and possibly finish Studio VGA, though.
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Offline Collector

Re: Source Release of SCI Companion?
« Reply #3 on: November 25, 2010, 01:04:47 PM »
The future of Companion may be a dead end, but until someone makes some progress with Studio, that is a moot point. Who knows if Omni will get anywhere, but at least he is has made some attempts to get things started. Putting it on SVN should encourage others. If you can add to his efforts, by all means, please do so. Any contributions would be appreciated.

One thing that you have to give Brian credit for is that he opened the source for Studio VGA when he realized that he was not going to do anything more with it. Too bad troflip is not around to open up Companion.
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Offline Cloudee1

Re: Source Release of SCI Companion?
« Reply #4 on: November 25, 2010, 02:23:25 PM »
Because scistudio is open source, it has greater potential for growth, true. But in their current states, companion is the better tool. That worries me that scumm especially doesn't like companions compiler because my games are too close on heap to use studios. It's probably a bad sign on the studio front that Phil thought it would be easier to start from scratch when making companion rather than sorting out studio.
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Offline gumby

Re: Source Release of SCI Companion?
« Reply #5 on: November 25, 2010, 03:07:21 PM »
That worries me that scumm especially doesn't like companions compiler because my games are too close on heap to use studios. It's probably a bad sign on the studio front that Phil thought it would be easier to start from scratch when making companion rather than sorting out studio.
So, is there a preference (for heap error avoidance - or for other reasons) on companion vs studio when compiling? 
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Offline Eigen

Re: Source Release of SCI Companion?
« Reply #6 on: November 25, 2010, 05:28:44 PM »
The thing with SCI Studio VGA source-code is that it's written in Borland C++ Builder, which is quite old and costs money. So, to use the code you have to strip out all the Borland GUI stuff and what you're left with is a mess. It'd be better to start from scratch using free IDEs and GUI libraries and use parts that you can from Brian's code.

I might look into it when I get a chance :)
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Offline Collector

Re: Source Release of SCI Companion?
« Reply #7 on: November 25, 2010, 05:58:32 PM »
There are too many free IDEs to ignore. Even Microsoft has Visual Studio Express for free download, even though it does have some limitations. Since Omni started to set it up on SVN, it should be possible to have more than one person working on it.

Ironic that part of the reason that Brian gave it up was the lack of fan games being made with Studio. I feel that would have changed if Studio VGA had been finished. At the time, I was waiting for it to try my hand at it. What would be great would be to have SCI32 to work with, so you could play on modern Windows without an emulator.
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Offline lskovlun

Re: Source Release of SCI Companion?
« Reply #8 on: November 25, 2010, 06:34:26 PM »
The only reason I even use Studio anymore is to compile my scripts because for some reason whenever Companion compiles ScummVM gets a stack overflow whenever you launch the game in question.
I fixed this a few weeks ago.

Offline MusicallyInspired

Re: Source Release of SCI Companion?
« Reply #9 on: November 25, 2010, 07:29:25 PM »
So you did! Excellent! I have no further reason to use Studio anymore. IIRC, Companion's compiling method is much more efficient and space saving than Studio's.
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Offline Cloudee1

Re: Source Release of SCI Companion?
« Reply #10 on: November 25, 2010, 08:45:13 PM »
@ gumby... companions compiled script sizes are smaller that studio's. So there's less heap being taken up by the physical script which gives you more to play with. Especially when it comes to the core scripts, the ones that are always loaded.
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Offline Omni

Re: Source Release of SCI Companion?
« Reply #11 on: November 25, 2010, 11:22:15 PM »
I am very glad Brian open-sourced SCI Studio, I wish SCI Comp was open to as it would have been easier to improve upon that I believe.

If you can do something with SCI Studio in the format it is currently in go ahead, a few people who wrote certain aspects do still lurk around and I have a somewhat working knowledge of it currently.

You can tell going through the code what is his early work just by his style and lack of comments. Other parts are done by others entirely and written in Visual Studio which makes some of it easier to bring up to date(for me anyways).

But like Eigen said the bulk of the code is Borland C++ Builder GUI components and that makes a mess of things.


Offline MusicallyInspired

Re: Source Release of SCI Companion?
« Reply #12 on: November 26, 2010, 12:31:11 AM »
What others are we talking about? I thought Brian was the only one who worked on SCI Studio ever.
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Offline Cryptonomic

Re: Source Release of SCI Companion?
« Reply #13 on: November 27, 2010, 04:16:44 AM »
I am very glad Brian open-sourced SCI Studio, I wish SCI Comp was open to as it would have been easier to improve upon that I believe.

Yeah, I agree. That was more my point: if a community is going to rally around a tool (like SCI Companion), then having that tool not be modifiable any further doesn't seem like the smartest strategy, regardless of how good the tool may be.

Out of curiosity, has anyone asked the original author of the SCI Companion if he had any plans to release source code? I see his web site appears to have a valid e-mail but I wasn't sure how many times he had been inundated with requests (if at all).

Offline MusicallyInspired

Re: Source Release of SCI Companion?
« Reply #14 on: November 27, 2010, 10:21:27 AM »
Troflip used to be an active member of the community way back. I don't remember why he didn't want to open-source it. Maybe because it wasn't quite finished? I don't know. At any rate, it doesn't really matter if one is more modifiable than the other at this point in time because nobody is really making any changes anyway. Although, Omni has been taking a look at the source lately and is making heads and tails out of it, which is exciting.
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