The Feeble Files

General chat related to ScummVM, adventure gaming, and so on.

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sev
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Post by sev »

FeebleFiles wrote:Are There any new news about the Feeble Files and ScummVM, any new knowledge about the formats, or some sucess in playing parts of it?
Yes, there is a progres, you may walk a little. No, we don't need any additional knowledge about formats since we know all of them, i.e. we have original source code. Okay, except Bink video, but that's irrelevant.


Eugene
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Post by FeebleFiles »

Oh very nice, are the audio and the soundeffects also working? or are you working on it? do you can put some screenshots online? or some images of your sucess?

That could be very great of you
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john_doe
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Post by john_doe »

I just read on Mike Melanson's blog that the Smacker codec has been reverse engineered. It probably will be included in ffmpeg some day. This would solve the problems with all the videos and animations as they could be used as-is without the need of converting them.
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Post by clem »

as I see it reverse engineering isn't the problem - smacker just forbids re-implementation

clem
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john_doe
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Post by john_doe »

Ah, just read it. Quite sad they won't allow it.
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Post by pi »

I just don't get it why they won't ever port it over to Linux. Or why Game Studios still use this as middleware, considering other, real video formats have progressed so well. Time for an OpenSource XviD-based Middleware, I guess ;)

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Post by john_doe »

The problem with XviD is that it's essentially MPEG-4, and you have to pay royalties to the MPEG-LA if you want to use it in a commercial product. The good thing with Smacker and Bink is that it's 1) royalty free, you buy it and that's it and 2) its APIs are really easy and it's not hard to implement them even into existing code.
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Post by fingolfin »

Let me clarify some things:

Smacker is a company which produces various audio tools, among them at least two video codecs, "Smacker" and "Bink".

The Smacker codec is a 256-color codec http://www.radgametools.com/smkintro.htm. You can't do that with MPEG etc., they simply don't allow this.
Granted, for modern games, you want 16/24 bit color for your videos (which e.g. the Bink codec provides), but back then, you only had 256 colors, and so it made sense to have a codec optimized for that setting. Comparing it to XVID, MPEG-1/2/4, etc. is really like comparing apples and oranges. Or like suggesting to drop PNG in favor of JPG or vice versa... :-)


Additionally, it doesn't matter if somebody REs the Smacker codec (we certainly could have done that by ourselves years ago) -- as long as Smacker (the company) explicitly forbids reimplementations, we won't use any of these, to avoid big legal troubles. That said, if ffmpeg really adds such a codec (which I doubt for the moment), it'll create a quite interesting legal situation. Either Smacker willl bite the sour apple and release Smacker; or else they must take legal actions if they want to keep their rights. This would then either give ffmpeg a bloody nose; or if smacker looses, give other parties (such as ScummVM) a potential opportunity to use code to playback Smacker videos.

The point being here that we do not want to risk those legal troubles, but if somebody is willing to jump the gun, we won't stop 'em, just make sure none of the blood and gore hits us 8).
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olki
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Post by olki »

fingolfin wrote:Smacker is a company which produces various audio tools, among them at least two video codecs, "Smacker" and "Bink".
Actually, the company is called RAD Game Tools.
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Post by fingolfin »

Oops, you are right of course, thanks for correcting me there :-).
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Post by FeebleFiles »

Yeah why you dont say the people who want to play this game that they could convert it via RAD Tools (which is free) to avi.

Can you write a function to use avi instead of smk? it should be possible
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Post by clem »

has been discussed before; you could also convert smk->avi->mpeg which is exactly what is done for the Broken Sword cutscenes

the point is that non-windows people will have a hard time to convert the video files

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Post by FeebleFiles1 »

When are you going to download a new version of ScummVM, with some new parts of the feeble Files, i am also so interested in the new source code

Thank you for your answer in advance
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sev
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Post by sev »

FeebleFiles1 wrote:When are you going to download a new version of ScummVM, with some new parts of the feeble Files, i am also so interested in the new source code
This is something extremely cryptic. What do you mean?


Eugene
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Post by FeebleFiles1 »

Oh Sorry, that was my Error. :roll:

Here the right Form of the above Sentence.

When are you going to upload an new version of ScummVM with some new parts of the game "The Feeble Files", because you say, some things could be played now with Scumm ^^

Regards

Sebastian
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