Support for The 7th Guest sometime?

arablizzard2413 · Post by **arablizzard2413** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 9:51 am

Is there any chance we might see support for The 7th Guest (Trilobyte/Virgin Games) in the future? The game is entirely pre-rendered video anyway, so it shouldn't be too difficult and it may even be possible to encode it to a different (and smaller) format.

My main reason for asking this is the game runs way too slow on OSX using DOSBox.

raina · Post by **raina** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 10:55 am

Now, as an FMV-puzzler sorta game, do you think it really is in the scope of ScummVM?

JamesWoodcock · Post by **JamesWoodcock** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 5:15 pm

I remember 7th guest very well, although maybe not something ScummVM may support, although would be nice

There was a CDi version, I wonder if the video was better quality than the PC version?

clem · Post by **clem** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 5:24 pm

glidem wrote:There was a CDi version, I wonder if the video was better quality than the PC version?

I doubt it - the PC version was 640x480x256, I doubt the CDi has a higher color palette for FMV, and even the PSX has only 320xsomething resolution

speaking of FMV games, you could just as well ask for support of Rebel Assault

JamesWoodcock · Post by **JamesWoodcock** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 5:34 pm

Is it CDi I am thinking of??? its been a while

I thought it would use MPEG video for compression as it doubled as a movie player as well or have I lost the plot

arablizzard2413 · Post by **arablizzard2413** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 8:28 pm

The 7th Guest had it's own compression (it was the first game to support full motion video or something like that) it wasn't MPEG; I've only ever played the DOS version so I don't know about CDi. The files extension for the videos was .vxd I think (they're inside another file container).

john_doe · Post by **john_doe** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 11:00 pm

The files have VDX as extension and the format is documented in the Xentax Wiki. I made a lame little player for them based on the specs. The engine used in T7G is basically "just" a movie player with a script interpreter thrown in but I don't think T7G or any FMV-only adventure fits with ScummVM.

Btw, when will Rebel Assault be supported?

loki1985 · Post by **loki1985** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 11:38 am

glidem wrote:Is it CDi I am thinking of??? its been a while I thought it would use MPEG video for compression as it doubled as a movie player as well or have I lost the plot

correct. the CDi was effectively just a (custom format) VCD player with menu capabilities. think of DVD with MPEG1

/EDIT: ok, not so true. it even had games which did not only consist of pre-rendered video.

JamesWoodcock · Post by **JamesWoodcock** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 6:06 pm

Ahh thank goodness for that, thanks for the clarification

Laskov · Post by **Laskov** » Sun May 06, 2007 7:07 pm

yes 7 guest support for Scummvm is a great idea.

If you support 7 Guest the support of 11 hours is easy after

md5 · Post by **md5** » Sun May 06, 2007 10:22 pm

"Easy?"
*sigh*

I'll only point you to this:
http://www.scummvm.org/faq.php#AEN67

I think it covers it all

clem · Post by **clem** » Mon May 07, 2007 8:20 am

md5 wrote:"Easy?"
*sigh*

I think he means that 7th guest and 11th hour engines are quite similar or even identical

also note the smiley

exofreeze · Post by **exofreeze** » Mon May 07, 2007 9:43 pm

I dont understand the logic that I commonly see here that states,

"If you guys spend months integrating support for game X, then games Y and Z will be a cinch!"

Does that make integrating X any more feasible in the first place?

SuperDre · Post by **SuperDre** » Fri Jun 01, 2007 7:11 pm

Just asked someone who has both versions (PC and CDi), and he tells me the CDi version is much better.. I can imagine that, since the PC version is only 256 colors, and the CDi version is much more..

3Yenman3 · Post by **3Yenman3** » Sat Jun 02, 2007 4:37 am

From what I read the 11th Hour's engine is a huge overhaul from the 7th Guest's engine, if memory serves me(which it rarely does, unfortunately) the games actually have two almost entirely different engines. If any first person adventure games were added(though I don't see that happening...) it would probably be Myst as the original version is jmore or less just Hypercard displaying a bunch of Quicktime movies(compressed using SuperMatch's Cinepak) and images.