You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike

[scoriae]

I'm going through trying to detect my various games. I'll post any errors below.


AdvSys:

The game in 'Elves '87\' seems to be an unknown game variant.

Matched game IDs for the glk engine: advsys

{"ELVES.DAT", 0, "6f274cff52b819915d4dffdf7a34f035", 78971},

[Raziel]

@scoriae

It would be better to add it to the bug tracker.

[scoriae]

ok

[dreammaster]

thank you

No, turns out I was wrong. Looks like the Magnetic interpreter written by Niclas Karlsson, that was used for Gargoyle, doesn't support those game versions at all, sorry. Maybe that's something that can be looked into some time in the future.

[scoriae]

A second question. I was looking at some of the other engines, and came across the Archetype games. Two of the games are listed at the authors github.
https://github.com/gitosaurus/archetype ... type/games

One is "Guess the Animal" and the other is "Bare bones adventure". However, these appear to be uncompiled versions. There are no instructions on these files at all, as to how to make them useable. Any tips? And if they are free;y distributable, is it possible that once compiled they could be hosted either directly or in a compiled format? I imagine the typical scummvm user isn't keen on compiling ach files into acx files.


edit:
It appears Jinxter currently identifies as "Magnetic Scrolls Game"

The game in 'Jinxter (Floppy DOS)\' seems to be an unknown game variant.

Please report the following data to the ScummVM team at https://bugs.scummvm.org/ along with the name of the game you tried to add and its version, language, etc.:

Matched game IDs for the glk engine: magnetic

{"jinxter.mag", 0, "998cf5c49a67409bd344e59307a5213e", 156458},


This is using the specific version of Jinxter that Niclas Karlsson supports. I tested it with the magnetic interpreter.



Comprehend:
Transylvania III - Vanquish the Night does not recognize as a game at all. I tried both with the original directory structure and dropping all files into the same folder.
Oo-Topos recognizes but doesn't start
The Coveted Mirror: As there is no documentation yet, would you mind telling me the disk name that scummvm would like to see for the Apple II disk images? I tried COVETEDA and COVETEDB with no luck. It was a shot in the dark. I looked at the detection tables in the github, and maybe this game isn't set up yet? I saw nothing for it listed there... but I'm totally new to trying to read those files, so i may have missed something.

JACL:
Looks like several games have no detection mechanism yet here either. I'm afraid maybe I'm getitng ahead of things and not providing useful information at this point.

[scoriae]

One last post for now. Champion of the Raj is listed under the Level 9 engine games.... however it is far from a text adventure. It is an action\strategy title. It isn't going to be supported, is it?

https://www.mobygames.com/game/champion-of-the-raj

[dreammaster]

A second question. I was looking at some of the other engines, and came across the Archetype games. Two of the games are listed at the authors github.
https://github.com/gitosaurus/archetype ... type/games

One is "Guess the Animal" and the other is "Bare bones adventure". However, these appear to be uncompiled versions. There are no instructions on these files at all, as to how to make them useable. Any tips? And if they are free;y distributable, is it possible that once compiled they could be hosted either directly or in a compiled format? I imagine the typical scummvm user isn't keen on compiling ach files into acx files.

The games are freely available from the If-Archive, so can download them directly from there.

edit:
It appears Jinxter currently identifies as "Magnetic Scrolls Game"

The game in 'Jinxter (Floppy DOS)\' seems to be an unknown game variant.

Please report the following data to the ScummVM team at https://bugs.scummvm.org/ along with the name of the game you tried to add and its version, language, etc.:

Matched game IDs for the glk engine: magnetic

{"jinxter.mag", 0, "998cf5c49a67409bd344e59307a5213e", 156458},


This is using the specific version of Jinxter that Niclas Karlsson supports. I tested it with the magnetic interpreter.

Added.

Comprehend:
Transylvania III - Vanquish the Night does not recognize as a game at all. I tried both with the original directory structure and dropping all files into the same folder.
Oo-Topos recognizes but doesn't start
The Coveted Mirror: As there is no documentation yet, would you mind telling me the disk name that scummvm would like to see for the Apple II disk images? I tried COVETEDA and COVETEDB with no luck. It was a shot in the dark. I looked at the detection tables in the github, and maybe this game isn't set up yet? I saw nothing for it listed there... but I'm totally new to trying to read those files, so i may have missed something.

As per this Wiki page, the Comprehend engine is currently only planned for now to target the four earliest games: Transylvania, The Crimson Crown, OO-Topos, and Talisman. Of them, the only first two are compleable at this time; the other two still need major work. Because of this, it's being left as unstable, and not being considered as supported for the upcoming release.

JACL:
Looks like several games have no detection mechanism yet here either. I'm afraid maybe I'm getitng ahead of things and not providing useful information at this point.

That's the trouble with the if-archive. the /games/jacl folder only has a single entry. I only recently discovered that there are plenty of games for various systems in the yearly competition folders. So the detection lists are still being fleshed out, with the kind assistance of Raziel.

One last post for now. Champion of the Raj is listed under the Level 9 engine games.... however it is far from a text adventure. It is an action\strategy title. It isn't going to be supported, is it?

ScummVM has long supported other game types from publishers, so long as they use an existing engine (either entirely, or with only minimal changes). I don't have the game to test myself, but so long as it works in the Level9 sub-engine, there's no reason not to leave it present.

[scoriae]

A second question. I was looking at some of the other engines, and came across the Archetype games. Two of the games are listed at the authors github.
https://github.com/gitosaurus/archetype ... type/games

One is "Guess the Animal" and the other is "Bare bones adventure". However, these appear to be uncompiled versions. There are no instructions on these files at all, as to how to make them useable. Any tips? And if they are free;y distributable, is it possible that once compiled they could be hosted either directly or in a compiled format? I imagine the typical scummvm user isn't keen on compiling ach files into acx files.

