Freesci Alpha Release

[frolik]

I don't know owt about coding but if it's mainly music, not sfx in these games couldn't you just make a very basic note interpreter to play the music without syncing? ok ok I'm out of my depth....

I've been playing for a little while now and here's some of my critique:

* the loading can be a little slow and I've had periods of dialogue that take ages to get through, what clockspeed do you have it running at and is it possible to have a speed selector?

* It's a little dark on my FLU unit, any chance of having a brightness control?

* virtual keyboard is one of the nicest I've seen! works great

* can you break the copy protection can't carry round game manuals everywhere....

 

[The Phantom]

* the loading can be a little slow and I've had periods of dialogue that take ages to get through, what clockspeed do you have it running at and is it possible to have a speed selector?

Could you be more specific. What loading are you referring to, when freesci starts up, when you go to a new room, loading savegames.. which? Note than when you play a game for the first time loading times will be higher initially because a directory will be created and some files may be copied into it.

I also don't understand what you mean by periods of dialogue. The only dialogue that comes to mind is the one near the beginning of LSL3. That one is time controlled and won't go faster or slower depending on speed of the machine it runs on (and besides, you can press enter to move it along yourself). SCI is designed to run on machines of different speed. If games are run on very slow machines they will turn off animation for example. The only speed setting there is, is the one that's in the game's top menu. I don't know whether that will influence the dialog speed though.

I am interested in what you meant though, if you can explain it to me better I might be able to do something about it.

Currently the CPU is set to 133Mhz, I could add an option to set it higher. I'll most likely just make that a config file option though and not a graphical selector. I hate making menu's and stuff like that.

* It's a little dark on my FLU unit, any chance of having a brightness control?

Yes, but again, probably only as a config file option.

* virtual keyboard is one of the nicest I've seen! works great

Thanks! I made it for the Dreamcast port actually. The image itself comes from the PocketPC port by Ismail Khatib.

* can you break the copy protection can't carry round game manuals everywhere....

​

No. Copy protection is built into the games, so it's the games that would need to be changed. Some games have a special number or word that can be used to bypass the copy protection screen though. I think Al Lowe mentions some of these on his website.

 

[frolik]

Sorry for being vague, I think it was probably user error. It took a while to load LSL3 and a few times I would press buttons and wonder why was doing nothing but now I realise the hand cursor means WAIT! And yes the dialogue I was referring to was the start of LSL3 so that explains it, now I can skip it with a click. So ignore me about load speeds as it seems fine now I've got used to it

Yes I've changed the movement speed to max and the character moves much faster now, also I realised that with key movement you only click in the direction once instead of holding down the direction and now it's not jerking.

No need for the clock speed changer then but it would be nice (not essential) if you can add a brightness control.

Found the magic page on Al Lowe's site here: http://www.allowe.com/Larry/cluescheats.htm

and it's worth knowing that <CTRL><ALT><X> will allow you to have full raunch!!! :lol:

...now I just need a chatboard :huh:

 

[The Phantom]

...now I just need a chatboard :huh:

​

Early on in this thread someone tried the chatboard support and unfortunately it doesn't work at this time. I don't have a chatboard myself yet. I'll try to fix this issue as soon as I get one. Jr2swiss has offered to send me one so hopefully I'll get it sorted out soon.

Oh btw, It might be worth pointing out that in some games the right mouse button can be used as 'look' (e.g. Colonel's Bequest).

 

[Captainbubby]

Hahah the good ol' CTRL-ALX-X for full raunch.

I remember back in the days me and all my friends trying and trying to answer all those questions and get five out of five.

 

[frolik]

strangely I got 5 out of 5 first time anyway! and I've never played it before.... guess I'm adult enough

 

[The Phantom]

There appear to be some issues with the latest release (related to background drawing). I'll provide a new binary when that's fixed.

Thanks to Jr2swiss who provided me with a Chatboard, I got Chatboard support basically working. Unfortunately it seems to be rather unreliable right now (e.g. occasionally a return keypress comes out of nowhere, very annoying at the game selection screen :/). So this will take a bit more time.

I've also started on a threading library (will probably take quite a while before that's finished).

