lazylazyjoe wrote:Here's some numbers...
The standard IBM cards were 80x12, so that's 960 punches/bits per card. That would take 786,097,767 to fill a standard cd. Stacked directly on top of each other they would stand 86.85 miles high.
A largish clay tablet inscribed with cuneiform could hold about 300 lines of text. Twelve such tablets are required for the Epic of Gilgamesh, too many to carry by hand (unless in a box or basket). A Torah scroll has many times more text and can more easily be carried by hand, although you might break some toes if you dropped it. Printed in a modern book, Gilgamesh is barely a pamphlet and the latter is now part of a much larger collection that still can be put in your pocket. And if put on a CD, neither would take up more than a small fraction of the available space.
Do you ever get the impression that, at it's simplest, all human inventiveness is mainly directed at just cramming more and more information into smaller and smaller spaces?
[Way off topic, last time I promise]
The compacted information is needed as we are at a point in history where everything is being documented all the time. With sattelite imagery storing what the earth looks like every second, we'll be able to go back and look at any spot on earth, in any point in history. Everyone is writing their everyday experiences with blogging and tweeting and the Waybackmachine is keeping track. And just about everyone puts their photos online, so we'll be able to see what everybody looked like and what they did their entire life. Finally Wikipedia is attempting to have something written about everything that existed at anytime.
Pretty soon those 20nm wide transistors and 3 trillion bits per square inch won't be small enough for us to keep track of all this massive data input. It's a fruitless attempt to try to quantify every little detail relating to us.
[Back on topic]
Ahh,... what was the topic again? Something about Space Quest?
Yeah, well, there is a kind of relevance to the topic. With all the different ways of storing data historically, there's always been the problem of conversion: different media, different encoding systems. Written texts are relatively easy because writing is writing whether it's on clay tablets or a computer, and language is language; but machine code is a different kind of thing and when code is written, generally nobody is thinking about preservation and conservation; that is more or less what ScummVM is about (even if maybe the devs don't seem themselves that way) but there are big hurdles I don't think most people appreciate. Hence my own impatience with people who are impatient with the progress on SCI.
MeddlingMonk wrote:Hence my own impatience with people who are impatient with the progress on SCI.
Especially when most of them run so easily in DOSBox. Since I don't play games on any handheld devices, the only SCI games that I am looking forward to on ScummVM are the few SCI games where DOSBox is not a solution for, like the few that the Windows version is far more desirable (KQ6) than the DOS version and the Windows only games (Shivers, Phant2, etc.). Of these KQ6 is the most likely one to be realized in the foreseeable future. I can wait, too.
I would imagine that the greater purpose of the project IS the presevation of the games, and getting to play them is sort of, an added bonus. Kind of like the view the MAME team has.
By updating the game engines to be compatable with current OSs/Platforms, it's just like translating an old text from an old language that isn't spoken anymore like Sumerian (Dos), into the current ones like English\Spanish (Win\iphone,etc.).
However, I'm not on the team, and each team member has his/her own vision so that is just my take.
lazylazyjoe wrote:I would imagine that the greater purpose of the project IS the presevation of the games, and getting to play them is sort of, an added bonus. Kind of like the view the MAME team has.
By updating the game engines to be compatable with current OSs/Platforms, it's just like translating an old text from an old language that isn't spoken anymore like Sumerian (Dos), into the current ones like English\Spanish (Win\iphone,etc.).
However, I'm not on the team, and each team member has his/her own vision so that is just my take.
That is quite close to the truth, actually. The other reason is because developers in this project like the overall process, i.e. breaking a game apart and understanding how it works
lazylazyjoe wrote:By updating the game engines to be compatable with current OSs/Platforms, it's just like translating an old text from an old language that isn't spoken anymore like Sumerian (Dos), into the current ones like English\Spanish (Win\iphone,etc.).
Its like decrypting and understanding some ancient foreign hieroglyphs made by natives and translating it into some universal open language.
SuperDre wrote:And how is the SCI coming along now? are most old games fully supported now or are still a lot of games not yet playable?
It's coming along nicely (that is, SCI0-SCI11, not SCI2+), but it still lacks things and needs quite a lot of playtesting before it can be considered stable and ready to be announced
SuperDre wrote:And how is the SCI coming along now? are most old games fully supported now or are still a lot of games not yet playable?
It's coming along nicely (that is, SCI0-SCI11, not SCI2+), but it still lacks things and needs quite a lot of playtesting before it can be considered stable and ready to be announced
thoughts on how the iPhone version is coming with sci?
md5 wrote:Too early to say, we don't know, try it and see
I'm doing that now
I just gave a quick smoke test on my iMac with QFG 1 (both versions), they both loaded up and brought me to the menu system.QFG II & III were both identified as valid games too.
I'm loading the iPhone version up now to give that a whirl.
by the way, anyone else as excited for the iPad & ScummVM? I really hope a compatible version comes along. PERFECT screen size.
wow. i got an iphone 3gs (32gb), and JUST uploaded the latest daily build.
you have to give it about 20-30 seconds for it to start up. at first i thought it was frozen, but then it picked up.
i just tried out the following:
QFG1 - very slow. as soon as i got past the intro, i went to the character selection screen, then it just took forever. took longer than i expected, had to force a reboot.
QFG3 - started off slow, thought it froze. then i was able to get to the character selection screen...but it froze
KQ5 - started slow, then i was able to get into the game. had a couple of issues trying to adjust the settings. didnt seem to respond to my double tab to change the speed setting. but left and right clicked worked fine. a little slow...but it's "working" now. may even be playable.
SQ4 - started just fine. but when i skipped the intro to go straight into the game, it froze up and ended up resetting my iphone.
...but this is showing progress. in the past, i couldnt get pass the sierra logo.
Folks, I know you mean well, and you can test the SCI engine all you want, you are welcome to.
But we don't really need any reports on issues (or success, for that matter) with it . We are aware of tons of issues already- probably aware of far more than you can even *notice* with simple playtesting . ,And people are working on fixing many of them, it just takes time.
We'll post an official announcement once we are looking for active testers.
This is one of the bigger threads in the forum and many people are interested in all aspects of the SCI portion of the program. Plus, the SCI thread in the iPhone forum doesn't get any responses at all, so I don't see the harm in the discussion.
and translating it into some universal open language.
