The Curse Of Monkey Island

[TelcoLou]

Accepted, although its abit late now, every1 seems to think im the antichrist lol.

No way, that's my job

 

[goob]

Listen, i never said i wouldn't wait. I said i was upset when i found broken sword wouldn't work...so what?! I have spoken to the guy doing the port on this very forum, and he has high hopes for broken sword. Yes i am eager for an update...but i never said i wouldn't wait, and i certainly didn't make out that the developers are "lazy". And if i could amend the code myself...i would.

Have you made a donation to the developer?

 

[martymcfly]

Im a student, it took me afew months to save up to buy a gp2x. No i haven't made a donation. Im not exactally rolling in money...i aint ashamed of it. What does that have to do with anything?

(Thanks for the apologies)

 

[goob]

Im a student, it took me afew months to save up to buy a gp2x. No i haven't made a donation. Im not exactally rolling in money...i aint ashamed of it. What does that have to do with anything?

No one said you were 'rolling' in money. But like the rest of us you make sacrificies when you want to purchase something like the gp2x. Donating money to developers to see improvements you want is no different really.

 

[Miika]

Why can't you just STFU? You have just been spamming this thread with off-topic shit. It's about COMI on GP2X! Stop now.

 

[goob]

Why can't you just STFU? You have just been spamming this thread with off-topic shit. It's about COMI on GP2X! Stop now.

Oh, pleeeease.

 

[martymcfly]

This is rediculous. I wasn't even complaining. All i said was i wish my fav game would play. but i know it won't and i'll have to wait. How many other people do you think have donated who use all the emus for this system?

Edit: now we're spamming as well, damn it

 

[Bramrash]

Post before it closes

 

[DJWillis]

What really upsets me over gp2x is that broken sword is apprently abit slow, and the cutscenes wont work. I really want broken sword on the move...i wish theyd update scumm....february release was nearly 3 months ago now!

If you read into it you would know that the problem (cut scenes aside, that is another issue I am actively working on) is really how the early Virtual Theatre games (BASS and BS1) handle saves, this causes a problem in the GP2X environment meaning nothing other then autosaves work. This is what makes BS1 (and BASS to a lesser extent) unplayable. I am still working on tracking the last bug down that stops normal saves from working.

As for speed, I consider less then average 80% of the full 1:1 speed to be far too slow to play, that is my standard and I am sticking to it .

BS2 is about 60-70% speed and that is just about playable, in fact I know it can be played as I am working though it on the back burner to give the port a workout. Saves also work fine in BS2 .

Anyway, onto the topic in hand, COMI.

Miika talks about an unscaled version of COMI being very fast. If you have a build that old then your on your own, you much be using code that is getting on for 2 years old and secondly I can assure you it is not fast at all, no faster then the scaled/zoomed version you have now, it only appears fast as all that is being rendered is that 'window' you see. You can't play that version so it is a moot point.

All the official builds (i.e. 0.9.* > Current SVN) have had scaling enabled and most also feature zooming. Anyway, to cut a long story short. COMI is a bitch of a game to render on a low end machine like the GP2X; it is very heavy both on the graphics and backend front. It also prefers to update the entire screen on every update rather then having any dirty marking concepts.

That combined with the overhead of needing a 640*480 buffer leads to it being slow and far from playable IMHO. It will get better (in fact it is a few % faster on my current dev code) but I doubt it will ever get to the average 80% of full speed I need to achieve for me to consider it fully supported.

This thread also seems to have turned into a little bit of a bitch fest. I am still working on ScummVM but it has to take its place with other projects (such as Open2x), a very busy work life and trying to keep the rest of my real life together (not been easy so far this year). Believe me, I would love to have more time to hack on it but it is what it is.

Anyway, now for a bit of a rant . I have been working with ScummVM on the GP2X and GP32 for years and I can remember every one of the few nice mails I have recived about it in that time. I can also remember every one of the bitching mails I have got about something not working well enough of it not supporting that persons favourite game. Some of those mails have been darn right unpleasant and rude and frankly left me wondering why to bother.

