ZVision status?

[zorkisreal]

Is this engine still in progress for Zork Nemesis and Zork Grand Inquisitor?

Thanks.

[Raziel]

It seems it's part of the Frozen engines right now...but maybe it will be picked up again once the dust of a new release has settled...

[md5]

There is a lot of work done by the original author who rewrote the engine, Marisa-Chan, in his own branch:

https://github.com/Marisa-Chan/scummvm/commits/zvision

He hasn't contacted us yet, AFAIK, so when he's done, his changes will be marged into ScummVM.

[zorkisreal]

Thanks for the info!

[md5]

Update: Support has been announced today
http://forums.scummvm.org/viewtopic.php?t=13787

[Robot_Maker20]

Awesome! It's so great to play these two classics again!

One minor question: the original games had some kind of 3D audio system called Qsound - the source code comments indicate that this doesn't work yet, but are there plans to implement it one day? It's been so long since I played the original games that I can't really remember how it worked; are sound sources supposed to move between speakers when you pan the view around a location, or something like that?

[md5]

Awesome! It's so great to play these two classics again!

One minor question: the original games had some kind of 3D audio system called Qsound - the source code comments indicate that this doesn't work yet, but are there plans to implement it one day? It's been so long since I played the original games that I can't really remember how it worked; are sound sources supposed to move between speakers when you pan the view around a location, or something like that?

QSound isn't supported at the moment. Eventually, it will be supported, yes. There's an implementation from MAME:
https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/ma ... d/qsound.c

There are several examples on youtube on how QSound sounds like. Have a look there

[clone2727]

QSound isn't supported at the moment. Eventually, it will be supported, yes. There's an implementation from MAME:
https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/ma ... d/qsound.c

Keep in mind that MAME is not GPL compatible.

[Robot_Maker20]

Another probably silly question: is it possible to get a fullscreen view in Zvision games? At the moment, scummvm is using my entire screen, i.e. the save-restore bar drops down from the top, but the actual playfield is letterboxed in the centre of the screen with black bars on all four sides. The playfield is significantly smaller than the whole screen in the case of ZGI, and smaller still in Nemesis.

[md5]

Another probably silly question: is it possible to get a fullscreen view in Zvision games? At the moment, scummvm is using my entire screen, i.e. the save-restore bar drops down from the top, but the actual playfield is letterboxed in the centre of the screen with black bars on all four sides. The playfield is significantly smaller than the whole screen in the case of ZGI, and smaller still in Nemesis.

That is how the original worked. The game resources are set for this size, and do not stretch to the entire screen. If we stretch the images to cover the whole screen, they would be severely distorted

[E-Male]

With "black bars on all four sides" is should technically be possible to enlarge the image to use the entire height of the screen (not the entire width (at least on wide-screen monitors)) without losing the correct aspect ratio.
I'm hoping for that option myself

[Robot_Maker20]

I'm sorry, I forgot to mention - my monitor has an aspect ratio of 1.77, so the sidebars are actually added by the screen driver when given a 1.33 signal, not scummvm. The effect was so pronounced, however, especially when playing Nemesis, that I wasn't sure if the game itself wasn't sidebarring a bit within the 1.33 window as well as letterboxing, and Nemesis does seem to do that a bit as well, although ZGI doesn't.

The original Zvision engine was programmed for monitors with a ratio of 1.33, which were pretty much all anyone had at the time, and ZGI uses the full width of the screen, so I realise that can't be zoomed at all on such monitors, and Nemesis only a bit, without distortion or cropping.

The actual Nemesis playfield, however, seems to have an aspect ratio of 1.6. Grand Inquisitor apparently uses 1.85. It seems to me it should be entirely possible to zoom in a lot on this on the widescreen monitors that are now prevalent (Nemesis, in particular, could fit the entire screen perfectly with no sidebars or letterboxing at all on a 1.6 ratio device like most Android tablets and some older laptops/desktops) - although I realise this is straying from a strictly faithful reproduction of the original engine, attempting to play the game as originally designed on a modern machine results in a 1.6 or 1.85 AR playfield letterboxed into a 1.33 window, which is itself then side-barred in turn on a 1.77 or 1.6 monitor, resulting in an absolutely miniscule playable area compared to the available screen. The original engine was clearly a compromise, attempting to produce a 1.6 or 1.85 widescreen panoramic playfield on 1.33 aspect monitors - if anything, the game datafiles are surely more suited to modern wide monitors than to the original 1.33 engine. Would adding a widescreen mode be within the project goals of scummvm? Would it be prohibitively difficult?

[Robot_Maker20]

I'm normally loath to threadbump, but it has been nearly three years. Any chance anyone could take a look at this and see if it's feasible? Fullscreen Zork would simply be glorious. I'd do it myself if I were only remotely skilled enough.