Fingolfin

Fingolfin
Name	Max Horn
Team Member since	2002-04-26
Working on	SCUMM Engine, SDL backend, infrastructure
Personal webpage/BLOG	-
Email	fingolfin AT scummvm DOT org

I am co-lead developer of ScummVM, together with Ender and Sev. I joined the project in April 2002. During this time I worked on the SCUMM engine, the SDL backend, the OSystem backend interface, the sound mixer, the GUI system, the general infrastructure of ScummVM, and many other things.

TODO

Web site

• Add big (green?) shiny buttons in the middle of the page for (1) Donations and (2) Downloads ?
• simplify screenshots: use a single screenshot "database" file, and use meaningful names on the screenshots, maybe even organize them in subdirs

Savefile manager

• get rid of getSavePath -> AFAICT it's only used for enhanced error/warning messages. So let's just finally add a Stream::ioErrorString methor or so, which describes the error that occured
• at the same time might want to replace ioFailed() with an ioError() method which returns an error code, not just a bool
• add a method to remove a savestate
• properly document listSavefiles
  • reimplement DefaultSaveFileManager::listSavefiles

File code

• several backends #define fopen, fread etc. -- this is bad, try to get rid of these hacks
• to get rid of all usages of fopen, etc. we could add backends/file and move the current file.cpp to backends/file/stdc (this is just a rough idea, mind you)
• at the same time, finally change File to read-only, and add a DumpFile class, which can be used for script dumps, screenshots etc.; ports can simply provide an "empty" implementations if they don't support dumping large files
• To enforce that no code uses fopen etc. directly, we could add our own #define's to scummsys.h to trigger errors in code doing it

GUI

• The options dialog may show a button for configuring the savepath even on systems where it is fixed -> not good. This button should be hidden/removed for these systems
• make a shared "main menu dialog", based on the SCUMM one
  • accessible via the same hotkey in all engines
  • save/load/help optional
  • enhance the current dialog by displaying the engine name at the top, maybe also "ScummVM 0.x.y"

OSystem

• get to rid of the evil global gBitFormat!
• Add getOverlayBitFormat() method, so we can avoid using RGBToColor, colorToRGB, ARGBToColor, colorToARGB in tight loops (it would return a value of 8 to indicate palette mode, otherwise a bitformat value compatible to those used in graphics/colormasks.h)
• Remove slack in OSystem
  • move getScreenChangeID functionality to EventManager
  • what are these for (and can we remove them)?: screenToOverlayX, screenToOverlayY, overlayToScreenX, overlayToScreenY
  • remove getOutputSampleRate -- instead, add a private API to the mixer code to setup the sample rate (like, a param to the Mixer constructor)
• Implement the RFC: Flexible keymapping via new EVENT_ (post 0.10)
• Further work on the modularization of OSystem

Mixer

• Cleanup the mixer code
  • document the semantics of sound handles and sound ids
  • cleanup the API (TODO: Be more specific)

Wish list

ScummVM supports many many games. Not just that, it also supports many variants of each of these games. Unfortunately, often bugs will only occur in one specific variant of a game, so unless you happen to own that particular version, it is very difficult to fix the problem (think of surgery while being blindfolded, with one hand tied behind your back).

In particular, being from Germany, I often only own the german version of a given game. While that is on the one hand useful (we have quite a big user base in Germany, it seems), the drawback is that often I lack an english variant, making it that much harder to work on bugs reported by English users.

Due to all this, here is a list of games resp. game variants that I lack and which might be useful. If you have a spare copy of any of these, feel free to donate it. I am only interested in originals, though, no warez! In addition, I also try from time to time to obtain these games e.g. via Ebay, so make sure to ask me before sending me anything, just in case I bought it in the meantime :-)

• SCUMM
  • Zak McKracken: FM-TOWNS (OK, I am probably being unrealistic here :-) ), classic (V1) English, any other languages
  • Indiana Jones and the last Crusade: EGA German
  • Loom: FM-TOWNS (see above), EGA German
  • Monkey Island: EGA (*any* language, English or German preferred)
  • Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis: Mac version
  • Sam & Max: German PC
  • The Dig: Mac version
• Others
  • Any AGI games