TWIN engine (was poll)

[Graxer]

why isn't there a forth option like: it's ACTION ADVENTURE for crying out loud.

To be honest, so was Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis in ScummVM with its fighting mechanics. It has been quite popular.

I never played LBA, does it have action seqences or they are part of normal game like run, shot, hide ?
How action elements looks like ?

The action isn't in sequences, but more mixed through the gameplay. It has the adventure game style, talking to people and doing tasks for them.

One task for instance has you using a bottle of cherry juice from your inventory on the village's water supply to flavour the water, because one of the villagers says the water tastes horrible. It also sometimes has options of what to say when the main character is talking, in adventure game style.

[aquadran]

To be honest, so was Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis in ScummVM with its fighting mechanics. It has been quite popular.

I never played LBA, does it have action seqences or they are part of normal game like run, shot, hide ?
How action elements looks like ?

The action isn't in sequences, but more mixed through the gameplay. It has the adventure game style, talking to people and doing tasks for them.

One task for instance has you using a bottle of cherry juice from your inventory on the village's water supply to flavour the water, because one of the villagers says it tastes horrible. It also sometimes has options of what to say when the main character is talking, in adventure game style.

I looked into some youtube videos, game it's indeed mix of elements and not strong in any style of game. It's action/adevture/platform style game.

[garrythefish]

The action isn't in sequences, but more mixed through the gameplay. It has the adventure game style, talking to people and doing tasks for them.

same stuff with RPG.

[Spin]

I remember playing LBA when I was still a little brat. And I have good memories of the game, so you got my vote to add to ResidualVM.

[garrythefish]

I remember playing LBA when I was still a little brat. And I have good memories of the game, so you got my vote to add to ResidualVM.

you known, it's kind of funny to compare LBA with Grim Fandango, Escape from Monkey Island, Discworld Noir, Broken Sword 3, King's Quest 8, Gabriel Knight 3, Blade Runner, Longest Journey, Tex Murphy and many other such games that would theoretically fit perfectly within the scope of residual.

LBA looks like a great and fun game to play, but again it's an action-adventure game.

[George22]

same stuff with RPG.

Like Elvira games or Lands of Lore which are part of ScummVM. I do not see a reason not to support adventure games with some action parts in ResidualVM. LBA would fit well a think.

[eriktorbjorn]

Like Elvira games or Lands of Lore which are part of ScummVM. I do not see a reason not to support adventure games with some action parts in ResidualVM. LBA would fit well a think.

Both those games were extensions of game engines that were already supported by ScummVM, though. The Elvira games use the same engine as Simon the Sorcerer and The Feeble Files, and Lands of Lore uses the same engine as the Kyrandia games. As far as I know, there are no plans for supporting the Lands of Lore sequels.

Of course, that doesn't mean ResidualVM can't have a completely different policy. It's certainly not for me to decide, even if I had an opinion in the matter.

[garrythefish]

i was just pointing out which games would qualify if they were ever considered, that's all.

[George22]

Both those games were extensions of game engines that were already supported by ScummVM, though.

Yes, so work was easier. But in LBA or AITD cases can help that there exist TwinEngine or Free in the Dark projects that are now abandoned. I think that would be pity to let them in that state.

[alexfont]

Hello guys,

A member of LBA community said me about this discussion so here I am .

I am one of the developers of Prequengine and TwinEngine as well.

I don't have much time to write now, so here's a bit of the status of both engines:

Twin-e:
The engine is still missing some parts, like voices, holomap and other but its playable.
The game crash while nurse appear is fixed in Prequengine so this shoudn't be a problem.
OpenGL port is broken. Current release uses a reverse engeneer of the original rendering system.

Prequengine:
This was start for Prequel project, but also to improve TwinEngine code. Instead of doing a branch, I start a new side project. Who knows in future it could be merge.
The ideia was to improve the engine to allow high quality formats, like mp3,ogg, avi, etc.. Also to have a cleaned source, commented and organized in correct files.
Not playable yet. The last time I touch the code was to implement actors animations and it stills buggy.

I don't have much times this days for coding Prequengine but its not a dead project. Anaway, I think its a good idea of having this engine port to a lot of OS.

I'll try to look at ResidualVM current code (the available one) in the next days, and looked in to continue discussion.

[Graxer]

I'll try to look at ResidualVM current code (the available one) in the next days, and looked in to continue discussion.

I would just like to know what the status for the Twin engine/prequengine's possible integration into ResidualVM is. Is support planned for LBA and/or the Prequel? I ask because not much has been said about this in a while and I noticed that Alexfont is now working on an engine in ScummVM.

