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Fingolfin

Revision as of 21:04, 1 January 2008 by Fingolfin (talk | contribs)
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

Usability

  • Check for the presence of all required data files in all games; or, as a somewhat less extensive measure, at least do this: For games which were shipped on multiple volumes (floppies, CDs), check for the presence of at least one file per volume.
  • Check for the presence of our external support files like kyra.dat, sky.cpt, etc., and also verify that they are up-to-date. For details, see FR #1520433
  • Add/unify "confirm exit" dialog, globally (see FR #1731025)
  • Add global main menu dialog (see also below under GUI)

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
  • Show "Release Date" on download page
  • Use AJAX for screenshot display?

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 (see FR #1217640)
  • maybe also one to rename a savestate (less important)
  • replace listSavefiles with a better API (possibly function with same name)
    • it should take a regex (well, allowing only "?" and "*" like in DOS)
    • it would return a List<String> with all matched filenames
    • reimplement DefaultSaveFileManager::listSavefiles to actual do more than returning "yes" for all and every filename
    • update engines to use (and trust) the new API. With "trust" I mean that some engines currently double-check the results of it with openFileForLoading (and good that they do so, considering that right now the default savefilemanager does *not* implement it. *sigh*)
  • Consider replacing "const char *" usages with "Common::String". This might or might not be a good idea -- don't just do it blindly!

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
    • Provides the following buttons/features in *all* games & engines: Resume, About, Quit
    • Ideally also provides an options dialog based on the generic option dialogs in the launcher
    • Engines can provide a subclass, which adds buttons/functions, like "save/load", or "help"
    • For backends that need it (or maybe even for all), provide access to the "key remapper" and "virtual keyboard", once/if we add those globally
    • Sugar on the cake: Display the engine name at the top, maybe also "ScummVM 0.x.y", and other goodies (ScummVM logo anyone?)
  • Highlight the "default" button in dialogs (e.g. the classic MacOS way, drawing a fat border around it; or by using different coloring; or a combination). This falls under "usability", too.

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
  • Change backends to use namespaces ?! (Not really that useful, I guess, except for the Doxygen pages)

Mixer

  • document the semantics of sound handles and sound ids
  • cleanup the API:
    • get rid of the evil Mixer::setReady hack
    • resolve the disparity between OSystem::getOutputSampleRate() and Mixer::getOutputRate(), probably by abolishing the former
    • instead, the mixer should probably receive the sample rate as a parameter to its constructor.
    • We could also make it possible to change the output sample rate the mixer uses on the fly (this would be a private API, only available to the backend, for backends which can change the output sample rate). This would essentially require changing the Channel::_converter objects
  • Are there backends which could benefit from a 'custom' mixer? If so, what would be required to implement such a thing? Needs talking to porters

SCUMM

  • Once the new SaveFileManager::remove method is there, add a "remove" button to the save/load dialog
  • Work around actor (re)color bugs in Indy3 FM-TOWNS / VGA. See http://home.comcast.net/~ervind/ij3misc.html
  • Might also be nice to use the trick they used in AGI/Sarien to add custom recoloring to costumes at least for the EGA games. E.g. in MM, an actor with blue trousers working on a blue ground looks... stealthy :)

Misc

  • Remove the 'addDefaultDirectory' calls from runGame in base/main.cpp. Reason: Their presence causes an asymmetry between the "detect a game" and "run a game" use cases, as different files are "seen" in each case. This can lead to subtle bugs, and also causes ugly code duplication in the AdvancedDetector code right now (there to work around asymmetries like this one)
  • Right now the SCUMM engine uses zlib directly. This causes problems when building plugins, as we have to link the SCUMM engine against zlib, so we have to hack the build system to do so. It also causes backlinking problems on e.g. Windows
    • Solution #1: Let the ScummVM binary re-export the zlib API. Pro: Very clean and elegant, Con: Might not be possible on all targets (investigate)
    • Solution #2: Create thin wrappers around all relevant zlib APIs, put those into a new file common/zlib.cpp, and make SCUMM use those
  • add plugin API to fetch a fresh desc string for a given target ?!?
  • completely get rid of #pragma pack for increased portability
  • rename stdafx.h to prefix.h and include it everywhre first
  • rename scummsys.h; and/or split it (types.h, defs.h ... ?)

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
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