Sierra / Dynamix

[Hodr]

Just wanted to mention I tried my copy of Day of the Tentacle using John's ScummVM port and it works awesome (I never used Scumm before so I wan't sure what to expect). The visuals are incredibly clean, The game runs fullspeed, and the sound is perfect. It is the best I have seen on the GP2X so far.

It got me thinking, if only there were a way to get my old sierra games to work as well. I would love to be able to play kings quest six, conquest of the longbow, and most of all, Adventures of Willie Beamish.

I don't know if there is an all in one emulation solution for sierra titles like there is for lucas arts titles, but if there were I would contribute towards a port of it for sure.

 

[Belgarath]

FreeSCI is an interpreter for the later Sierra games, but I don't believe it supports KQ6 or Longbow yet. I don't think there's an interpreter for Dynamix games at all. Of course they might work on uae4all providing you can stand the disk swapping

 

[Hodr]

FreeSCI is an interpreter for the later Sierra games, but I don't believe it supports KQ6 or Longbow yet. I don't think there's an interpreter for Dynamix games at all. Of course they might work on uae4all providing you can stand the disk swapping

​

Dynamix was part of Sierra, and the game (Willie Beamish) played very much like the later Sierra games (KQ6 et. all). So I can hope at least.

 

[Wolfspirit]

I just tried the amiga version of willy beamish on the uae4all port for the gp2x. I seem to be getting a fs of about 30-40. It is rather annoying with the disk loading, but other than that it does seem to run fine. Is there a utility that will merge all of the disks into one rom? Thanks.

 

[Captainbubby]

Yes, Dymanix was "Part of the Sierra family", but I believe (I could be wrong) their adventure games ("Rise of the Dragon" "Willy Beamish" "Heart of China" etc..) used a different engine to Sierra's SCI (Sierra's Creative interpreter) which followed in the footsteps of it's predeccesor AGI. The SCI engine was revamped in about 1990 for the 256 Icon based Sierra games. As far as I know, the Gp32 version of Freesci supported the earler SCI (typing) games such as Space Quest III / King's Quest IV / Police Quest II. Has free SCI been ported to the Gp2x yet?

For AGI games, there is Sarien, but I believe Sarien has only been released on the gp32 at this point. I could be way out of date though, so if I am, sorry!

 

[cbox]

Where can one download this port of ScummVM? the other one had bugs if I remember right.

 

[Javacat]

I was considering having a go at porting FreeSCI to the GP2X, when I finally recieve mine. Unfortunatly if I did port it, it would probably go up for the "Worst port ever" award, as I have little experience in C. I did manage to get FreeSCI compiling in windows again a year or so ago (before they got the new windows maintainer), and it wasn't to hard to do. The more ideal solution would be getting hold of Walter van Niftrik (the person who ported it to the GP32), to see whether they are interested in porting it to the GP2X.


I have mentioned this before, but you could have a go at using GBAGI in the game boy advance emulator, for playing AGI games. If it's a playable speed, this will have the added benifit of already being designed to use a hand held console control scheme.

 

[God Ginrai]

Aren't Dynamix the guys who created one of the best games in existance?

The Incredible Machine (TIM)

>

 

[Thraka]

Yep, and Tribes! And they really are now known as Garage Games.

 

[Javacat]

For anyone who is interested, Space Quest I, II and III all work perfectly in Outcast and SQ3 looks better than ever . Skeezix is currently my favourite person in the world.


Police Quest next me thinks :lol: .

 

[Captainbubby]

I'll have to check those out in Outcast, though wouldn't you need to buy one of the little keyboards for it?

http://www.armchairempire.com/Interviews/j...garagegames.htm

There's an interview with Jeff Tunnell (Of Dynamix fame) about Garagegames

 

[Javacat]

When you press 'Select' a mini keyboard pops up at the bottom of the screen. This should be ok for most of the games, although it might be abit of a problem towards the end of Space Quest I, where you need to enter a command quite quickly, whilst simultaniously moving Roger towards the object you want to interact with.
You may be able to get around this by setting the Throttle to the slowest speed possible.

 

[Captainbubby]

Oh that reminds me, wasn't that essential at the end of Space Quest II? To get into the Escape Pod before the Alien reached you, you had to put it on slow speed and type quickly to get in the pod, otherwsie if you ran away from the Alien you'd die due to the ship exploding.

