Best program to develop a new adventure to be used with SCUM

[rivadolmo]

I'm sure I've seen MI4 in Game recently... I better shut up before this turns into one of those long, tedious forum debates.

They've re-released some of their older games, at least in Europe. I've seen Sam & Max, Full Throttle and The Dig fairly recently in stores. I've also seen some of their non-adventures, like Outlaws. I wonder if the re-release still has that nice music as audio tracks.

Take a look:

http://compraonline.mediaworld.it/webap ... y_rn=11055

http://compraonline.mediaworld.it/webap ... y_rn=11055

http://compraonline.mediaworld.it/webap ... y_rn=11055

http://compraonline.mediaworld.it/webap ... y_rn=11055

http://compraonline.mediaworld.it/webap ... y_rn=11055

[jumnle]

I'm sure I've seen MI4 in Game recently... I better shut up before this turns into one of those long, tedious forum debates.

They've re-released some of their older games, at least in Europe. I've seen Sam & Max, Full Throttle and The Dig fairly recently in stores. I've also seen some of their non-adventures, like Outlaws. I wonder if the re-release still has that nice music as audio tracks.

Take a look:

http://compraonline.mediaworld.it/webap ... y_rn=11055

http://compraonline.mediaworld.it/webap ... y_rn=11055

http://compraonline.mediaworld.it/webap ... y_rn=11055

http://compraonline.mediaworld.it/webap ... y_rn=11055

http://compraonline.mediaworld.it/webap ... y_rn=11055

Was Fate of Atlantis not rereleased in Italy, then? It was here in Spain, at least.

http://www.game.es/ficha/ficha.aspx?SKU=042779

[seubz]

Hello everybody,

I'm new to this forum. I'm answering here because I wanted to tell some people who might be interested that I'm starting a new project called ScummGEN which will eventually be a set of editors that will be able to create SCUMM games (and of course playable with ScummVM).

After a couple of weeks writing a resource file disassembler, I can know say I understand almost every part of the game resource files. I am now focusing on SCUMM v5 but this is very likely to change in the future. Currently, no editor is available at all, I'm still working on the skeleton of the compiler (base classes and functions). Progress is really fast, as I can now start a room and display a background in ScummVM (basic script functions have been implemented).

This project is definitely not an easy task and will take some time to get to a "usable" state, but I hope to be able to show some cool stuff already before the end of the year. I have no website yet and I'm planning to have one, even though I haven't thought through it a lot (any webmaster anyone ?).

I'm also available in the #scummvm IRC channel.
Bye everyone !
Seubz.

[rivadolmo]

Always happy to see good news like this one.

I may help you with the web site and as betatester also.

Let me know!

[Jorpho]

I get the impression that Lucasarts does not stop publishers of foreign versions of its older games from rereleasing them. Ubi Soft published the French versions, and I've seen them do several different rereleases of some of the old Lucasarts games. (The last one came out a while ago, though, so they're getting kind of elusive.)

[PsYcO]

is it just me or or does that seem a little backward? 'cause english is the most used language in the world, and if it isn't its in the top 3.

so wouldn't it make *more* sense to release the english versions again, instead or along with those of different language packs?

[PotajiTo]

Hello everybody,

I'm new to this forum. I'm answering here because I wanted to tell some people who might be interested that I'm starting a new project called ScummGEN which will eventually be a set of editors that will be able to create SCUMM games (and of course playable with ScummVM).

After a couple of weeks writing a resource file disassembler, I can know say I understand almost every part of the game resource files. I am now focusing on SCUMM v5 but this is very likely to change in the future. Currently, no editor is available at all, I'm still working on the skeleton of the compiler (base classes and functions). Progress is really fast, as I can now start a room and display a background in ScummVM (basic script functions have been implemented).

This project is definitely not an easy task and will take some time to get to a "usable" state, but I hope to be able to show some cool stuff already before the end of the year. I have no website yet and I'm planning to have one, even though I haven't thought through it a lot (any webmaster anyone ?).

I'm also available in the #scummvm IRC channel.
Bye everyone !
Seubz.

Great news! Someone help this guy

[Winter Knight]

I'm starting a new project called ScummGEN which will eventually be a set of editors that will be able to create SCUMM games (and of course playable with ScummVM).

Excellent.

Is your project free? (GPL, BSD, or other free distribution license?) If it is, many doors open to you, such as more developers willing to help out. If it is free, I recommend hosting on sourceforge.net. Also, you can lift code from ScummC (if helpful) if your project is GPL.

[rivadolmo]

Off course it would be free!.
It would be a great thing to form a team that may share the tips to the community.

It would be usefull to collect all the essential links in order to have an inventory of the the free tools / references for the project.

