Instead of continuing working, I’ll rather goof and play around with video capturing ;). So you can now gaze at some working Mike walking animations:
Author: DrMcCoy
bookmark_borderAn inconvenience solved
Just a minor update: Thanks to sev, who pointed me to the right place in the wine sources, I managed to solve the cursor inconvenience :).
The problem was, of course, my own damn fault; I misunderstood the nature of cursor resources. They’re not, as I assumed, plain cursors, one by one each taking up a resource entry. Instead, there are cursor groups, each capable of possessing a variable amount of cursor images. That isn’t even a quirk of NE files, it’s like that in PE files as we well, so my complaining about the executables being in that old format doesn’t apply either. Mea culpa.
bookmark_borderThe aforementioned cursor inconvenience
In the previous post, I mentioned an inconvenience with the cursors. Here’s the gist of it:
In Dark Seed II, the cursors are embedded into the resource part of the Windows 3.x (NE, “New Executable”) executable dark0001.exe. Specs are available on the Microsoft website, but they don’t quite match the executable, which claims that each cursor is only 32 byte big. Continue reading “The aforementioned cursor inconvenience”
bookmark_borderA non-gob-y Squidmas
Just on time for this blog’s first anniversary (quite scary, especially considering that there weren’t that many posts ^^) and ChristSquidmas, I come to you with a status update.
So, what have I been doing the past months? Apart from some RL stuff I’d rather not talk about, and playing Dominion (seriously, check that out, it’s really great), I didn’t do much concerning gob. Sorry. Instead, I started a new ScummVM engine, for Dark Seed II. Continue reading “A non-gob-y Squidmas”
bookmark_border“I know it’s too late I can’t be saved”
Recently, I completely revamped the save system in the gob engine. To explain why that was necessary and what that means for old saves, I have to start with how script variables are handled, how saving works in the original games and how the old save system worked. Continue reading ““I know it’s too late I can’t be saved””
bookmark_borderPSA: Real Name of the Gob Engine Found
For anyone following #scummvm, this is old news: Strangerke, who’s been in contact with the original Coktel Vision developers, has found out the real name of their engine. “DEV”.
Now, I happen to think that this is a bloody stupid name (no offence to the original team meant, of course). People around me seem to agree.
Also, I’ve gotten used to “gob” and this blog’s name wouldn’t work with “DEV” ;). Therefore, the engine in ScummVM will keep being called “gob”. For now, anyway ;).
bookmark_borderFascinating *eyebrow raise*
Just a quick overview of the latest developments for people interested in Fascination (I know you’re out there, you’ve been bothering me for some time now 😉 ).
bookmark_borderShallow Beauty
Well, here’s my final follow-up to the dithering stuff.
I actually grew a bit weary of fiddling with it, so pardon me that this post won’t be long. This will also be my last one about this, too… Continue reading “Shallow Beauty”
bookmark_borderDemos
Since a few days ago, ScummVM also supports a few BAT- and SCN-based non-interactive demos,
namely for Inca 2, Woodruff, Urban Runner and Playtoons. The interesting thing about them is that, strictly speaking, they’re not Gob-based, but are just either a BAT file that calls a small program for IMD playback; or a small interpreter for a simple SCN script with VMD playback capabilities. Either way, they practically just consist of IMD/VMD videos.
If you find a Coktel Vision demo that doesn’t yet work with the latest daily build of ScummVM, I’d be interested in getting my hands on it. 🙂
Sparked by the resulting demo exchange and discussion in #scummvm, sanguinehearts also set up an unified hosting site for demos (which we’ve been missing) and started uploading all demos already known to the team.
Similar to above, we’d like to get any yet unknown demos for ScummVM-supported games you might have.
bookmark_borderMore Beauties to Dither
This is just a quick follow-up to the dithering post.
Firstly: Yeah, it’s kinda late. Unfortunately, I have been busy with RL and didn’t have much time to work on Gob.
Secondly: Sorry Seldon, but I didn’t get much out of your posts. As far as I understood, it’ll only lead to a lookup that’s far too complex for my needs. The point is a bit moot now anyways, as you can see below. But thanks all the same! 🙂
The actual reason reason for this blog entry is that I did fiddle with the code a bit, though. In some spare minutes, I’ve asked my coworkers/bosses about my problem and they’ve suggested using a more crude approximation of the distance function, namely
ABS(x1 – x2) + ABS(y1 – y2) + ABS(z1 – z2)
This would remove the need for the costly multiplication. Whether it still looks good is a thing to try out. Which I did, and it does. Continue reading “More Beauties to Dither”