And I'm married, can you believe it?

 

[Javacat]

I'd forgotten about that part in SQ2..

Outcast could do with some sort of "keyboard buffer", where you could go to the emulator menu, type a string into the buffer, and then go back to the game. When you get to a part that needs the buffer you could then press a button and the emulator automatically types in the buffer. Or something like that .
A slight variation of this could be having a text file with loads of prewritten commands entered, which the emulator then loads. You could then press a button which pauses the emulator and displays a list with all of the prewritten commands available (with the ability to also type your own in).
Non of this should be to hard to do, but these would probably only be useful for sierra's early adventure games so there wouldn't be to much of an insentive for Skeezix to add this, unless there are other games/applications which require you to keep typing the same thing in over and over again.


Non of this should be a problem in SQ3, because as soon as you press a button on the keyboard the parsar pops up and the game pauses.



Edit: And I forgot to say, I know a few people who are hard core Space Quest fans which are also married. One of them has even named a few of his children after characters from the games.

 

[The Phantom]

I was considering having a go at porting FreeSCI to the GP2X, when I finally recieve mine. Unfortunatly if I did port it, it would probably go up for the "Worst port ever" award, as I have little experience in C. I did manage to get FreeSCI compiling in windows again a year or so ago (before they got the new windows maintainer), and it wasn't to hard to do. The more ideal solution would be getting hold of Walter van Niftrik (the person who ported it to the GP32), to see whether they are interested in porting it to the GP2X.

​

I am he. I was planning to port FreeSCI to GP2X too. But due to the problems with the first batch of GP2Xs I decided to wait for the second batch, so I don't have a GP2X yet. However, as I'm already maintaining Dreamcast, GP32 and BeOS ports of FreeSCI, I'm not too keen on adding yet another port to that list. So if you (or anyone else) wants to have a go at porting FreeSCI to GP2X, by all means go for it. If you have any questions feel free to contact me or another member of the FreeSCI team. You could also drop by the #freesci IRC channel on freenode.

 

[Muncher666]

And with the new breakout box, you could use a real keyboard too.

Allan.

 

[Silberstein]

Where can one download this port of ScummVM? the other one had bugs if I remember right.

​

I have the exact same question. I've tried NK's port but the sound lagges like mad. Maby DjWillis's port is prefereble even though it is in an early state?

 

[Captainbubby]

What breakout box!?

Whoever names their kids after Space Quest characters, BLESS THEM!

It's little Vohaul's first day of Kindergarten! hahah, I love it!

 

[Javacat]

I had a go at playing SQ1 last night. It took me about 10 minutes to get to the translator, but I had forgotten the command to pick it up and the ship blew up

I reckon it would take about 2 hours to complete SQ1 at this rate, using the onscreen keyboard. I suppose this could be a good thing, as it normally takes me 5 minutes to finish the game on my pc.
It probably will need some sort of mini keyboard to make the game more playable, but my text file, with a list of commands should be able to improve it somewhat. Even mapping the space, backspace and enter keys to buttons on the gp2x could improve the gameplay.

How did FreeSCI work on the GP32? Did it use an onscreen keyboard, a mini keyboard or something else?



Regarding the breakout box, I don't think there is one available at the minute, although we are getting closer to having one available.



btw, if you're interested in Space Quest you may want to check out the omnipedia @ http://www.sq7.org/omnipedia/index.php/Main_Page. It's a wiki about Space Quest.
I would point you to a SQ forum, but the main one was shut down a few months ago after some trouble :unsure:.
If you want more info on what happened check out any sierra/adventure game forum and search for SQN, spacequest.net or janitorial times.

 

[sweetlilmre]

Hi,

I have ported Sarien to the GP2x, but didn't bother to release it as there seem to be serveral fatal issues with the engine itself. I'll have a go at getting FreeSCI to work as soon as I get a gap at work (major project deadlines ). If anyone wants a .gpe of my Sarien port or the source, you're welcome to PM me.

The Phantom: if you're reading this, I'll try and pop onto the channel to have a chat sometime about porting FreeSCI, I already ripped off your virtual keyboard code / gfx for the Sarien port, so I'm slightly familiar with the code

-(e)