Freesci Alpha Release

[The Phantom]

By 'lock up' I mean the D-pad and A/B buttons do not work but the START button does (cycles thru K, M and virtual keyb).

Thanks for the feedback. I don't really know what's wrong with the Chatboard support at this time. I guess it'll have to wait until I get a chatboard myself.

 

[The Phantom]

Thx Phantom your fix worked a treat. It looks very promising (esp for an alpha).

Little bug report:

On Space Quest 3 the game loads ok but the spaceship door does not open (first screen in the game). It works ok on the windows version.

Leisure Suit Larry 3 locks up after you answer the first question (start of the game that asks you 5 questions). Again it works on the windows version.

I'll do some more testing later....

​

After some testing I've determined that these problems are not caused by the missing soundserver. I'll investigate them shortly, I found several more of these problems...

Some examples of bugs that are caused by the missing soundserver are the intro's of SQ3 and LSL3 not starting.

As for chatboard support, Jr2swiss has kindly offered to donate a chatboard. So hopefully the chatboard issues will be resolved in the near future.

 

[The Phantom]

Alpha 3 is now available. The bugs mentioned by ross_hall should be gone. First post in thread updated.

 

[dreamwarbird]

Great work dude!!

Cheers

 

[Hooka]

Hmm, am I doing something wrong? I put KQ4 on my SMC and made a config file that says: (yes it's unix format)

[kq4]
resource_dir = dev0:\gpmm\kq4

and yet it loads up the game selection screen but when I try and select the game it just resets (past 2 alpha's, didn't get a chance to try the first one yet...)

What am I doing wrong?

 

[The Phantom]

What am I doing wrong?

​

Your config file is working fine (if it wasn't the game selection menu would be empty. I tried KQ4 myself and it loads up fine in Alpha 3. Two things come to mind that might cause the problem:

1) Some KQ4 files are missing on the SMC.
2) You have the AGI version of KQ4. This version is rare but it does exist. The AGI version can be played with Sarien. If you have the AGI version several filenames will contain the word 'AGI'.

Btw, Alpha 3 has some directory and file issues (e.g. it will create directories for each config entry). I'll post a new binary soon. Even with that new binary some file issues will remain, but fixing those will require writing some low-level file routines which might take a day or two.

 

[pip]

Hmm, am I doing something wrong? I put KQ4 on my SMC and made a config file that says: (yes it's unix format)

[kq4]
resource_dir = dev0:\gpmm\kq4

and yet it loads up the game selection screen but when I try and select the game it just resets (past 2 alpha's, didn't get a chance to try the first one yet...)

What am I doing wrong?

​

Try it without the spaces before and after the =

 

[markusdragon]

Hmm... Guess I need some SCI games... Any suggestions?

 

[C16]

Hiya,

I seem to be having a similar problem to the other with the config file.

This is what Ive done already

1 Placed the FXE file into GPMM
2 Created FreeSCI
3 Placed LSL2 into its own directory
4 Created a config file in the FreeSCI folder as below

[lsl2]
resource_dir=dev0:\gpmm\LSL2

FreeSCI loads fine but there are no games on the menu list, could there be something wrong with the config file?

I've tried it on LSL3 also and still the same effect.

Any help would be appreciated.

Regards,

Chris

 

[The Phantom]

Try it without the spaces before and after the =

​

It should work with or without spaces.

FreeSCI loads fine but there are no games on the menu list, could there be something wrong with the config file?

​

The file needs to be in UNIX text format.

 

[The Phantom]

Alpha 4 released. First post in thread updated.

 

[The Phantom]

Final Alpha released.

Changes:

* Christoph Reichenbach (former FreeSCI maintainer), sped up the routine that draws the backgrounds a great deal (this goes for all platforms, not just GP32). You'll notice that rooms load pretty much instantaneously now, while before you had to wait up to 8 seconds for some rooms.

* One bug was fixed which caused a crash on exit (and perhaps some other problems as well).

This will most likely be the final alpha release (I haven't received any feedback at all on the previous alpha). I haven't decided yet how future releases will be done. I may end up setting up an automated build system that uploads binaries built from FreeSCI CVS periodically.

 

[Zorn]

Could someone make a list of the best SCI games?
Because i don't know these games.

I've found Space Quest 7 on a pc magazine CD.
Is it a SCI game?

Can this final Alpha play most of the SCI games?

 

[The Phantom]

Could someone make a list of the best SCI games?
Because i don't know these games.

I've found Space Quest 7 on a pc magazine CD.
Is it a SCI game?

Space Quest 7 was cancelled.

Can this final Alpha play most of the SCI games?

​

No, FreeSCI in general doesn't support the newer games yet. The GP32 port should run the same games that FreeSCI supports on other platforms (but there are some problems right now because the GP32 port has no sound support). The following games should work reasonably well (ignoring the sound issue):

# Leisure Suit Larry 2
# Leisure Suit Larry 3
# Police Quest 2
# King's Quest 4
# Hero's Quest / Quest for Glory 1
# Space Quest 3
# The Colonel's Bequest
# Conquests of Camelot
# Hoyle's Book of Games
# Hoyle's Book of Games 2

 

[Zorn]

Space Quest 7 was cencelled??
Do you mean that it wasn't developed?
And why do i have it on my CD?
Hm...

 

[Blah]

You dont call something a final anything if there is no sound. It's ok though.

@abc_Keks: Its probably just a unplayable demo to make people want to buy
it when it comes out which it never did.

 

[The Phantom]

You dont call something a final anything if there is no sound. It's ok though.

I could have called it purple chicken if I wanted to. All I wanted to say is that there won't be any more 'Alpha x' binaries as I consider it to be in basic working order without sound.

 

[Dolfhin]

Definly something i'll give a try (recharing battery's now)

edit :
Anyone tried 'Leisure Suit Larry' yet?

And I forgot to say Thanks

 

[frolik]

wow! this is really cool! I must say I never really got into the Sierra games much but nows my chance.. I got it working first time and it's tremendous what you've done here.

Do you have plans on getting the music working? It's probably just nasty old adlib sound, ahh I remember those days

 

[The Phantom]

Thanks

Do you have plans on getting the music working? It's probably just nasty old adlib sound, ahh I remember those days

​

Yes, well actually these games support the MT32 synth, but there's no way that can be emulated on GP32. And hooking up a real midi device wouldn't really make sense for a portable game console.

The main problem is that FreeSCI requires threads/processes for sound support. As far as I know there is no threading library for GP32. So implementing sound is going to be a lot of work.