Runaway - a road adventure

pelayo · Post by **pelayo** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 12:48 pm

Oh, thanks, I think I need to use more the forum search...

TheUltimateKoala · Post by **TheUltimateKoala** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 9:58 am

I parsed the symbols used by the .exe and found that Runaway uses the Bink video API. The libs don't appear to be free.

I don't think that it would be possible to do a backend without re-encoding the videos. Is someone familiar with the bink and licensing world? How would this be possible to do?

clem · Post by **clem** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 10:04 am

TheUltimateKoala wrote:I don't think that it would be possible to do a backend without re-encoding the videos. Is someone familiar with the bink and licensing world? How would this be possible to do?

both Smacker (.smk) and Bink belong to http://www.radgametools.com/ but I think smacker is the older format - now they don't even allow inclusion for smk, so Bink is probably even more unlikely

TheUltimateKoala · Post by **TheUltimateKoala** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 10:12 am

What do you mean "inclusion" ?

clem · Post by **clem** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 10:15 am

TheUltimateKoala wrote:What do you mean "inclusion" ?

the ability to play .smk files from within ScummVM directly

Post by **eriktorbjorn** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 10:21 am

clem wrote:but I think smacker is the older format

Yes, Smacker (256-colour) appeared in 1994, while Bink (true-colour) appeared in 1999. Bink is also the more expensive one of the two.

TheUltimateKoala · Post by **TheUltimateKoala** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 10:23 am

OK. I looked at RAD's website. They have a free tool for converting .bik (Bink) videos into any other video format we have the codec to under windows.

If anyone hypothetically were to:
1) extract the bink videos from the resource files,
2) convert these bink videos into mpegs.
3) make the ScummVm Runaway backend read these mpegs instead of the bink videos in the resource files.

Whom should this anyone ask for permission to?

Post by **eriktorbjorn** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 10:49 am

TheUltimateKoala wrote:If anyone hypothetically were to:
1) extract the bink videos from the resource files,
2) convert these bink videos into mpegs.
3) make the ScummVm Runaway backend read these mpegs instead of the bink videos in the resource files.

4) add support for 16-bit graphics. (There has been some thoughts about that already.)

TheUltimateKoala · Post by **TheUltimateKoala** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 11:32 am

eriktorbjorn wrote: 4) add support for 16-bit graphics. (There has been some thoughts about that already.)

Does this means that ScummVm works in palettized 8-bit mode? (Sorry, I did not look at the ScummVm code yet, re-implementation of the Runaway engine can also be an independant project)

I was actually more concerned by the legal and permission-asking questions. (Apart from redirecting to the copyright FAQ which do not address these questions) What has been done for Revolution's BS1/2 ?

Post by **eriktorbjorn** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 12:44 pm

TheUltimateKoala wrote:Does this means that ScummVm works in palettized 8-bit mode?

The games ScummVM supports use 8-bit colour, i.e. a 256-colour palette. Some HE games use a separate palette for the mouse cursor, though, and some of them would need 16-bit colour to be properly supported.

ScummVM itself normally uses 16-bit colour. This is used for the GUI, many of the graphics filters, and (an ugly hack) the Broken Sword MPEG movies. (The original Smacker movies used 8-bit graphics.)

I don't know the answer to the other questions.

TheUltimateKoala · Post by **TheUltimateKoala** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 12:49 pm

Ok, thanks

Adventureguy · Post by **Adventureguy** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 8:27 pm

Do you have any plans for supporting Runaway in a later version when you now start talking about how to convert the videos and how to support 16-bit graphics of the game? I mean, has someone already asked Pendulo Studios for the sourcecode, or what? Or is this only speculation so far?
Sorry if I jumped to conclusions so early.

clem · Post by **clem** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 8:42 pm

Adventureguy wrote:Do you have any plans for supporting Runaway in a later version when you now start talking about how to convert the videos and how to support 16-bit graphics of the game?

converting videos is exactly like for BS1/2 and Feeble Files
16-bit mode is needed for some Humongous games

none of those two points were touched specifically for Runaway, so I'm not sure this is even considered for inclusion into ScummVM

Post by **eriktorbjorn** » Tue Jul 11, 2006 9:23 pm

Adventureguy wrote:Do you have any plans for supporting Runaway in a later version when you now start talking about how to convert the videos and how to support 16-bit graphics of the game? I mean, has someone already asked Pendulo Studios for the sourcecode, or what? Or is this only speculation so far?
Sorry if I jumped to conclusions so early.

Not as far as I know. I was just pointing out that in addition to all the usual problems, there would also be the problem of adding missing infrastructure to the ScummVM backends. (In this case it's infrastructure that may very well be added anway at some point, but still...)

TheUltimateKoala · Post by **TheUltimateKoala** » Wed Jul 12, 2006 7:44 am

Adventureguy: I was the one talking about it, and I am not part of the ScummVM dev team. I'm just a professional and hobbyist developer.

I just said that I disassembled a little Runaway.exe, and touched the point that they were using Bink videos. After that, I got a little too carried away about the hypothetical legal stuff of porting the engine.

I have no plans of porting the engine in any manner, and I don't think the ScummVM team has either. (this thread is in the Junkyard, after all)

Hope this wipes the confusion away.