Re: DGDS (Dynamix Game Development System)

Vasco,

This is really impressive. Hopefully you'll be able to continue working on
this :)

Alex

On Tue, 21 Nov 2017 at 20:45 Vasco Alexandre da Silva Costa <
[email protected]> wrote:

> Thanks for the resources, it helped move this foward tremendously!
>
> I basically have the following pieces put together now:
> - decompressor (LZW and RLE).
> - archive unpacker.
> - .SCR|.BMP:BIN:|VGA:|MA8: image loader (TODO: VQT loader).
> - .SND Sierra SCI music loader, MT-32 MIDI player, Soundblaster PCM
> sound sample player (TODO: MT-32 patches).
> - .TTM cinematic sequence parser and intepreter with enough commands
> to play the Rise of the Dragon intro.
> - Graphics subsystem.
> - .ADS loader and parser with some basic interpreter code.
> - TODO: .SDS and .GDS loaders.
>
> The result is we can play the Rise of the Dragon title and intro
> sequence, with some caveats, as you can see here:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHyjCtypBiM
>
> For this it is necessary to use the Macintosh game files with the PC
> music. This can be done by dumping the game sound resources (i.e.
> 'scummvm -u') then starting the game with the Macintosh port. i.e.
> 'scummvm rise-mac'.
>
> All the code is available here:
> https://github.com/vcosta/scummvm/tree/master/engines/dgds
> Wiki has also been updated:
> https://github.com/vcosta/scummvm/wiki
>
> Recently I have also come up with a lot of data on a later DGDS game
> engine implementation. I can share this data with anyone who's
> available to help with the project. I don't think I'll be able to
> continue this at this pace. I would say the DGDS engine code work is
> like 1/3rd complete.
>
> Regards,
>
> On Mon, Oct 23, 2017 at 1:37 PM, Alex Bevilacqua <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> > Hey Vasco,
> >
> > I took a stab at this many (many, many) years ago, but didn't really make
> > all that much progress (https://github.com/alexbevi/scummvm/tree/dgds).
> >
> > I started disassembling Willy Beamish at first, but found a lot of
> > similarities to how Betrayal at Krondor's resources were being managed.
> > There is a great project at http://xbak.sourceforge.net/ (mirrored
> source at
> > https://github.com/alexbevi/xbak) that was an engine re-implementation
> for
> > BaK.
> >
> > You could probably reuse a lot of the logic there to get you moving
> forward
> > a bit faster.
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Alex
> >
> > On Mon, 23 Oct 2017 at 06:46 Filippos Karapetis <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hello Vasco, and thanks for your interest in ScummVM!
> >>
> >> Reading the game file data from the resource containers is
> >> straightforward, however the game data itself is a bit harder. The image
> >> files for example have a peculiar encoding scheme, and is different
> from the
> >> newer Dynamix games, which have easier to understand resource files. Any
> >> help is certainly welcome!
> >>
> >> We have a WIP engine for DGDS, but it's still in very (very) early
> stages.
> >> I have a second attempt locally, which is a different approach to the
> public
> >> WIP engine, and IMHO a bit cleaner. It still is a glorified resource
> >> container handler, like the current public WIP engine.
> >>
> >> If you're interested, I've uploaded the second version here:
> >> https://github.com/bluegr/scummvm-dgds
> >>
> >> I'd be glad to help in any way I can :)
> >>
> >> Regards
> >>
> >>
> >> On Mon, Oct 23, 2017 at 3:01 AM, Vasco Alexandre da Silva Costa
> >> <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Hey folks,
> >>> I have been interested in DGDS engine support in ScummVM for some
> >>> time. So I could play Heart of China and Rise of the Dragon.
> >>>
> >>> I have read all the information about the Rise of the Dragon game I
> >>> could find online to decode the files. You can find a summary of the
> >>> info which I scrounged together so far here:
> >>> https://github.com/vcosta/scummvm/wiki
> >>>
> >>> I know there's a DGDS port which was started already for ScummVM. It
> >>> seems to have some basic file archive support. Also some font support
> >>> I think. But it probably needs to be ported to the latest codebase. I
> >>> was also thinking of adding image and text loading support.
> >>>
> >>> The game interpreter proper is still beyond me at this point.
> >>>
> >>> Regards,
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Vasco Alexandre da Silva Costa
> >>> PhD in Computer Engineering (Computer Graphics)
> >>> Instituto Superior Técnico/University of Lisbon, Portugal
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Scummvm-devel mailing list
> >>> [email protected]
> >>> http://lists.scummvm.org/listinfo/scummvm-devel
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> "Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes" - Oscar Wilde
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Scummvm-devel mailing list
> >> [email protected]
> >> http://lists.scummvm.org/listinfo/scummvm-devel
>
>
>
> --
> Vasco Alexandre da Silva Costa
> PhD in Computer Engineering (Computer Graphics)
> Instituto Superior Técnico/University of Lisbon, Portugal
>

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