Any other idea is welcome

I'm preparing rough graphics for a web page to be used for the project.

[seubz]

Yes it's free, and based on the LGPL license.
The project is hosted on Google Code at scummgen.googlecode.com.

The status of the SVN doesn't reflect the actual status of the project, as I removed a lot of code when switching from SCUMM v5 to SCUMM v8 resource file generation, and I haven't updated the SVN yet. If anybody is interested, feel free to contact me through the email given on the project page.

[SSH]

AGS 3.0 now stores it's source code as text files and the sprite info, game structure etc. in XML. Does it seem feasible that a compiler could be written to convert these into a ScummVM-compatible input file that might allow AGS authors to recompile for a scummvm platform?

[eriktorbjorn]

AGS 3.0 now stores it's source code as text files and the sprite info, game structure etc. in XML. Does it seem feasible that a compiler could be written to convert these into a ScummVM-compatible input file that might allow AGS authors to recompile for a scummvm platform?

To be honest, I don't see how this would make any difference as far as the ScummVM project is concerned. We'd still have the thankless task of trying to catch up with an actively developed project. Besides, just because something is stored as text (XML in this case) doesn't necessarily mean it's easily understandable. Just look at this example.

I'm not sure what the benefits would be either. I thought AGS already ran on several operating systems. Not hand-helds, but the AGS FAQ states that the AGS resource requirements make that impractical anyway.

In other words, let us know when you've gotten it to work.

[SSH]

To be honest, I don't see how this would make any difference as far as the ScummVM project is concerned.

Surely it's easier to reverse-engineer the somewhat readable (yes, the XML is pretty understandable to someone familiar with AGS) rather than some bytecode?

We'd still have the thankless task of trying to catch up with an actively developed project.

As I imagined it, people using AGS would still have to target ScummVM, but it would let them do so if they wished (with the added ease-of-game-cheating that adds by using an open engine) or not. It would also allow people who want to makes games to play under ScummVM have an option rather than the only working one just now: AGI. It would also stop people asking this question every 5 minutes on the forum

I'm not sure what the benefits would be either. I thought AGS already ran on several operating systems. Not hand-helds, but the AGS FAQ states that the AGS resource requirements make that impractical anyway.

That FAQ is ancient and was written when handhelds were pretty rubbish. I'm sure a GP2x could handle AGS, and it would be feasible to port AGS's own engine to Gp2x since it's linux-based and there's already a linux port of the engine and a gp2x version of allegro. As is, though, AGS runs on Windows, Ubuntu and older games run on OSX, but that port hasn't been maintained recently.


I've been looking through the source for the SCUMM engine and I can see how it could be adapted to do some AGS stuff, but I'm really not clear on how much of the AGS functionality would work on the ScummVM back-end: I'm sure it could do it, but I'm hazy as to a number of things. Is there somewhere I can chat with someone in the scummvm team who understands such things to get an idea of how to get started?

[Raziel]

As I imagined it, people using AGS would still have to target ScummVM, but it would let them do so if they wished

(with the added ease-of-game-cheating that adds by using an open engine)

or not. It would also allow people who want to makes games to play under ScummVM have an option rather than the only working one just now: AGI. It would also stop people asking this question every 5 minutes on the forum

from the AGS FAQ (as outdated as it may seem, it's on the HP and therefore active)

Q. Then can I have the source code, to port it myself?
A. Sorry, AGS is not open-source. There are many reasons for this which I will not go into here. The main two are:
(1) I made another application open-source in the past, and someone took it, changed the copyright and tried to release it as their own

(2) The AGS file formats are proprietary to make it harder for people to "hack" other people's games. If the source code was available, it would be easy for someone to write some sort of de-compiler for use with other peoples games.

Theres a reason behind the AGS author's decision

That FAQ is ancient and was written when handhelds were pretty rubbish. I'm sure a GP2x could handle AGS,

See above, if theres a newer FAQ up, please share a link
and to the second point, do you KNOW or do you THINK?

Is there somewhere I can chat with someone in the scummvm team who understands such things to get an idea of how to get started?

taken from the really up-to-date Wiki Manual

Contacting the developers

The easiest way to contact the ScummVM team is by submitting bug reports (see reporting-bugs) or by using our forums. You can also join and email the scummvm-devel mailing list (see [1]). Or chat with us on IRC (channel #scummvm on irc.freenode.net).

edit: no bold, no underlines, hmm

[sev]

Is there somewhere I can chat with someone in the scummvm team who understands such things to get an idea of how to get started?

First thing you need to do is talk to AGS author. We do not want to do anything in this regard without his permission. Then, it would be much easier if he would hand his source code and allow it to use under GPL.

And only then we may talk about ScummVM internals .


Eugene