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ScummVM has a little Hugo support

Posted: Tue Jun 23, 2020 12:22 pm
by Ice Cream Jonsey
More later but you need a development build here: https://buildbot.scummvm.org/builds.html

Re: ScummVM has a little Hugo support

Posted: Tue Jun 23, 2020 12:36 pm
by Roody_Yogurt
Ah, cool. I had noticed that they were basically working off gargoyle (or possibly just glk) ever since they added z-code support, but they have been so slow in adding support for the others, I wasn't sure it was ever going to happen.

Re: ScummVM has a little Hugo support

Posted: Tue Jun 23, 2020 3:39 pm
by Ice Cream Jonsey
Roody_Yogurt wrote: Tue Jun 23, 2020 12:36 pm Ah, cool. I had noticed that they were basically working off gargoyle (or possibly just glk) ever since they added z-code support, but they have been so slow in adding support for the others, I wasn't sure it was ever going to happen.
It ain't great. The graphic didn't show when I tried Enceladus but I thought I put code in to check to see if it was a graphics-supporting terp or not. And then I typed "help" and ScummVM took that command over and didn't send it to the game. :(

BUT I know it's a work in progress, so. (And all of the other implementations for the graphics-based games are great.)

Re: ScummVM has a little Hugo support

Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2020 8:22 pm
by Tdarcos
Sometimes there is a problem in new systems supporting older ones, how do you allow people to use new features under an older environment?

This was a problem in hardware going back to how it was documented in Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine when Dtat General was developing a 32-bit version of their Nova mnicomputer, to compete with the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) VAX Mainframe, which is also a 32-bit machine.

Someone wanted to add a "Mode bit," which if toggled would enable 32-bit mode. A simple fix, but the company president, Edson DaCastro, vetoed. DaCastro, who quit DEC to found Data General and had seen some bad choices made there, didn't want to add a mode bit, because when you get kludges added to fix a problem, they end to spread elsewhere.

ScummVM is one of two systems most likely, not having looked at the source code: (1) a multiple interpreter including separate execution modules for each game type; or more likely (2) a 'meta interpreter' which takes the code of that particular game, uses a custom "switcher" for that game's instructions, acquires the particular locations which will have data for those instructions, then passes these arguments to the execution module for that function. In the case of the latter, the effectiveness of the interpreter is directly related to how well it maps the functions of the original interpreter to its own functions.

Re: ScummVM has a little Hugo support

Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2020 12:53 am
by Jizaboz
Tdarcos wrote: Wed Jun 24, 2020 8:22 pm Sometimes there is a problem in new systems supporting older ones, how do you allow people to use new features under an older environment?

This was a problem in hardware going back to how it was documented in Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine when Dtat General was developing a 32-bit version of their Nova mnicomputer, to compete with the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) VAX Mainframe, which is also a 32-bit machine.

Someone wanted to add a "Mode bit," which if toggled would enable 32-bit mode. A simple fix, but the company president, Edson DaCastro, vetoed. DaCastro, who quit DEC to found Data General and had seen some bad choices made there, didn't want to add a mode bit, because when you get kludges added to fix a problem, they end to spread elsewhere.

ScummVM is one of two systems most likely, not having looked at the source code: (1) a multiple interpreter including separate execution modules for each game type; or more likely (2) a 'meta interpreter' which takes the code of that particular game, uses a custom "switcher" for that game's instructions, acquires the particular locations which will have data for those instructions, then passes these arguments to the execution module for that function. In the case of the latter, the effectiveness of the interpreter is directly related to how well it maps the functions of the original interpreter to its own functions.
I think it is more number 1. This system originally was meant to only run LucasArts games like The Secret of Monkey Island smoothly on multiple devices.

As years went on they piled on old Sierra game support and then many other games. I was a it surprised they added text game support as I always viewed ScummVM as a graphic adventure modern loader.

Re: ScummVM has a little Hugo support

Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2020 5:56 am
by Ice Cream Jonsey
Tdarcos wrote: Wed Jun 24, 2020 8:22 pm ScummVM is one of two systems most likely, not having looked at the source code: (1) a multiple interpreter including separate execution modules for each game type; or more likely (2) a 'meta interpreter' which takes the code of that particular game, uses a custom "switcher" for that game's instructions
So your analysis is that there is either one interpreter or more than one?

Re: ScummVM has a little Hugo support

Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2021 7:07 pm
by Roody_Yogurt
One of the many victims of 2020 was my almost-religious habit of checking ScummVM updates- of course, not very important compared to many of the other events of 2020, but I thought to check it for the first time in months today and had a, "whoa, it has been a while" moment.

Interestingly (to people like us), daily builds these days support some of the Penguin/Polarware games which I guess used an engine they called Comprehend. I gave it a spin today, and it's kind of neat- it displays the graphics as one would want (I only tried it with the DOS version; it's possible it doesn't work with anything else), but all of the text is displayed with the glk-using crisp goodness that we enjoy these days.

It's surprising but kind of cool that ScummVM could very well become the best interpreter for playing certain text games.

Re: ScummVM has a little Hugo support

Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2022 8:52 am
by Angry Stewart Payne
Came here to ask about this but had some notifications I had to deal with.

Did anyone get this to work?