Status of SCI games

yeah yeah · Post by **yeah yeah** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 2:47 pm

any 'support' for any SCI games in the daily builds yet? or is that something for way later?

Graxer · Post by **Graxer** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 6:03 pm

yeah yeah wrote:any 'support' for any SCI games in the daily builds yet? or is that something for way later?

Using the daily builds there are many SCI games that are playable. Some games, for instance like EcoQuest 1, are even fully completable now. (Except you have to use the keyboard to enter the code on the door at the beginning, the mouse won't click on the keys.)

EDIT: Actually, upon testing it again EcoQuest's support is much worse than it was. It was almost flawless in the past, and now many of the graphics aren't loading. This sort of thing happens sometimes if you follow the daily builds.

MusicallyInspired · Post by **MusicallyInspired** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 6:31 pm

I noticed that the disk version of KQ5 (VGA version) is unplayable. It works fine until you try to click to walk somewhere and then it just crashes. Haven't tried the EGA or CD versions yet. I wonder if it'll be a similar issue.

md5 · Post by **md5** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 6:50 pm

Yes, it's an issue with some weird code in the script parser (variables were casted back and forth), it'll be fixed soonish

bobablob · Post by **bobablob** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 7:05 pm

A number of classics are playable (and extremely enjoyable), although you'll run into some bugs here and there. For instance, the first two or three sections of Space Quest III appear to be completely error free (I can even hear sound effects now that I don't remember playing through the speaker on my old Epson PC). But then when you get to Astroburger, you can't walk left, as though some sort of invisible wall is blocking the way.

Same bug occurs in Quest For Glory 1. Strangely enough, I haven't had this problem in the latter SCI games (such as Space Quest IV, King's Quest V, etc.)

yeah yeah · Post by **yeah yeah** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 10:18 pm

is there an available list of SCI games that are supported...even if it does crash or not?

downloaded the latest build on my iphone 3gs, want to give it a shot.

KuroShiro · Post by **KuroShiro** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 2:05 am

bobablob wrote:A number of classics are playable (and extremely enjoyable), although you'll run into some bugs here and there. For instance, the first two or three sections of Space Quest III appear to be completely error free (I can even hear sound effects now that I don't remember playing through the speaker on my old Epson PC). But then when you get to Astroburger, you can't walk left, as though some sort of invisible wall is blocking the way.

Same bug occurs in Quest For Glory 1. Strangely enough, I haven't had this problem in the latter SCI games (such as Space Quest IV, King's Quest V, etc.)

Yeah, there are a lot of small walkmap errors that pop up in the older SCI0 games, but since the games aren't really supported yet I doubt they want any bug reports. I would say though that fixing that and perfecting the music support are the only things standing in the way of SCI0 games being pretty much supported (though I've only played around with about half of them).

md5 · Post by **md5** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 6:56 am

The script parser bug should be fixed now

MusicallyInspired · Post by **MusicallyInspired** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 3:47 pm

Nice! Works all the way up to Mordack's Maze now.

l3l3l5l · Post by **l3l3l5l** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 3:50 pm

Though "%sierra title here% collection"s are not a perfect choice for ultra hardcore fans - still it is a good thing you can buy these at http://www.direct2drive.com/ and try them in scummvm. Thank you guys for doing this work.

Graxer · Post by **Graxer** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 4:44 pm

yeah yeah wrote:is there an available list of SCI games that are supported...even if it does crash or not?

downloaded the latest build on my iphone 3gs, want to give it a shot.

Sadly, I dont think there is at the moment, but here are the ones I have that work:

Space Quest I (VGA)
Space Quest III
Space Quest IV
Space Quest V
Space Quest 6 (Detected, but SCI32, so doesn't start yet)
Astro Chicken
King's Quest VII (Detected, but SCI32, so doesn't start yet)
Torin's Passage (Detected, but SCI32, so doesn't start yet)
EcoQuest 1
EcoQuest 2
Island of Dr Brain

EDIT: Actually, here is a full list of detected games (from the source code):

