Re: [freesci-develop] KQ6 and SCI 1.1 Games

[Lars Skovlund]

Hi!

First of all, thanks for volunteering to write some code - it is really
refreshing to get such an offer!

> I was wondering what would be required to get SCI 1.1 games working,
> KQ6 in particular? I'd be willing to help out if I could get some
> direction on where to get started with your guy's code.

OK. Let's see... the script support for SCI1.1 is mostly done, insofar
that SCI1.1 games load and run. In my opinion, the natural next step
would be the ability to parse information out of message resources
(yes, this is also necessary for CD-based games). I wrote some
enhancements to the resource manager a few weeks ago that facilitate
this; with them, accessing resources in RESOURCE.MSG (where the
message resources reside, as opposed to the main resource volume
RESOURCE.000) should be transparent. There are several versions of the
message file format - they are described in the FreeSCI manual. I
suggest making a multiplexing system, so we can handle them all
transparently. None of this should require detailed knowledge of
FreeSCI internals - I imagine it being quite isolated from the existing code.
Once the API is done, kMessage() -- which is the function that the
games actually interface with -- can be hooked up to it.  

Support for audio resources requires a little more work in the
resource manager. As I've already written, the resource manager is
already able to load resources from several sources, but the concrete
sources used for audio in SCI1.1 are not. This will require either the
addition of a parameter to scir_load_resource and friends, or the
creation of *_ex variants (Microsoft style) of them.

When these two things are in place, we can discuss the next steps.

> Thanks
> -Laine

Thanks again,

Lars