The microscope puzzle. As many of you might have predicted, even the non-programmers, it’s one of the more difficult bits of the project. In fact, just as it was one of the more difficult bits of the game.
I’m going about it in a way that feels like cheating. Basically, I’m completely ignoring the disassembly for now, and implementing my own algorithm (with inspiration from this tool) play the game (hopefully well). The ideal thing being that once I’ve done this, and have a really good idea of how the game works, I then look at the disassembly and figure out more easily (though certainly not easily) how it works. But it is possible that this latter step may get… postponed. Depends how well my algorithm works (and how different its playing style is from the original’s).
Month: November 2008
Well, as of ScummVM r35060, the Groovie engine is part of it. Yes, that’s right folks, if you download the Daily Snapshot of ScummVM from now on, you’ll be able to play The 7th Guest with it.
We’re going to keep the google code project going, but the svn repos there might not always have the most recent code: that will be in ScummVM. And this blog will continue indefinitely :-).
… kinda. Apparently. As of r328, the game should be completable without the use of the library. However, no-one has played it through from start to finish: if anyone wants to try to play the game all the way through, please let us know if it works! As stated in the last post though, disassembling the AI for the microscope puzzle is going to take quite some time as it is very complicated: at the moment Stauf may seem considerably more stupid than you remember him (in fact, his moves aren’t even valid: he basically does nothing the entire game). But still. The game’s completeable! Yay!
Wow.
I leave the project for one day, and come back to find that Jordi has changed four bits in the source code, leading to the fact that at least five more puzzles are now complete. Of the two that are left, one might work (apparently, just about to test it myself :-), and the other is going to be very, very difficult. It’s the microscope puzzle, which if you know the game, you’ll know is very different to all the others, as it involves an albeit basic form of AI.
We’re trying to figure out how many different versions of groovie games (particularly t7g) there are, and the differences between them. If you want to help out, you’ll need a copy of t7g (or other Groovie game), the ability to create an iso file from it (e.g. one of these pieces of software: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_image_software), and the ability to generate md5 hashes from the resulting files. Then post the relevant information as a comment on the checksums page. We will also need the executable version number: this can be found by running the executable (v.exe for t7g, v32.exe for 11h) in a command window (or in Dosbox).
http://code.google.com/p/t7gre/wiki/Status
It has been pointed out to me, that since I last posted any actual news about t7gre, quite a lot has changed. Jordi has been working away since I last posted (about MIDI music working), and we now have a wiki page to keep track of which puzzles are working, and 13 out of the 21 puzzles in the game are working fine. That’s an amazing testament to the work that he’s put in over the past few months. But now he’s getting distracted in other directions… take a look at this!
Well, the most hectic time on The Tale of Despereaux is (probably) over, and I have a little more time. Just enough time, in fact to spend a substantial amount of this weekend installing Kubuntu 8.10, and to get pissed off at KDE 4.1 (which, despite its prettiness and everything, seems to have less features than KDE 3.5).
But I have managed to do a little on t7gre, even if it is just to fix a small regression that has been there for goodness knows how long… ever since Jordi revamped the movie player to, y’know, work properly. Shows how often we watch the intro! Well, it is ridiculously long…
And so just as I’m thinking I’ll dig back into the assembly, I discover that VirtualBox, the method by which I run WinXP IDA on Linux, has stopped working. Grrr. Having re-isntalled it, it works, but my VM now BSODs on startup. I have to install Windows. AGAIN.
Calm down. Relax. Man, I wish I could afford copy of IDA for Linux…