Broken Sword 2.5

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Tooms
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Mar 28, 2008 11:36 am

Broken Sword 2.5

Post by Tooms »

Hello scummVM team,

my name is Sebastian Nisi and I'm one of the developers of Broken Sword 2.5. We're going to release the game in the middle of 2008 for PC. In the past and also today we received many mails from Fans asking us about making the game compatible to scummVM. Indeed we love this idea.

What does the scummVM team thinks about this topic? Our programmers would support you with all necessary information.

Please write back in this topic or just write an eMail to sebastian.nisi@baphometsfluch25.de. I appreciate your answer and thank in advance.
jvprat
ScummVM Developer
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Re: Broken Sword 2.5

Post by jvprat »

Tooms wrote:What does the scummVM team thinks about this topic? Our programmers would support you with all necessary information.
As far as I know, this game is based in a custom engine. In order to add support for this game (like for any other), a new engine needs to be implemented for ScummVM. Here are some comments:

- You need to think whether you want ScummVM to be the main platform (so every release of your game will include ScummVM as the binary) or just an alternative (there would be the "official" engine and the "ScummVM" engine: confusing the users and duplicating effort)

- If you want your engine to be included as part of the official ScummVM (benefit: your game will be supported in most of the ports) the engine needs to be open sourced with a GPL compatible license. This could be done either by your team releasing the source code and even working together with the ScummVM team to integrate it, or by releasing the specs and full documentation and someone else reimplementing it (lots of work and effort duplication, unlikely to happen).

- You can do a ScummVM engine as a third party plugin, but you'll have to do a new release for every new release of ScummVM and build it yourselves for each platform you want to support.

Anyway I'm not sure about the policies for including engines for fan-made games into ScummVM, but releasing the engine source as open source would probably be the first step.

Good luck and thanks for your interest!
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eriktorbjorn
ScummVM Developer
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Post by eriktorbjorn »

Another thing to consider is the limitations in ScummVM. For instance, we currently assume that all games use 8-bit colour, i.e. never more than 256 different colours at a time. (Actually, that's not quite true since the mouse cursor can have its own palette.)

What kind of graphics requirements does Broken Sword 2.5 have?

Eventually, ScummVM will probably have to support 16-bit colour since some of the Humongous Entertainment games needs it, but I don't know when that will happen.
Tooms
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Joined: Fri Mar 28, 2008 11:36 am

Post by Tooms »

Thanks for both comments! The second one was very helpful, because our game uses 16,7 millionen colours. In consequence of that an integration in the scummVM system seems impossible. What a pity! :cry:
timofonic
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Post by timofonic »

Never say never! ;)

Not possible now, but it will in the future. It's just a matter of waiting, as some already supported games need 16bit support.
clem
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Post by clem »

furthermore, nothing stops you from hacking 16bit support into ScummVM yourself and using that fork just to run your game
Tooms
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Joined: Fri Mar 28, 2008 11:36 am

Post by Tooms »

clem wrote:furthermore, nothing stops you from hacking 16bit support into ScummVM yourself and using that fork just to run your game
Yeah, right... but I would prefer an official solution on the part of the scummVM team.
fingolfin
Retired
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Post by fingolfin »

Actually, they would need 24 / 32 bit color mode support, if they are using 16.7 million colors.
clem
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Post by clem »

oops, of course
panthael
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Joined: Thu Sep 11, 2008 1:00 pm

Post by panthael »

Hi !! no news about the port of this game ? ^^
clem
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Post by clem »

panthael wrote:Hi !! no news about the port of this game ? ^^
If you carefully read this thread, you'll notice that no work on this is being done, and won't be done (likely for years).

For general questions about Broken Sword 2.5, try http://baphometsfluch25.de/
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