SCI for ScummVM? Any news from the GSoC student and FreeSCI?

ezekiel000 · Post by **ezekiel000** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 10:18 pm

Also the advantage especially for old games with an interpreter rather than an emulator is that you get a constant and correct speed on faster computers as a lot of older games used the speed of the cpu or programming tricks with timing that work correctly only on the computers of the time.

MusicallyInspired · Post by **MusicallyInspired** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 10:53 pm

All SCI games run just fine in DOSBox. Genuinely fine. I run them in DOSBox on my Pentium 4 and also on my old 486 desktop sitting right next to it and there is no differences in the speed. DOSBox may be an emulator but there are no noticeable speed issues.

Arantor · Post by **Arantor** » Mon Sep 15, 2008 11:45 pm

It depends on the game and the hardware you have handy. I used to have an AMD Sempron 2200 machine running Win98, and later WinXP, but I had to completely max it out to run Worms United properly.

The later games that run in DOS do tend to have slightly higher requirements, I've noticed.

Collector · Post by **Collector** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 5:04 am

ezekiel000 wrote:Also the advantage especially for old games with an interpreter rather than an emulator is that you get a constant and correct speed on faster computers as a lot of older games used the speed of the cpu or programming tricks with timing that work correctly only on the computers of the time.

You obviously have not had much experience with DOSBox. The vast majority of DOS games do fine in DOSBox. While it would be nice to have the SCI games supported by ScummVM, it would still be limited by Free SCI. As I said, at this point (and for the foreseeable future) the SCI games run far better in DOSBox than in Free SCI. ALL DOS SCI games run extremely well in DOSBox. If you are a classic computer game fan, the two most important tools that you can have in your arsenal are DOSBox and ScummVM, bar none.

ezekiel000 · Post by **ezekiel000** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 7:25 am

Collector wrote:
ezekiel000 wrote:Also the advantage especially for old games with an interpreter rather than an emulator is that you get a constant and correct speed on faster computers as a lot of older games used the speed of the cpu or programming tricks with timing that work correctly only on the computers of the time.
You obviously have not had much experience with DOSBox. The vast majority of DOS games do fine in DOSBox. While it would be nice to have the SCI games supported by ScummVM, it would still be limited by Free SCI. As I said, at this point (and for the foreseeable future) the SCI games run far better in DOSBox than in Free SCI. ALL DOS SCI games run extremely well in DOSBox. If you are a classic computer game fan, the two most important tools that you can have in your arsenal are DOSBox and ScummVM, bar none.

I've had lots of experience with DosBox but no experience with SCI games which is why I was talking in general terms rather than specifics.

HelixNRG · Post by **HelixNRG** » Thu Sep 18, 2008 1:42 am

fingolfin wrote:It's certainly possible to compile FreeSCI for a PowerMac, just somebody has to do it. So, no need to wait for a very hypothetical FreeSCI-ScummVM merger to try it on your PowerMac.

If anybody with enough savvy skills can compile programs using XCode, they may be able to do so with the downloadable archive of MacFreeSCI from http://sourceforge.net/projects/macfreesci/. It includes an XCode project, but I couldn't open it with the version of XCode with Mac OS X 10.4.11.

I've never compiled anything in XCode, but I can't imagine it's too difficult to compile a version that's able to run from Tiger and PPCs, but I don't know anything about software development.

The guy behind the project on sourceforge is willing for anyone else to join the project.

- Alex

oduverne · Post by **oduverne** » Fri Oct 24, 2008 11:16 am

Here is the status of Freesci for scummvm:
Input: keyboard and mouse work correctly
Graphics
- Games using 16 colors (SCI0 and SCI01) are shown correctly
- Games using 256 colors show major graphical glitches
- The mouse pointer doesn't use the right colors
Sound
- Digitalized sound effects play correctly
- Music is played using FreeSCI's soft-sequencers (currently broken)

You can grab the sources (gluton repository) on freesci website and compile it for scummvm

SuperDre · Post by **SuperDre** » Fri Oct 24, 2008 7:20 pm

So there's major improvements on SCI.. the 256 color problems are propably something that is fixed easily..

lazylazyjoe · Post by **lazylazyjoe** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 9:34 pm

In response to playing the games on dosbox..
Freesci does a really nice job with its dithering and filtering. Play kq1-sci on dosbox then on freesci. It almost looks like vga on freesci. Dosbox supports graphical filters, but it never looks as nice as it does in freesci.

MusicallyInspired · Post by **MusicallyInspired** » Sat Oct 25, 2008 9:38 pm

Sometimes FreeSCI's filtering abilities work against the style of the game's artist, though. For instance, I'm making a KQ2SCI remake with SCI Studio/Companion and on the backgrounds I make I make trees and parts of the trees are dithered black and brown with random black lines drawn inside as well. This looks perfect in the original form, but with FreeSCI's filtering it looks like a slightly darker shade of brown with random black triangles and lines everywhere making it look not nice but more like a complete mess.

lazylazyjoe · Post by **lazylazyjoe** » Sun Oct 26, 2008 12:12 am

Well, most of what I've played with turned out better. With dithering and filtering, there's always going to be moments where it comes out wrong since it's mostly blending, scaling, and guessing. Plus in freesci, each game is allowed individual settings which helps.
However, I didnt realize there was a fanproject for a 16 color kq2 remake, in sci no less. There's almost no fan sci games, tons of agi and millions of ags,though. Pretty cool!

MusicallyInspired · Post by **MusicallyInspired** » Sun Oct 26, 2008 10:47 pm

Yes, I started it a couple years ago. But doing the whole thing myself takes a while. I ve got quite a bit finished, though.

http://brandonblume.commerceculture.co.uk/kq2.php

There are many screenshots and a couple youtube clips as well.

JemyM · Post by **JemyM** » Mon Oct 27, 2008 9:00 am

From my experience with FreeSCI, Codename Iceman could not be completed. If I remember right, the problem came up when trying to close the hatch during the first submarine run. You are supposed to write "green board" to do so but freesci doesn't accept that command. I tried to get some help on that one but it was over my head. A few months later I started all over again using DOSBox and sucessfully completed the game.

It would be nice to see SCI support in ScummVM. It makes perfect sense now when AGI support is introduced. However, it will take a lot of work.

oduverne · Post by **oduverne** » Mon Oct 27, 2008 12:03 pm

oduverne wrote:Here is the status of Freesci for scummvm:
Input: keyboard and mouse work correctly
Graphics
- Games using 16 colors (SCI0 and SCI01) are shown correctly
- Games using 256 colors show major graphical glitches
- The mouse pointer doesn't use the right colors
Sound
- Digitalized sound effects play correctly
- Music is played using FreeSCI's soft-sequencers (currently broken)

You can grab the sources (gluton repository) on freesci website and compile it for scummvm

Someone is fancy to compile it? I tried with VS2008 but without success. There is a readme at the root of the glutton branch.

Angelus3K · Post by **Angelus3K** » Mon Oct 27, 2008 2:56 pm

KQ6 playable in ScummVM, now thats the dream!