CrafterCMS (Online AGI tools)

[lance.ewing]

Ah, I see. I'd been trying "save game", which didn't work. I'm in the habit of using that, so perhaps that is one of the phrases supported by the original games. Just checked KQ1 and it works in there, but not "save" as it turns out. I didn't want to check your logic scripts to see what was being used, as I'm trying to avoid spoilers for now.

It should definitely help me complete the game, now that I can save. I was previously starting from the beginning each time

[russdanner]

OOF That's impressive! I would expect to be lit up for that.

I will add support for Save|Restore Game to the WORDS.tok

[lskovlun]

It should definitely help me complete the game, now that I can save. I was previously starting from the beginning each time

It took my father and me one year to finish KQ1 because we didn't know how to initialize disks and so on. It was our first adventure game. I would say it was enough copy protection in itself.

[lance.ewing]

OOF That's impressive! I would expect to be lit up for that.

I will add support for Save|Restore Game to the WORDS.tok

I'm up to about 28 out of 40 in the score now. I think I may have hit one of those more tricky puzzles that remain. I have an idea what to do but so far haven't worked out the right word combination, assuming I'm thinking along the correct lines. I will continue exploring and trying things out.

I think as long as the remaining puzzles are not as hard as that infamous reverse alphabet puzzle that the first releases of KQ1 had, then I'll hopefully be finished by the end of the weekend.

[lance.ewing]

It took my father and me one year to finish KQ1 because we didn't know how to initialize disks and so on. It was our first adventure game. I would say it was enough copy protection in itself.

I can't remember now what Sierra game I was stuck on for the longest. I do remember that I finished SQ3 in a single weekend. The puzzles seemed obvious for that one. But for SQ2, it was about two months before I finished it. I don't recall any other "finish lengths" from my first play throughs.

Regarding copy protection, I remember using my original SQ2 disk to get past the copy protection check for an installation of KQ3 that happened to be on the hard disk of a second hand IBM PC XT that we had inherited. No idea who actually installed it but it was my first experience with KQ3.

[lance.ewing]

I think as long as the remaining puzzles are not as hard as that infamous reverse alphabet puzzle that the first releases of KQ1 had, then I'll hopefully be finished by the end of the weekend.

@russdanner, it turns out I was only 20 minutes from finishing the game. I have now completed it and have emailed you a screenshot of the final screen as evidence. I assume you also got the analytics event to say another person finished it.

It was really fun to play. Thanks for all the hard work. I'm looking forward to when the data files are in 100% AGI compatible format so that I'll be able to include it in my AGILE web launch.

[doomlazer]

Does the https://let-them-eat-cake.com/ version include the most recent bug fixes? I'm running into a lot of seemingly obvious issues on Chrome that aren't mentioned on the game's github. I couldn't make progress after the tube control room, but I documented the bugs I ran into up until that point - attached below.

Also, this might be a personal preference thing, but I'd really prefer the messages to use the system font instead of the raster fonts. Seems so out of place.

[lance.ewing]

I couldn't make progress after the tube control room, but I documented the bugs I ran into up until that point - attached below.

I got stuck there for a bit, but then tried to retrace my steps shall we say.

Also, this might be a personal preference thing, but I'd really prefer the messages to use the system font instead of the raster fonts. Seems so out of place.

Yeah, I agree with this. This will be a feature of the agi.js interpreter that Russ forked to use for the execution of the game. This is one of the reasons I'm keen to get the game up and running within AGILE, since, in theory, many of those issues would be fixed automatically by running it in an interpreter such as AGILE, NAGI, scummvm, or obviously the original AGI interpreter.

After seeing your post, I realised that I should also have been reporting bugs to Russ. I saw many of the same bugs that you mention in your list. My assumption is that all the priority issues, of which there are many, is also a "feature" of the agi.js interpreter and not the PICTURE data files, as the priority issues occur in pictures that are obviously copied from original Sierra games. Now that I've finished the game, I have loaded it into WinAGI (as much as successfully loads in, the PICTUREs appearing to load fine) and the priority screens themselves look fine to me. Nothing in them to explain the priority issues in the game. Hmmm... just noticed a few PICTUREs I didn't see during my play through. It looks like I might have to play through again to find those rooms. Apparently visiting them isn't required to finish the game, but perhaps it explains why I finished with only 38 out of 40.

