Blinding you with SCIence

Post by **criezy** » Fri Apr 28, 2017 9:44 pm

Explore a haunted museum, hunt a serial killer, mop the floor, descend into madness, find your true love, find your "true love", travel to lands below, solve the Voodoo Murders, rediscover a lost opera - or do it all! The first batch of 32-bit DOS/Windows Sierra adventures are now ready to be tested in the latest daily build of ScummVM:

The Datafiles page has been updated with instructions on how to install these games. If you don't own some, go to our where to get the games page to buy them!

Before you start your test run, please read the instructions on our SCI testing page, and take some screenshots along the way.

If you have been itching to play some of the earlier SCI games, please take this time to run through them again too, as changes to the engine may also affect some 16-bit SCI games!

Important: Please report your testing using this form (as mentioned on our SCI testing page) and not by replying in this forum thread as we used to do. Since we are trialling a new way to gather test results, any feedback is welcome (and this can be posted here).

Have fun!

Post by **criezy** » Fri Apr 28, 2017 10:35 pm

Since there is no OS X PPC build on our daily build page, I have made one today that can be used to test those games: get it here

Build updated on May 14.

Raziel · Post by **Raziel** » Mon May 01, 2017 9:35 am

Sweet!

Bobbin · Post by **Bobbin** » Mon May 01, 2017 11:40 pm

Congrats folks, glad all these years of SCI32 development paid off. Always wanted to play Gabriel Knight 2, seems like now is the time

MrPunchy · Post by **MrPunchy** » Fri May 05, 2017 3:35 pm

any way to use the avi videos in KQVII instead of rbt?

The framerate is better in the avi videos.

Thank you.

Post by **criezy** » Fri May 05, 2017 8:44 pm

MrPunchy wrote:any way to use the avi videos in KQVII instead of rbt?

The framerate is better in the avi videos.

Thank you.

I just asked that question to our SCI developers and the answer I got is:

Mr SCI Developer wrote:The dos-version uses robot, not avi. The way to use the higher framerate video is to run the windows version... They're exactly the same except for those videos.

MrPunchy · Post by **MrPunchy** » Sat May 06, 2017 12:48 pm

Ok, but scummvm only detect the dos version

My king Quest VII is the Spanish version.

Code: Select all

&#91;2017-05-06 14&#58;50&#58;02&#93; ScummVM 1.10.0git3234-gdb17478 &#40;May  4 2017 04&#58;12&#58;26&#41;
&#91;2017-05-06 14&#58;50&#58;02&#93; TAINTED Vorbis FLAC MP3 RGB zLib MPEG2 Theora AAC FreeType2 JPEG PNG 
&#91;2017-05-06 14&#58;50&#58;02&#93; --- Log opened.
&#91;2017-05-06 14&#58;50&#58;02&#93; Using configuration file&#58; legends.ini
&#91;2017-05-06 14&#58;50&#58;17&#93; El juego en '..\KQVII\' parece ser desconocido.
&#91;2017-05-06 14&#58;50&#58;17&#93; Porfavor, informe de ello al equipo de ScummVM junto al nombre
&#91;2017-05-06 14&#58;50&#58;17&#93; del juego que ha intentado añadir y su versión, lenguaje, etc.&#58;
&#91;2017-05-06 14&#58;50&#58;17&#93; 
&#91;2017-05-06 14&#58;50&#58;17&#93;   &#123;"resource.aud", 0, "b025ac511c768b146da7a35fa006353d", 209960861&#125;,
&#91;2017-05-06 14&#58;50&#58;17&#93;   &#123;"resource.000", 0, "51c1ead1163e19a2de8f121c39df7a76", 200764100&#125;,
&#91;2017-05-06 14&#58;50&#58;17&#93;   &#123;"resource.map", 0, "0b62693cbe87e3aaca3e8655a437f27f", 18709&#125;,
&#91;2017-05-06 14&#58;50&#58;17&#93; 
&#91;2017-05-06 14&#58;50&#58;17&#93; WARNING&#58; Failed to find volume for 0.MAP!
&#91;2017-05-06 14&#58;51&#58;44&#93; --- Log closed successfully.

Post by **criezy** » Sun May 07, 2017 3:38 pm

MrPunchy wrote:Ok, but scummvm only detect the dos version

The detection for the KQ7 Spanish Windows version was indeed missing and has now been added. With a new daily build if you add the game it should now propose both the DOS and Windows version (I don't know if the one from today contains the changes, so you may need to wait until tomorrow).

