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Difference between revisions of "ScummVM History"
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As stated earlier, Ludde was really ahead of me. Indeed, we had a different approach of the problem. I was implementing things by guessing and understanding how the engine was supposed to be working, and Ludde was working from disassembly. This mad for a great difference in terms of speed and accuracy. I knew it would be better for me to change my method in favor of Ludde's, and it even clearer to me when I lost a large number of hours of work because of a misunderstanding. [[Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis|Indy4]] was getting more and more playable, (but not yet completable) and I started to be interested into adding v6 games support, especially [[Day of the Tentacle|DOTT]]. The thing was, the script engine had had a major facelift between v5 ([[The Secret of Monkey Island|MI1CD]], [[Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge|MI2]] & [[Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis|Indy4]]) and v6, so I started getting to understand that new script engine. I spent a large number of hours looking at the compiled scripts and trying to understand how they were supposed to work. When I got back to [[ScummVM]] with my newly found insights of the [[SCUMM]] v6 scripting system, I was faced with an already working [[Day of the Tentacle|DOTT]] in [[ScummVM]]. At that point, I decided to get into disassembly, and to always make it clear what I was working on. Even if [[Day of the Tentacle|DOTT]] was running, it was still buggy. I remember fixing core bugs like misplaced staff text, crashes on non-American version (the original American version used sprites for verbs, but foreign versions used plain text) and a few other miscellaneous things. [[Sam & Max Hit the Road|Sam & Max]] was added to the engine not that far off, but suffered from lots of bugs. I don't remember all the precise details of that time, but I do remember playtesting [[Sam & Max Hit the Road|Sam & Max]] while fixing stuff here and there. The sound system in [[Sam & Max Hit the Road|Sam & Max]] and a large bunch of logic script bits were very different and had to be fixed. This was also the time that Ludde (whose aim was originally [[Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge|MI2]]/[[Day of the Tentacle|DOTT]]) started to lose interest in the project. | As stated earlier, Ludde was really ahead of me. Indeed, we had a different approach of the problem. I was implementing things by guessing and understanding how the engine was supposed to be working, and Ludde was working from disassembly. This mad for a great difference in terms of speed and accuracy. I knew it would be better for me to change my method in favor of Ludde's, and it even clearer to me when I lost a large number of hours of work because of a misunderstanding. [[Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis|Indy4]] was getting more and more playable, (but not yet completable) and I started to be interested into adding v6 games support, especially [[Day of the Tentacle|DOTT]]. The thing was, the script engine had had a major facelift between v5 ([[The Secret of Monkey Island|MI1CD]], [[Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge|MI2]] & [[Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis|Indy4]]) and v6, so I started getting to understand that new script engine. I spent a large number of hours looking at the compiled scripts and trying to understand how they were supposed to work. When I got back to [[ScummVM]] with my newly found insights of the [[SCUMM]] v6 scripting system, I was faced with an already working [[Day of the Tentacle|DOTT]] in [[ScummVM]]. At that point, I decided to get into disassembly, and to always make it clear what I was working on. Even if [[Day of the Tentacle|DOTT]] was running, it was still buggy. I remember fixing core bugs like misplaced staff text, crashes on non-American version (the original American version used sprites for verbs, but foreign versions used plain text) and a few other miscellaneous things. [[Sam & Max Hit the Road|Sam & Max]] was added to the engine not that far off, but suffered from lots of bugs. I don't remember all the precise details of that time, but I do remember playtesting [[Sam & Max Hit the Road|Sam & Max]] while fixing stuff here and there. The sound system in [[Sam & Max Hit the Road|Sam & Max]] and a large bunch of logic script bits were very different and had to be fixed. This was also the time that Ludde (whose aim was originally [[Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge|MI2]]/[[Day of the Tentacle|DOTT]]) started to lose interest in the project. | ||
=== | === Later games get added === | ||
To | To properly master the disassembly way of doing things I needed a challenge. So I started working on [[The Dig]]. [[The Dig]] was my aim when I first got involved in reimplementing [[SCUMM]]. Getting [[The Dig]] to actually start was long and painful, as I was struggling to learn disassembly while discovering some aspects of [[ScummVM]] I had never come close to, not to mention that there is a very large gap between [[SCUMM]] v6 ([[Day of the Tentacle|DOTT]]) and v7 ([[The Dig]]). After a while, I got [[The Dig]] to actually boot and go in-game. Yet, I got stuck with the AKOS system to draw sprites, and Ludde came to my rescue on that point (I think that's one of the last thing Ludde did on [[ScummVM]]). Time passed by, and I added features to [[ScummVM]] to make [[The Dig]] play further. As [[The Dig]] and [[Full Throttle]] share a very common engine, it was really easy to also get FT to boot. While I was getting sick of debugging [[The Dig]], I was moving into fixing bugs in [[Full Throttle|FT]] and coming back to [[The Dig]] (and those [[Full Throttle|FT]] fixes sometimes helped [[The Dig]]). My evenings and nights were starting to turn into endless debugging sessions. As an example, I can remember spending a more or less complete night tracing [[Full Throttle|FT]] scripts to understand why the verb interface wasn't working as it was supposed to be. To take a break off the [[The Dig|Dig]]/[[Full Throttle|FT]] duo, I started working on [[Loom|LoomCD]], while others were working on the cutscene video and music system of [[The Dig]]/[[Full Throttle|FT]]. [[Loom|LoomCD]] was challenging, but I can say I got it to work almost completely by myself (minus the masks and the sound system). In that period, I got back to other games to fix things, like fixing the special save system in [[Day of the Tentacle|DOTT]]/[[Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis|Indy4]], and implementing the flash light/transparency in [[Sam & Max Hit the Road|Sam & Max]]. | ||
=== Yaz0r steps off === | === Yaz0r steps off === | ||
Time was running short. I now had projects on my own (LBA not to name it) and was losing interest in [[ScummVM]]. Yet, I gave a hand with the [[Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders|Zak256]] and [[Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade|Indy256]] implementation. I remember fixing the sprite system, and a large bunch of logic in the script. I also tried to get the walkbox system running, but I never got it right (others fixed it after since). And then, I finally drifted away from [[ScummVM]], heading for new horizons... | Time was running short. I now had projects on my own (LBA not to name it) and was losing interest in [[ScummVM]]. Yet, I gave a hand with the [[Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders|Zak256]] and [[Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade|Indy256]] implementation. I remember fixing the sprite system, and a large bunch of logic in the script. I also tried to get the walkbox system running, but I never got it right (others fixed it after since). And then, I finally drifted away from [[ScummVM]], heading for new horizons... | ||