Bioforge Support?

[JustAGamer]

How about support for the adventure game known as Bioforge?
Sure, it may not be a point and click adventure game, but I think this gem is worth taking a look at.

[fingolfin]

If it's not a point and click and adventure game, it won't be supported.

Try dosbox if you are desperate to play it.

[monster99f150]

To say a game must be point and click game is irrelevant. All the old AGI sierra games never had mouse support, NEVER, except for the newer games like Space Quest 3 and Lesuire Suit Larry 2 and others. Yet Games like sq1, sq2, kq1-kq3 have been given mouse support, but were never point and click games originally, yet they are supported by scummvm. Hell scummvm was never designed to play sierra games, but the engine has been implemented. Maybe we shouldn't even call the program scummvm, since it plays alot more than just games running on the scumm engine.

[sev]

monster99f150, those statement discover nothing but your complete ignorance. So let me enlighten you.

Amiga AGI games had mouse support in the original engine; ScummVM is a collection of game engines, and was designed to play any 2d game, and more engines to come, not just those of Sierra; and about the project name, there is a dedicated page.


Eugene

[eriktorbjorn]

To me, what sets the game apart from the ones that ScummVM usually supports is a greater focus on fighting [1], and the use of 3D models. It's possible that it would fit within the Residual project, if that ever gains any momentum and moves beyond its current, single game engine.

Anyway, whether or not a game gets support is rarely - if ever - a matter of simply being reminded that it exists. The games ScummVM support are a result of either the original developers being able to provide the source code, or someone having just the right combination of skill, determination and sheer lunacy to sit down and reverse-engineer it. While searching for information about the game, I did come across some references to a remake project, but the links were all dead so I have no idea what happened to it.

[1] That may be unfair, since my impression is based only on the very early stages of the game, and the manual. I only played it for a little bit before getting frustrated with the somewhat awkward controls and putting it in the "I'll look at this one later" pile. And I guess you could argue that fighting has been part of adventure games all the way back to the Colossal Cave Adventure.

[monster99f150]

monster99f150, those statement discover nothing but your complete ignorance. So let me enlighten you.

Amiga AGI games had mouse support in the original engine; ScummVM is a collection of game engines, and was designed to play any 2d game, and more engines to come, not just those of Sierra; and about the project name, there is a dedicated page.


Eugene

I will prove that your ignorant as well, jut because you have a mouse cursor that is ONLY capable of moving a character around and nothing else does not make it a point and click adventure game. Space quest 1 And others are not point and click and never will be. I dare to be able to complete the game or hell leave the space station without touching the keyboard. Oh yes that's let's see.... You must TYPE commands to play the game! Doesn't sound like a point and click game. Sounds like a game that is played with the keyboard moron.

[KuroShiro]

I will prove that your ignorant as well, jut because you have a mouse cursor that is ONLY capable of moving a character around and nothing else does not make it a point and click adventure game. Space quest 1 And others are not point and click and never will be. I dare to be able to complete the game or hell leave the space station without touching the keyboard. Oh yes that's let's see.... You must TYPE commands to play the game! Doesn't sound like a point and click game. Sounds like a game that is played with the keyboard moron.

By looking at... well... reality, we can see that ScummVM's actual scope is "Graphic adventure games" not "Point 'n click adventure games". Hence why AGI/Hugo/etc. stuff is included but Gargoyle for example is kept as part of a separate project. Bioforge is more of an action/rpg type game.

Also, you might try not acting like a jerk.

[fingolfin]

Folks, please let's try to stay civil, I don't like temp banning people.

[Robot_Maker20]

Regardless of what kind of gameplay qualifies a game for ScummVM, a boundary that has always been a little blurry, a more fundamental limitation is (unless things have changed since I was last here) that all ScummVM games and their engines are 2D and sprite based. Bioforge is 3D; specifically, it's fixed-camera with 3D objects on pre-rendered backgrounds. Though this undeniably places it outside the scope of ScummVM, it also makes it a good candidate for Residual, but for one thing: the combat, which is an argument that has already gone on here for years and I suspect will go on forever. Discussions over whether Alone in the Dark 1 qualifies, due to its relatively sparse combat and decent helping of puzzles, exploration and plot, get tangled enough; Bioforge, I suspect, would be a much harder sell, since a) the ratio of unavoidable combat to puzzles in it is much higher, b) the puzzles and other thinky bits aren't really anything to write home about, c) the combat and action sequences are Nintendo Hard, and d) if they weren't so punishingly hard, the game would be disappointingly short.

Despite all that, I'd say that if someone can be found willing to code Bioforge into Residual, then go for it, along with the AITD series (and maybe even it's obscure descendant, Timegate:Knight's Chase, in the unlikely event anyone ever manages to track down an authentic copy of that) - there are precious few games that really qualify for Residual as it is, and it'd be nice to broaden the list of stuff it supports. Besides, Bioforge is really quite a polished game, certainly very advanced technically for its time (which also makes it exceedingly difficult to get running in dosbox), and its brutal difficulty would not have been so out of the ordinary back when it was published anyway - making games ridiculously hard has been a traditional technique of extending gameplay without running out of space on the storage medium since the earliest text adventures.