MrPunchy · Post by **MrPunchy** » Mon May 08, 2017 7:40 pm

Thanks! Now scummvm detect the windows version.

TarkinMX · Post by **TarkinMX** » Mon May 29, 2017 7:42 am

Forgive me if this question has already been answered but I'm new to the forum, long time user but first post. I didn't see anywhere any mention of fan games created using the AGI/SCI formats so I don't know if they are a focus for the development team. Anyway, my question is, is there a way to report them? Or would I just use the issue tracker?

Raziel · Post by **Raziel** » Thu Jun 01, 2017 11:26 am

"Known" AGI/SCI fangames are already supported (the ones that are around for some time - albeit sometimes not 100% bug free, but people who play them and report bugs for them will also get them fixed)

New games might not be known to ScummVM (yet), but you can always report them to be included.

TarkinMX · Post by **TarkinMX** » Sat Jun 03, 2017 8:43 am

Raziel wrote:"Known" AGI/SCI fangames are already supported (the ones that are around for some time - albeit sometimes not 100% bug free, but people who play them and report bugs for them will also get them fixed)

New games might not be known to ScummVM (yet), but you can always report them to be included.

The game in question is Space Quest: The Lost Chapter, I can't get any sound to play.

Raziel · Post by **Raziel** » Sat Jun 03, 2017 3:55 pm

Confirmed...my MIDI hardware is picking up signals but no sound is played

Why don't you report it to the bug tracker??

TarkinMX · Post by **TarkinMX** » Sat Jun 03, 2017 11:43 pm

Raziel wrote:Confirmed...my MIDI hardware is picking up signals but no sound is played

Why don't you report it to the bug tracker??

Alrighty then, like I said before, I'm new to the forum and wasn't sure hence asking the question. I'll report it right now.

Bakhtosh · Post by **Bakhtosh** » Wed Jun 07, 2017 3:17 pm

MrPunchy wrote:any way to use the avi videos in KQVII instead of rbt?

The framerate is better in the avi videos.

I noticed some time ago that some CD's of the english Kings Quest VII Windows version v1.65c also have three unused RBT videos in the AVI folder. These are version 4 RBT movies compared to the version 5 RBT movies of the DOS versions of the game. Since they are twice the size of the normal RBT's I rewrote them as version 5 RBT's and noticed that they are 10 FPS (like the AVI's and compared to the 5 FPS of the normal RBT's). I tried them with the english v2.00b DOS Version of the game using DOSBox. But they stuttered unless I used a cycle value of ~20000 which had negative effects during the normal gameplay (distorted sound, firecracke bug).

But now that ScummVM supports SCI32 games I took these 10 FPS RBT's and converted them to AVI's to be used with the english Windows versions of Kings Quest VII. The reason is that these movies have less blocky compression artifacts when the camera moves or changes than the normal AVI's and the audio is also slightly better. The downside is that they are 3 times as big. But with ScummVM this isn't a problem (other than with systems running Win 3.1).

I made two comparison screenshots: Link, Link
From left to right: 10 FPS RBT (converted to AVI), 10 FPS AVI (normal Windows version), 5 FPS RBT (normal DOS version)
Example 1: Frames 264, 265, 266 from Intro, Example 2: Frames 48, 49, 50 from Outro with good ending
Examples scaled up by factor 2 to make the differences more visible.
These are extreme examples since these are parts when the camera moves.

I converted the RBT's mainly for myself. But I thought maybe someone else would also like it...
So I created a patch that patches the normal AVI's of the Windows version to the improved Version: Download
The patch supports the following versions: english 1.51, 1.65c, 2.00b (and maybe 1.4), german 1.51, french 1.65c, spanish 2.00

Latest ScummVM daily build should be used because older builds have problems with some language version/AVI codec combinations.

The improved AVI's can be scaled up by 2 if you switch the "Full" option of the game on. You have to start a game, switch the option on, leave the game to the main menu and then play the intro to make it work. It's the same for the normal AVI's.

The non english versions of the improved AVI's have the same sound as the normal AVI's since I don't have a source with better audio for these languages.

Edit: Exchanged the links to the new AVI's for a link to the mentioned patch to not provide copyrighted files any longer.