[Observation] SCI in Different Countries

[Cryptonomic]

I noticed (what may be) an interesting thing. I created a few mini-games (not even games, really) based off the SCI Studio template and then sent those to a few people in other countries so they could see the general idea. What I seemed to have found was that the games cannot run in those countries.

Now, more specifically, I sent copies to a friend in China, one in Kazakhstan, and one in Zambia. Not one of them could play the game(s). These games run fine here. The error they would get was basically an MS-DOS prompt showing up and the text: "Cannot load resource map." In the case of Kazakhstan and Zambia, they were run on Windows 98 machines. In the case of China, my friend was running on a Windows 2000 machine. (Again, here I can play them on both operating systems.)

I guess part of my observation would be a question: I am not doing something right in order to allow these games to be played? Is there some special step for those games being played outside the country or is there some "other" file that needs to be included? (I did not think SCI needed country codes as part of its compilation into a game.)

(One other point: the operating systems were localized in the case of China and Kazakhstan but I am not sure yet of the case in Zambia. I am also uncertain if the regular Sierra games can be played in those countries but I would certainly assume this to be the case.)

[Brian Provinciano]

They should all run no matter what country you are in. The only difference between early EGA interpreters for games in one country verses another is that some use 128 chars, while some use 256 in their fonts. The original EGA SCI0 games released in North America which were then translated used SCI01 interpreters for the extra chars. Most versions of SCI01 are not compatible with SCI0.

[Cryptonomic]

They should all run no matter what country you are in.

Interesting, and, based on what I have read, I would agree. But I have confirmed today that the games do not work in those countries, at least with the people I have been talking with. Basically I sent them a zipped up game with all files (that works fine here) and they cannot run it there. To a tee, each person in each country gets the same message: "Cannot load resource.map!" I will keep working with them to figure out what is going on.

I know with other programs I have written the country code for a given machine could be important unless the system took account of that when executing. I do not think this is the case here but I will keep trying some things and report back on progress.

[Cryptonomic]

Just another update to this: turns out people in those countries cannot play games like "Conquest of Camelot", "Police Quest II", or "Space Quest III" either. I had them try it and the same message comes up: "Can't load RESOURCE.MAP." This is probably due to some sort of localization code not being present but I am not really sure. Again, these are English machines, which is kind of odd. But there must be something that would cause this. Note that these are games that work just fine here so perhaps Sierra did some sort of internal coding for various country codes or for other aspects. (Granted, this is only three people that I am dealing with but it is three people in totally separate countries, with English localized machines, trying to play games that work just fine here in the United States. I also confirmed that the games work fine in Britain and in Canada.)

[Eero R]

Hmm, on my Windows XP in Estonian they all work fine, and they did with Windows 98 Russian... Maybe it's something wrong with file system...

[Cryptonomic]

[quote author=Eero R