The games are freely available from the If-Archive, so can download them directly from there.

The two I mentioned aren't. The two I mentioned are listed as available from the authors github, just as I linked above.

edit:
It appears Jinxter currently identifies as "Magnetic Scrolls Game"

The game in 'Jinxter (Floppy DOS)\' seems to be an unknown game variant.

Please report the following data to the ScummVM team at https://bugs.scummvm.org/ along with the name of the game you tried to add and its version, language, etc.:

Matched game IDs for the glk engine: magnetic

{"jinxter.mag", 0, "998cf5c49a67409bd344e59307a5213e", 156458},


This is using the specific version of Jinxter that Niclas Karlsson supports. I tested it with the magnetic interpreter.

Added.

Great, thank you!

Comprehend:
Transylvania III - Vanquish the Night does not recognize as a game at all. I tried both with the original directory structure and dropping all files into the same folder.
Oo-Topos recognizes but doesn't start
The Coveted Mirror: As there is no documentation yet, would you mind telling me the disk name that scummvm would like to see for the Apple II disk images? I tried COVETEDA and COVETEDB with no luck. It was a shot in the dark. I looked at the detection tables in the github, and maybe this game isn't set up yet? I saw nothing for it listed there... but I'm totally new to trying to read those files, so i may have missed something.

As per this Wiki page, the Comprehend engine is currently only planned for now to target the four earliest games: Transylvania, The Crimson Crown, OO-Topos, and Talisman. Of them, the only first two are compleable at this time; the other two still need major work. Because of this, it's being left as unstable, and not being considered as supported for the upcoming release.

Understood.

JACL:
Looks like several games have no detection mechanism yet here either. I'm afraid maybe I'm getting ahead of things and not providing useful information at this point.

That's the trouble with the if-archive. the /games/jacl folder only has a single entry. I only recently discovered that there are plenty of games for various systems in the yearly competition folders. So the detection lists are still being fleshed out, with the kind assistance of Raziel.

Yea, I was going off the webapge here:
https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?titl ... s/Glk#JACL

So the games I have been trying are all from those lists

One last post for now. Champion of the Raj is listed under the Level 9 engine games.... however it is far from a text adventure. It is an action\strategy title. It isn't going to be supported, is it?

ScummVM has long supported other game types from publishers, so long as they use an existing engine (either entirely, or with only minimal changes). I don't have the game to test myself, but so long as it works in the Level9 sub-engine, there's no reason not to leave it present.

I have no problem with it being supported, I was just surprised to see a game using that engine that was so different. Currently it doesn't recognize at all, and it's file format is incredibly different from the other Level9 games.

[dreammaster]

The two I mentioned aren't. The two I mentioned are listed as available from the authors github, just as I linked above.

I'll have to look into them, then.

I have no problem with it being supported, I was just surprised to see a game using that engine that was so different. Currently it doesn't recognize at all, and it's file format is incredibly different from the other Level9 games.

Ah, sorry, I didn't properly understand. Then yes, I'll remove the game's detection entry.

[Raziel]

@dreammaster

Will c64 floppy images (.d64) be supported too?
ifarchive.org features some games on this format and i'm not able to extract the files from those images.

I saw that the scumm engine supports maniac and zak .d64 images, but they need to be renamed.
So, i was wondering if such a feature already exists and if so, what name needs to be given?

Otherwise i'll post the image links in question to the unkown games list, if you need them?

[dreammaster]

Will c64 floppy images (.d64) be supported too?
ifarchive.org features some games on this format and i'm not able to extract the files from those images.

No, not unless the d64 games in question share a common engine that can be re-implemented in code, and just use the d64 files for their game scripts/data. Otherwise, the only way to support them would be to add a full-blown Commodore 64 emulator, which would be against the spirit of ScummVM. At that point, we'd have people asking us why we weren't adding DosBox so PC games could be played.

[Raziel]

@dreammaster

Hmm, ok, do you know if the infocom c64 releases share a common engine?

Hehehe, I'll add myself and ask if you could support "basic language" adventures

Thank you

edit: Ok, seems not possible to add.
Most games i own come with some kind of bootloader which exist as file on the floppy disk, but the rest of the data is "hidden".

[dreammaster]

@dreammaster

Hmm, ok, do you know if the infocom c64 releases share a common engine?

Hehehe, I'll add myself and ask if you could support "basic language" adventures

Thank you

edit: Ok, seems not possible to add.
Most games i own come with some kind of bootloader which exist as file on the floppy disk, but the rest of the data is "hidden".

No problem. In theory, since the Infocom games were based on a standardized bytecode, they could be extracted. But if they're present as hidden data rather than a standard file that could be extracted, it'd be unfeasible to figure out how to extract the data for each game. Easier to simply get a PC compilation like Masterpieces or Lost Treasures.

[Raziel]

@dreammaster

Thank you

I'll re-check all my disks, once I have finished the glk variants lists.

If I find one with usable data on it I'll pass the information to you.

[Lillesvamp]

scummvmglk.png (224.59 KiB) Viewed 3788 times

I played around with changing the size of the ScummVM window and font, and it is obvious that ScummVM is still rendering at half resolution compared to the macOS native text display system. ScummVM is to the left in the image.

This is with settings (by manually editing the ScummVM Preferences file)
height=1700
width=2000
propsize=40
monosize=40
filtering=false
stretch_mode=center
aspect_ratio=false
gfx_mode=1x