Author Topic: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'  (Read 30785 times)

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Offline MusicallyInspired

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #30 on: December 24, 2010, 04:20:14 PM »
Don't you just wish that some ex-Sierra employee somewhere still has the SCI source code somewhere? Maybe even  the source for a game or two...
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Offline Omni

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #31 on: December 24, 2010, 04:27:09 PM »
Don't you just wish that some ex-Sierra employee somewhere still has the SCI source code somewhere? Maybe even  the source for a game or two...

I just wish I could get it because I know a form of it still exists.

Offline MusicallyInspired

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #32 on: December 24, 2010, 05:25:13 PM »
Where? In what way?
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Offline Collector

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #33 on: December 24, 2010, 06:42:28 PM »
There are a number of them on Facebook. I pay very little attention to my Facebook account, but have seen a number of the ex-Sierra employees there. Al Lowe may be one of the most amenable, but I don't know how much of the programming he did in the SCI era.
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Offline MusicallyInspired

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #34 on: December 24, 2010, 07:21:47 PM »
Heh, in those early games he was credited as doing everything including programming. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean he programmed the specifics of the SCI interpreter itself.
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Offline Collector

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #35 on: December 24, 2010, 08:26:54 PM »
I doubt that he did much of any kind of programming after AGI. But still, he may still know someone who did and he is one of the most accessible of the old Sierra employees.
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Offline MusicallyInspired

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #36 on: December 24, 2010, 09:06:22 PM »
He was credited for programming for all the Larry's up to 5. So he must know something about the SCI language.
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Offline lance.ewing

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #37 on: December 25, 2010, 01:50:28 AM »
I looked through both the 3rd and fourth editions page by page and found nothing. I believe the original KQ book was called something else, but that would have been pre SCI.

I have a copy of "The Official Book of King's Quest", which did indeed have some AGI source code in it. The person who told me that there was SCI source code in King's Quest Companion was an ex-Sierra employee. But I think it was based on a memory that is nearly 20 years old. There must be some basis to it though. When I showed him a snippet of script code from SCI Companion, he asked if some of that syntax came from the SCI snippets shown in King's Quest Companion. It may be that he is remembering the AGI code snippets in the earlier King's Quest book. I'll go back to him and check.

Offline lance.ewing

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #38 on: December 25, 2010, 02:41:05 AM »
Don't you just wish that some ex-Sierra employee somewhere still has the SCI source code somewhere? Maybe even  the source for a game or two...

I doubt that an ex-Sierra employee would release the original source code in a way that would end up making it public. I've been discussing the original syntax with two ex-Sierra employees over the past week and even though they worked very closely with the system, they can't recall the exact syntax anymore. But they've given me a rough idea.

For starters, when I showed one of them a snippet of code from SCI Companion, he said that is definitely NOT the original syntax. He also told me that it was definitely not similar to C in anyway. This means that the method invocation mechanism that SCI Companion uses is wrong (i.e. using () as an invocation mechanism). Instead the method invocation used Smalltalk syntax, in fact it would seem that the language was more a cross between LISP and Smalltalk, but has its own set of keywords (by which I mean that those keywords in SCI don't appear to come from LISP or Smalltalk). Here is an example of syntax that is apparently closer to the original syntax. This is a snippet from SCI Companion that has been modified to use Smalltalk message sending syntax (no guarantees here that it is an exact match to the original but is closer to the original):

   (method (delete)
      (if (& signal $8000)
         (if (& signal $20)
            (gAddToPics add:   
               ((PV new:)
                  view: view
                  loop: loop
                  cel: cel
                  x: x
                  y: y
                  z: z
                  priority: priority
                  signal: signal
                  yourself:
               )
            )
         )
           (= signal (& signal $7FFF))
           (gCast delete: self)
         (if underBits
            (UnLoad rsMEMORY underBits)
            (= underBits NULL)
         )
           (super dispose:)
        )
   )

Smalltalk uses a message sending mechanism of the format:

object method: param

Smalltalk obviously doesn't have all of the LISP parentheses in there, but if we were to add those, then in the SCI language it becomes:

(object method: param)

You'll notice that kernel functions (such as Unload shown above) also do not have the ( ) around the parameters. In think this is where the LISP side of the syntax comes into it. Everything is just a list. The first item in the list is one of the following:

keyword  e.g.  (if underBits (do-something-here))
kernel function  e.g.  (Unload rsMemory underBits)
operator  e.g. (= underBits NULL)
object   e.g.  (gCast delete: self)

If parentheses exist within other parentheses then I think it is more a grouping mechanism rather than a way to pass parameters to a method. So that Unload example above is just (name-of-function param1 param2 etc).

Offline MusicallyInspired

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #39 on: December 25, 2010, 12:25:22 PM »
This is fascinating!
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Offline lance.ewing

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #40 on: December 25, 2010, 03:59:29 PM »
I looked through both the 3rd and fourth editions page by page and found nothing. I believe the original KQ book was called something else, but that would have been pre SCI.

I have a copy of "The Official Book of King's Quest", which did indeed have some AGI source code in it. The person who told me that there was SCI source code in King's Quest Companion was an ex-Sierra employee. But I think it was based on a memory that is nearly 20 years old. There must be some basis to it though. When I showed him a snippet of script code from SCI Companion, he asked if some of that syntax came from the SCI snippets shown in King's Quest Companion. It may be that he is remembering the AGI code snippets in the earlier King's Quest book. I'll go back to him and check.

It sounds like we'll need to find a first edition copy of King's Quest Companion in order to verify this. I went back to double check the title and, although it is possible the title is incorrect, apparently the SCI code was only it the first edition of the book in question. Apparently there was a law suit and all proprietry information was removed from later editions.
« Last Edit: December 25, 2010, 04:01:19 PM by lance.ewing »


Offline gumby

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #42 on: December 25, 2010, 11:34:29 PM »
I doubt that an ex-Sierra employee would release the original source code in a way that would end up making it public. I've been discussing the original syntax with two ex-Sierra employees over the past week and even though they worked very closely with the system, they can't recall the exact syntax anymore. But they've given me a rough idea.

I think it's great that you've got a discussion going with previous Sierra employees regarding syntax of the language.  What an opportunity to get with those that were involved!
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Offline lance.ewing

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #43 on: December 26, 2010, 01:17:52 AM »
It sounds like we'll need to find a first edition copy of King's Quest Companion in order to verify this. I went back to double check the title and, although it is possible the title is incorrect, apparently the SCI code was only it the first edition of the book in question. Apparently there was a law suit and all proprietry information was removed from later editions.

I've just reread what was said. The law suit was not in relation to the publisher of the book. Instead what happened is that Sierra sued another games company (presumably for building games like theirs) and the other company used the book in its defence claiming that the book is evidence that Sierra's technology was not completely protected. - Presumably this was a reason why the proprietary information was removed from later editions.

Offline MusicallyInspired

Re: Vocab.900 - The 'Black Box'
« Reply #44 on: December 26, 2010, 08:39:52 AM »
Probably Accolade and their very similar adventure games (Altered Destiny and Les Manley: Search for the King). Sierra totally sued them back in the day.
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