What happened to ph0x?


Valentino

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Oct 15, 2003
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Does anybody know? He's that great guy that ported the SCUMM-emulator. However, his website has been down for weeks now. Maybe two months ago, I heard rumours of a new GPscumm version based on the newest scumm version. So far, not a sign of life from him at all. Is he still alive? Definitely hope so.
 
I vaguely recall hearing he moved on to cell phones. Not to fear though, "DJWillis" is supposed to be working on scumm. This was mentioned here:
gp32zine #2
 
I sent a mail to ph0x yesterday and asked him about GPScumm. When I get an awnser I will post it in this thred.

(I'm from sweden, not good at typing in English)
 
Explosivo posted on Oct 15 2003 at 10:11 PM said:
I sent a mail to ph0x yesterday and asked him about GPScumm. When I get an awnser I will post it in this thred.
Explosivo, what do you want to know about gpScummVM?

I have taken on ph0x's code with his blessing and he (when I last spoke to him) was spending more of his time looking at J2ME stuff and having fun at conferences :)

Regarding the status of gpScumm, here is a little WIP. I have the ph0x’s/my code working well enough on the ScummVM 0.5.1 code base (and CVS code) but performance in some newer games is shockingly bad :(. Sam and Max and the non-LucasArts games are not really playable (slow or buggy) currently. I have just figured out tonight how (I think) to get it all to build using ARM ADS so if the performance claims are true that could lead to a healthy speed up of maybe even 5-8% over GCC :D. Other then that there are some fixes to the sound code, save code and a few general speedups/tweaks and little changes to the port, nothing too major. All the fixes that went into the core ScummVM engine from 0.3 > 0.5 are also in there (obvious really).

As soon as I can get most games up to a playable speed then I intend to chuck a public beta and source out of the door. I don't really see the point in releasing a version that is little better then what is already out (or in some cases much slower).

I am also working on adding OGG (libTremor) and MP3 (libMAD) support to gpScumm but a number of issues make that quite slow going, namely the lack of memory on the GP32 and the CPU cycles required to decode the MP3/OGG stream and the fact that fmOPL (the engine ScummVM uses for AdLib synthesis) is a CPU hog on the GP32 making it very hard to get game, MIDI and MP3 or OGG working in the 133MHz speed limit. I have no problem with overclocking but I am dammed if you will have to overclock the program just to get it to work :D.

Also, the fact that I am really not that good a programmer does not help ;). I am fairly sure I’ll get it working in the end (I have some great offers of help) but don’t hold your breath.

I do (when I can be bothered) update the project page (in my sig) but don’t bet on anything for at least a few weeks as I have some other big projects on the go.
 
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