Issue #1 and #2 would also be bugs in agi.js. For issue #4, I assumed that this was deliberate, as it is fairly obvious. I thought that perhaps that captures the nature of sweeping, which sometimes involves moving backwards. - Yeah, I also noticed issue #5. I need to play through again and make a list of bugs... anything I can see that you haven't already mentioned. - Regarding issue #9, I saw in many rooms that certain word combinations that I tried did not have any response at all. In some cases actually, the same word combination worked fine in the room next door, even though the sentence related to what I was carrying rather than what was in the room. - Issue #17 would be related to a bug in agi.js.

I also saw issues in some places where the drawing of certain VIEW cells appeared to be corrupted. It kind of gets drawn static-y, where the pixels are jumbled up a bit.

[doomlazer]

I'm only pointing out bugs Russ may or may not have noticed. These were intended as constructive criticisms from what I saw in my play through. I wouldn't hold it against him if re-writing the message handling was out of scope for this project. Honestly how does anyone keep personal projects in their head with all this work bullshit?

[lance.ewing]

Yeah, I realise that, and I'm sure Russ does as well and would really appreciate the constructive feedback.

I know what you mean about work getting in the way. I envy Russ, as it seems that he's found a way to combine his work and Sierra game development together. It's a nice proof of concept for the CrafterCMS. Wish I could think of a way to incorporate a Sierra fan project into my work 

[doomlazer]

I finished the game. Had to look at the source code to figure out a step in the final puzzle. I probably missed a bunch of stuff considering I never used one of the inv items (not counting the glitched item). Added a bunch of bugs in the file below, but nice work over all.

[lance.ewing]

I finished the game.

Cool!   So that makes two of us now.

Just wanted to double check with other people reading this thread: Are any of you playing through the game? If so, I'll hold back talking about things that might be a spoiler. Or are we free to start discussing parts of the game?

I probably missed a bunch of stuff considering I never used one of the inv items (not counting the glitched item).

Yeah, I missed a couple of points, and when I loaded the game into WinAGI after having completed it, and started looking through the pictures, I can see at least three rooms I didn't go into, assuming they're linked up to the rest of the game map. I haven't started looking through the logic scripts yet, but will do when I get some spare time. Will be interesting to see what I missed.

[r1sc]

It's very weird seeing AGI.js used for... well, anything! It's probably 10 years ago I did any work on it whatsoever. It was left in a very early and bug-prone state and it was eventually left to rot. :/

I touched on the AGI engine again a couple of years ago with TinyAGI, for the Raspberry Pi PICO. That went much further and got pretty much feature complete as I remember it. Seeing AGI.js actually being used kind of makes me want to start "working on it" (read: rewriting it) again though

Btw, from what I remember, AGI.js actually packed the IBM VGA font and the rendered text would look identical to how it was drawn in the original AGI engine. However the message box functionality itself could have had so many problems that the OP was motivated to replace it.

[lance.ewing]

Hey! Welcome back r1sc! I had forgotten that you'd previously posted to the forums, or that I'd replied back then. My memory must be getting worse. Nice to see you back! 

tbh, I had forgotten about agi.js when I started out on the web version of my interpreter, otherwise I would also have considered forking your repo as a potential starting point for what I have in mind as a long term goal. But when CrafterCMS was discovered recently, I thought.. "Oh, yeah... I remember now, trying agi.js out in the past". I had even starred your repo!

A few years back, I started on a pure JavaScript port of my AGILE interpreter (by hand) called agile-js. One of the reasons I didn't end up completing it was that the process of manually converting C# to JavaScript was a bit laborious and error prone.

Then fast forward to around the end of November last year, I had the idea to convert the C# version to Java, as a stepping stone to transpiling to JavaScript using libgdx and GWT, and that went really well. Java is more similar to C#, so I could literally copy and paste a lot of the code and then work through all the bits that needed Java equivalents quite quickly. The cool thing is that the C# version already had a high level of compatibility, and so the Java code also should, in theory, have high compatibility.

Long story short, I could have saved myself several months if I'd remembered agi.js and forked that instead. If you are planning to continue development of agi.js, perhaps in conjunction with what Russ is adding, then I could potentially also help here and there.

[russdanner]

It took my father and me one year to finish KQ1 because we didn't know how to initialize disks and so on. It was our first adventure game. I would say it was enough copy protection in itself.

I can't remember now what Sierra game I was stuck on for the longest. I do remember that I finished SQ3 in a single weekend. The puzzles seemed obvious for that one. But for SQ2, it was about two months before I finished it. I don't recall any other "finish lengths" from my first play throughs.

Regarding copy protection, I remember using my original SQ2 disk to get past the copy protection check for an installation of KQ3 that happened to be on the hard disk of a second hand IBM PC XT that we had inherited. No idea who actually installed it but it was my first experience with KQ3.

Space quest I.. the glass. I was trapped by that for MONTHS!