 

[nem]

Wow, very nice work, The Phantom. I've been playing Space Quest 3 with it and it seems to work really well.

What I would like to see from future versions:

- chatboard support
- an on-screen indicator that tells you which control mode you're currently using
- a rudimentary program that read txt files, so you could browse a walkthrough as you're playing ;-)

Sound would be lovely as well, but I guess it might be pretty difficult to get it working.

 

[The Phantom]

Wow, very nice work, The Phantom. I've been playing Space Quest 3 with it and it seems to work really well.

What I would like to see from future versions:

- chatboard support

Working on it.

- an on-screen indicator that tells you which control mode you're currently using

This is indicated in the right-bottom corner.

- a rudimentary program that read txt files, so you could browse a walkthrough as you're playing ;-)

Probably not gonna happen.

 

[frolik]

Thanks to Jr2swiss who provided me with a Chatboard, I got Chatboard support basically working.

Thanks jr2swiss!

I've also started on a threading library (will probably take quite a while before that's finished).

Excellent! thanks phantom!

 

[nem]

- an on-screen indicator that tells you which control mode you're currently using

This is indicated in the right-bottom corner.

​

Haha, oops, sorry about that

Has anybody gotten Quest for Glory 1 to work properly? I'm having problems in the character selection screen. It all loads up fine before that, but then it gets stuck. It doesn't crash, since it gives you these funny messages when you repeatedly press the right button of the mouse, but it doesn't advance to the next screen. I have tested the game on the PC (w/ dosbox) and it loads up fine there.

I haven't tried Hero's Quest, but I can't see it being any different.

Othen than that every other game has worked perfectly (bar the Hoyle's Casino games, which I haven't tried).

 

[The Phantom]

Has anybody gotten Quest for Glory 1 to work properly? I'm having problems in the character selection screen. It all loads up fine before that, but then it gets stuck. It doesn't crash, since it gives you these funny messages when you repeatedly press the right button of the mouse, but it doesn't advance to the next screen.

Right. That's directly caused by the missing soundserver. The character selection screen is in part controlled by sound events (which never happen).

Here's a workaround:

1) Open the virtual keyboard and select the Ctrl key.
2) Press the ` key, this starts the debugger.
3) Deselect the Ctrl key.
4) Enter: "vmvars g 136 0" (for fighter), or "vmvars g 136 1" (for magic user), or "vmvars g 136 2" (for thief), followed by enter.
5) Enter: "vmvars g 13 203", followed by enter, to teleport to the next screen.
6) Enter: "go", followed by enter, to go back to the game.

Another workaround would be to create a savegame with another version of FreeSCI (e.g. win32) and transfer that savegame to GP32.

 

[nem]

Thanks!

 

[The Phantom]

Btw, Chatboard support seems to be working pretty well now. But I want to wait until the issues caused by the background image drawing optimization have been investigated before releasing a new binary.

I've been thinking of changing the d-pad control to a 'hold-down to move' approach, instead of the current "push once to start moving, push again to stop moving". Opinions?

 

[nem]

I've been thinking of changing the d-pad control to a 'hold-down to move' approach, instead of the current "push once to start moving, push again to stop moving". Opinions?

​

Hmm, that could work, although I do quite like the way it is now. But since the more options the better, couldn't you make it a variable in the config file?

 

[The Phantom]

Hmm, that could work, although I do quite like the way it is now.

The problem I have with the current control method is that it's not possible to walk diagonally. I could hack that in, but having to push a diagonal again to stop walking wouldn't feel right. That's why I think it might be better to switch over to a more 'console-natural' hold-down approach. I think the Sarien port uses this method as well.

 

[The Phantom]

New binary available, initial post updated.

 

[gametux]

Ok, I am a little late to make my report about freesci_gp32, but here is it:
GP32 BLU+ with Chatboard - freesci-stable-20050116
Games tested:
Leisure Suit Larry 2: Works and looks very good on the 3.5" Display (much better than on 17").
BLU+ configured like in README. Works perfect.
Chatboard works good (1st time used it, so I can`t say more about it).
Usability is very good. I like all three methods of input and the virtual keyboard is good.

Thank you for your work.