[alexfont]

I would just like to know what the status for the Twin engine/prequengine's possible integration into ResidualVM is. Is support planned for LBA and/or the Prequel? I ask because not much has been said about this in a while and I noticed that Alexfont is now working on an engine in ScummVM.

Hey Graxer,

I already talk with aquadran about the integration of Prequengine in ResidualVM. The integration won't use exactly previous code, so there is yet things to plan and rethink. But in resume, you can count with it.

I was in holidays and now moving to another team in my work so the time is few this last days. Anyway, I'm keeping in touch with some members of the team, and we should start redrawing the structure directly inside ResidualVM (something to talk better with aquadram) as a fresh start.

The idea is to support both, LBA and Prequel, and all the modifications projects out there. Ofcourse the main focus will be LBA since its a final game, while prequel have few things done yet. Still, we want to give better sound quality, movies, etc..

About the new engine, yes I started few weeks ago at ScummVM (also a game I love and plan to do such thing for a long time) and its giving me know-how in ScummVM (and also reminding C++) to better do this integration of LBA as well.

The integration may take a while till get a Prequengine status or even more to get Twin-e status, but we don't want to make the same mistakes in both engines so we need to start slowly.

Thanks for your support and keep replying here

[Graxer]

I would just like to know what the status for the Twin engine/prequengine's possible integration into ResidualVM is. Is support planned for LBA and/or the Prequel? I ask because not much has been said about this in a while and I noticed that Alexfont is now working on an engine in ScummVM.

Hey Graxer,

I already talk with aquadran about the integration of Prequengine in ResidualVM. The integration won't use exactly previous code, so there is yet things to plan and rethink. But in resume, you can count with it.

I was in holidays and now moving to another team in my work so the time is few this last days. Anyway, I'm keeping in touch with some members of the team, and we should start redrawing the structure directly inside ResidualVM (something to talk better with aquadram) as a fresh start.

The idea is to support both, LBA and Prequel, and all the modifications projects out there. Ofcourse the main focus will be LBA since its a final game, while prequel have few things done yet. Still, we want to give better sound quality, movies, etc..

About the new engine, yes I started few weeks ago at ScummVM (also a game I love and plan to do such thing for a long time) and its giving me know-how in ScummVM (and also reminding C++) to better do this integration of LBA as well.

The integration may take a while till get a Prequengine status or even more to get Twin-e status, but we don't want to make the same mistakes in both engines so we need to start slowly.

Thanks for your support and keep replying here

Thanks for the reply Alexfont, im very pleased that it's going ahead.

Good luck with your work in both ResidualVM and ScummVM.

[artart78]

Some news!

I started working on Twin Engine a long time ago. But I didn't do a lot of things. I didn't have a lot of motivation, this project seemed to be dead. Then I discovered there was new engines like Prequengine and Lba2engine, so I stopped; I thought it was useless. And I met Alexfont, when I started to code for Asylum-engine (a Sanitarium engine for ScummVM).

We started talking about these projects; and he said he would like to merge all the projects (Twin Engine, because it's almost complete; Prequengine, because it's clean; maybe Lba2engine), so it would be great to clean up Twin Engine code. So now, I'm taking the project, and making a big cleanup.
There's also a start of LBA API here: http://code.google.com/p/lbapi/
There's nothing yet, but it's a good idea, and we should maybe use it.
Twin Engine SourceForge project page (I didn't see it anywhere in this topic): http://sourceforge.net/projects/twin-e/

So, now, I'm working on Twin Engine, and we'll see what we do next...

[Graxer]

Some news!

I started working on Twin Engine a long time ago. But I didn't do a lot of things. I didn't have a lot of motivation, this project seemed to be dead. Then I discovered there was new engines like Prequengine and Lba2engine, so I stopped; I thought it was useless. And I met Alexfont, when I started to code for Asylum-engine (a Sanitarium engine for ScummVM).

We started talking about these projects; and he said he would like to merge all the projects (Twin Engine, because it's almost complete; Prequengine, because it's clean; maybe Lba2engine), so it would be great to clean up Twin Engine code. So now, I'm taking the project, and making a big cleanup.
There's also a start of LBA API here: http://code.google.com/p/lbapi/
There's nothing yet, but it's a good idea, and we should maybe use it.
Twin Engine SourceForge project page (I didn't see it anywhere in this topic): http://sourceforge.net/projects/twin-e/

So, now, I'm working on Twin Engine, and we'll see what we do next...

Wow! That's awesome news! I was beginning to think that the Twin Engine/Prequengine had been completely forgotton about!

Also the addition of the LBA2 engine would make this perfect, as I love LBA2.