I do this for fun (I have never taken cash donations for example for any of my projects) and I hope people also get fun out of it. But I do wish people would be more willing to help, patches, documentation, compatibility lists, FAQ’s all that sort of stuff is good.

Even just a thank you or a nice well worded feature request is great. “Your apps shit, I want to play X game and it does not work” is not very helpful and unfortunately all too common . X game slows down in the scene with the Monster and Hump-back-bridge is there any way the could be sped up, I am using version X/Y is much better .

Very few devs get anything out of scenes like this and most put there heart and soul into it, it’s worth remembering that and thinking about it when people word there questions and comments . We are all human too (though some of the devs have to be part computer to pull of the tricks they do ).

Anyway, rant over, I am still about, I have been working on an update that when it settles down will be out for testing and I am more then happy to answer questions but asking when COMI will be full speed is getting very old now , just accept it will always be slow but I will try and make it better.

People are welcome to submit patches to make things better (if you can) or offer to help in other ways if you want.

 

[Draken]

Thank you. I've been enjoying Full Throttle on it, awesome game.

 

[Miika]

Thanks for reply DJWillis, you have done a very good job, thanks a lot.
Good to hear you are still working on it

 

[PokeParadox]

Yep, your work is most definitely appreciated. I'm looking forward to putting all my SCUMM stuff on my HDD when it arrives

 

[Miika]

No idea where I got such an old build of the official ScummVM, but today I downloaded the latest official, and COMI works much faster than on the SVN build. It's quite playable at 240MHz

 

[sensible GP32]

Willis you are awesome.

end of.

 

[Perky_Goth]

yeah, thanks to you I'll force myself to play all those great adventures I missed the first time around.

 

[DJWillis]

No idea where I got such an old build of the official ScummVM, but today I downloaded the latest official, and COMI works much faster than on the SVN build. It's quite playable at 240MHz

Much as I said I would not work on COMI support it may have got a tad faster due to a fix I am putting in elsewhere (I can't test as I don't have COMI handy). If the fix works elsewhere I will try and get a release out in a few days.

 

[Noel007]

any news on this? This is my fav game and i wont commit myself to buying one before this game is working

No pressure.java script:add_smilie(":unsure:","smid_17")
unsure.gif

thanks

 

[DJWillis]

any news on this? This is my fav game and i wont commit myself to buying one before this game is working

No pressure.java script:add_smilie(":unsure:","smid_17")
unsure.gif

thanks

Don't buy one then .

I can't see how I loose out .

In all seriousness I am still working on it, its a little faster in my dev builds (not much) but currently crashes after the 1st scenes on the ship (or so my testers tell me) so there is no point doing a new release just for COMI.

It will never be fast enough for me to consider it supported (80% of 1:1 speed) and it will ALWAYS look nasty (IMHO) due to the crude downscaling from 640*480 > 320*240.

Anyway, I am away for a few days so don't expect any movement on this for a while, I will be attempting to enjoy Barcelona instead.

 

[PokeParadox]

Just a thought, but could the smooth software scaling that Notaz used on PicoDrive be used to scale down the image? I mean scaled vertically with the scaling chip and scaled horizontally using the PicoDrive scaling method?

Would it be anyway near feasable to use the HW smooth scaling by converting the colourspace to YUV?

Enjoy Barcelona

 

[DJWillis]

Just a thought, but could the smooth software scaling that Notaz used on PicoDrive be used to scale down the image? I mean scaled vertically with the scaling chip and scaled horizontally using the PicoDrive scaling method?

Would it be anyway near feasable to use the HW smooth scaling by converting the colourspace to YUV?

Enjoy Barcelona

All ideas I have been mulling over with ZodTTD among others. I also have some ARM ASM scalars I have been working on with others that may prove to be a viable option.

The smooth H/W scalar is very appealing but we need to use the image signal processor to convert the image frame by frame, not currently ideal and nigh on useless in our currently implementation.