Status of SCI games

Pix2 · Post by **Pix2** » Tue May 19, 2009 5:01 pm

We are talking about two different engines here. I'll reserve judgement on how well KQ5 or any other SCI1 game will ever work until I've had a better go at it but as far as I know SCI0's audio is far simpler and the only problem I've had to contend with so far is tracks which don't loop right back to the start. I've played SQ3 all the way through and half of LSL3 on an earlier (and more stable) SVN and it worked fine. I'd be hard pushed to tell the difference to the real MT-32 most of the time. Theres still a few things to sort out but I'm not going to fine tune anything until the SCI code has settled down a bit.

As far as timings go, I leave the adlib running in the background and intercept any calls to play notes if an ogg is found. This definitely isn't good code but it's good enough for my purposes.

A real MT-32 will always be better and the MT-32 emulator is all well and good but neither will be capable of running on any portable system I own any time soon. This has to be a better alternative than adlib.

filipetolhuizen · Post by **filipetolhuizen** » Tue May 19, 2009 6:21 pm

Collector wrote:From the readme of the patch:

The driver will expect the patch file to be named "4.PAT" so you must rename the appropriate patch file for each game to "4.PAT"

Sorry I missed that. Now it works, thanks! But the best thing will be when we'll hear GM/MT32 music in SCI with scummvm.

Seldon · Post by **Seldon** » Wed May 20, 2009 11:45 am

MusicallyInspired wrote: I think before too long we'll be running with perfect MT-32 emulation (which would be far better than any music pack).

I doubt any of currently available (and future too) mobile devices are powerfull enough to handle real-time MT-32 emulation.
Of course digital soundtracks are somewhat limited, but frankly, I prefer to have sound with decent samples without panning effects etc, than squeeky Adlib emulation with those.

MusicallyInspired · Post by **MusicallyInspired** » Wed May 20, 2009 1:00 pm

Suit yourselves. I'd rather have Adlib than a digital music pack. But I love Adlib and I'm pretty particular about the way game soundtracks were meant to be heard. I hope it turns out better than I'm expecting it will. Not that I'm putting down your work, Pix2. At least the MT-32 soundtrack will be experienced by more people now.

maximus · Post by **maximus** » Wed May 20, 2009 6:36 pm

This is slighthly off topic, but I just noticed that my copy of Conquest of the Longbow has a couple extra assemblies in it (VIEW.EXE and PICT.EXE). When I played these games in the past, I never really paid much attention to them, as I just assumed that they have something to do with the game.

Today I tried running them, and it looks like they're actually SCI debugging utilities. I'm assuming the devs are well aware of these, but on the off chance that they're note, I figured I'd mention it.

Here's a screenshot, and I won't post the actual files (just in case it violates rule #0

), but if you guys want them, just shoot me a pm.

MusicallyInspired · Post by **MusicallyInspired** » Wed May 20, 2009 11:10 pm

Wow. Looks very similar to the fan-made SCI Decoder tools (only they viewed VIEWs, PICTUREs, TEXTs, and stuff all in the one program).

Mud · Post by **Mud** » Thu May 21, 2009 12:08 am

Just curious, what version of the Conquest of the Longbow do you have? Did it come in a compilation?

maximus · Post by **maximus** » Thu May 21, 2009 12:28 am

No, it wasn't part of the collection. Actually, I may have jumped the gun.

I've been google'ing around like mad all afternoon trying to get to the bottom of this, and I think I found the answer. It looks to be a russian fan-made tool for browsing resources. I've only been able to find one place that still has it (but I don't speak Russian, so I don't know what's going on there

)

I've been farting around with freesci for a number of years now and was scooping up tools here and there while trying to (unsuccessfully) work on patches to their code. I gave up after a while though, and I guess I still had these files in my longbow folder.

If you want to take a look, the page is here

filipetolhuizen · Post by **filipetolhuizen** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 5:14 am

The music in Larry 1 VGA just got better, but it still has problems. If it could be played through GM/MT-32 would be nice too, as the original game has that option (and so has Larry 3)

Collector · Post by **Collector** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 2:41 pm

LSL1SCI has GM support through a separate patch.

filipetolhuizen · Post by **filipetolhuizen** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 5:00 pm

I know, but it would be nice to make it play MT-32/MIDI music through scummvm rather than adlib, as the own scummvm supports it in other games.

el seth · Post by **el seth** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 7:13 pm

What are the chances of support for the various Quest for Glory games in the future?

md5 · Post by **md5** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 9:37 pm

Well, the QFG games they are SCI games, so they will be properly supported at some point in the future.

Collector · Post by **Collector** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 9:47 pm

md5 wrote:Well, the QFG games they are SCI games, so they will be properly supported at some point in the future.

The first 4 are SCI, QfG5 is not.

MusicallyInspired · Post by **MusicallyInspired** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 11:26 pm

QFG5 is part 3D so it'd probably be more at home at the Residual project......if anyone figured out the engine, that is.