Astro Chicken
Christmas Card 1988
Christmas Card 1990: The Seasoned Professional
Christmas Card 1992
Castle of Dr. Brain
Codename: Iceman
Conquests of Camelot: King Arthur, Quest for the Grail
Conquests of the Longbow: The Adventures of Robin Hood
EcoQuest: The Search for Cetus
EcoQuest II: Lost Secret of the Rainforest
Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist
Fun Seeker's Guide
Hoyle Official Book of Games: Volume 1
Hoyle Official Book of Games: Volume 2
Hoyle Official Book of Games: Volume 3
Hoyle Classic Card Games
Jones in the Fast Lane
King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown
King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella
King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder
King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow
Laura Bow: The Colonel's Bequest
Laura Bow 2: The Dagger of Amon Ra
Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards
Leisure Suit Larry 2: Goes Looking for Love (in Several Wrong Places)
Leisure Suit Larry 3: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals
Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work
Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out!
Crazy Nick's Software Picks: Leisure Suit Larry's Casino
Mixed-up Fairy Tales
Mixed-Up Mother Goose
Ms. Astro Chicken
Pepper's Adventure in Time
Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel
Police Quest II: The Vengeance
Police Quest III: The Kindred
Quest for Glory I: So You Want to Be a Hero
Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire
Quest for Glory III: Wages of War
Slater & Charlie Go Camping
Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter
Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon
Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers
Space Quest V: The Next Mutation
The Island of Dr. Brain
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers
The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery
King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride
Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail!
Lighthouse: The Dark Being
Phantasmagoria
Phantasmagoria II: A Puzzle of Flesh
Police Quest IV: Open Season
Police Quest: SWAT
Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness
RAMA
Shivers
Shivers II: Harvest of Souls
Space Quest 6: The Spinal Frontier
Torin's Passage

Morden · Post by **Morden** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 6:23 pm

I tested ScummVM 1.0.0 with King's Quest VI and it actually does work, but the glitches are plentiful, so I'll stick to DOSBox for now.

Strange thing, though. While the opening animation flickers in DOSBox, it works fine in ScummVM - But, in ScummVM, item windows will flicker like crazy. Just start the game and lift the wooden plank in the very first location. Once you click on the revealed box, a window will pop and that's when the seizure inducing flickering starts.

Walk along the path towards the next location, and you'll see that the background elements overlay Alexander at times. I didn't play past the second location, but I'm guessing the emulation still needs work, thus there isn't even a compatibility percentage listed.

Mataku · Post by **Mataku** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 7:44 pm

^ yes there are major problems with character scaling in KQ6, Alexander stays the same size everywhere he goes (hilarious when you walk to the castle XD), also when you go to the dock you can't click on anything, you get the same game message every time, no matter what you do, also you can't leave the location unless you use the ENTER key to press. you can't save (that is, you CAN save, but trying to load will crash the program). In other words, a lot of work to be done

MusicallyInspired · Post by **MusicallyInspired** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 8:41 pm

Then there's all the different versions of each SCI game as well. Disk versions, CD versions, EGA versions. All the SCI10 games have EGA versions, actually. This was before Sierra created the EGA640.DRV 16-colour dithering driver in twice the resolution. They actually made separate EGA versions of VGA games that you could send away the original diskettes for with a form and they'd send back the EGA version disks to you. We had to do this on all our games because we only had a Tandy 1000 at the time. All the games that have corresponding EGA versions:

King's Quest 5
Space Quest 4
Police Quest 3
Space Quest 1 Remake
Leisure Suit Larry 5
Leisure Suit Larry 1 Remake
Jones in the Fast Lane
Conquests of the Longbow
Castle of Dr. Brain
Hoyle Games Volume 3
Eco Quest 1 (most likely since it has an SCI10 version)

There might be a couple more I'm not remembering. And then there's the games with CD and disk versions which contain differences like SQ4's Radio Shock/Hz. So Good, KQ5's redesigned icon bar, and KQ6's alternate GUI colour scheme (yellow and purple as opposed to pink(ish) and purple).

This post has no point really, just spewing out facts

.

Morden · Post by **Morden** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 11:01 pm

I'm really hoping that one of these days we'll see full support for SCI32, since right now running King's Quest VII is simply a pain. It's a shame Sierra was so cheap when they published the Collections.

All the DOS games ran through DOSBox and King's Quest VII was left exactly as it was in the original - No effort was made to make it more compatible [you still have to force the 256 color mode, etc.].

Bugs aside, I'm still really impressed that ScummVM has come so far. I never really thought that Sierra games would be supported by the project.

I also tested Freddy Pharkas, but kept getting an annoying error on every click.

By the way, is AGI & SGI support implemented solely thanks to reverse engineering? Sierra wouldn't be kind enough to help out here, would they? After all, they could benefit from this, as having engine level support is obviously much better than DOSBox solution.