Is The Serrated Scalpel for 3DO Supported on ScummVM?

[philthethrill]

I found a copy of The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes The Serrated Scalpel for the 3DO on Amazon for $16.95 plus $4.95 for shipping. I’m tempted to get it. Will it work on ScummVM? Here’s the link to purchase it if anyone is interested. https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Files-Sherl ... fkmrnull_1

If anyone here snatches it before I do, I hope he or she enjoys it. I don’t mind being on the lookout for another good deal like this one.

[criezy]

Our compatibility page indicates that only the DOS version is supported. And the source code seems to agree with that as the 3DO version is detected but flagged as unstable. But I don’t know how much of it works, if anything, since I am not familiar with that engine.

[eriktorbjorn]

I remember it used to run somewhat (I think actor positions were off, and I never played it more than a little bit past the intro), but it seems to have regressed since then. Now transparency is broken - things are drawn with a black background - and it crashes with a failed assertion as soon as I try to talk to Watson. I'm pretty sure it used to play the animation of him talking.

[CaptainJei]

I remember it working surprisingly well around version 1.8, though I didn't play too far into it. There were no crashing or obvious graphical glitches.

[philthethrill]

That's good to know. Do you know what data files I'll need for it to run?

[eriktorbjorn]

That's good to know. Do you know what data files I'll need for it to run?

As I said, I never gave it that much of a try. But after I had extracted the files from the CD, I just pointed ScummVM to the "HolmesData" folder.

I think the main problem with getting the 3DO version to work with the current version of ScummVM right now is that the DOS version uses 8-bit graphics while the 3DO version uses 16-bit graphics. (Now, I don't think the 3DO graphics were redrawn to take advantage of that, but the filmed sequences of characters talking probably needs it.)

At some point - probably as part of some cleanup - parts of the engine lost support for 16-bit graphics. But I could be wrong about that.

[dreammaster]

At some point - probably as part of some cleanup - parts of the engine lost support for 16-bit graphics. But I could be wrong about that.

That's my recollection as well.. it happened when I switched several of the engines I'd worked on from using their own custom extended surface implementations to using the Graphics::ManagedSurface and Graphics::Screen classes. Since the 3DO wasn't officially supported at that time, and the DOS version still worked fine, I put fixing the resulting transparency issues on the backburner.

[m_kiewitz]

I think the main problem with getting the 3DO version to work with the current version of ScummVM right now is that the DOS version uses 8-bit graphics while the 3DO version uses 16-bit graphics. (Now, I don't think the 3DO graphics were redrawn to take advantage of that, but the filmed sequences of characters talking probably needs it.)

I worked on it back then.
Well, the graphics were stored differently - in 16-bit as well. They do not use more colors, but they are not stored in 8-bit. And yes, the videos need 16-bit anyway.

[a.borque]

Hello!
After playing The serrated Scalpel on DOS back in the 90s I recently bought the 3DO version to enjoy full speech.
Is there any chance this version will be supported by ScummVM in a future release?
If I understand it correctly it was working but support was dropped when cleaning up the code?
Could restoring full 3DO support perhaps be a task for a GSoC-student?
Anyway, I am glad to see both Lost Files games supported!
A.Borque

[dreammaster]

Hello!
Is there any chance this version will be supported by ScummVM in a future release?
A.Borque

Well, seeing this post reminded me that I'd been meaning to fix the problems the surface changeover had introduced for some time, so I spent a couple of hours to fix the transparency problem, the conversation/talking videos, and the display of the map. I've committed them in, so you'll at least be able to get at least as far as leaving Baker st.

Beyond that though, I don't really have any time further to work on it right now. Unlike the PC version of the game which we had source for, implementing support for the 3DO version was mostly guesswork and luck that the game used some standard 3DO specific video/image formats. So all the support for it so far has been guesswork. That's why you'll see bunches of warnings when running the code, and various other glitches like the poorly drawn font, conversation dialogs in the wrong place, and so on. It really needs a developer with a copy of the game to spent some serious time experimenting with the data, and figuring out how the original did things. That's pretty much beyond the scope of a simple GSOC task, since it'd likely end up being an extended laborious task.