Serge

On a related note: Until the remaster, I actually thought we saw Bernard's eyes whenever he faced left or right. My mind always interpreted one of the pixels of the rim of his glasses as a pupil for some reason. Why my mind never questioned why he was always looking at the ground, I will never know. 😂

@s-island is correct - and indeed, in the Loom intro, min-jiffies is set to 0. Which is "as fast as possible".

Added some more of those pesky "L" vs "I" OCR-errors (and "RN" vs "M") - if there are any left, you'll probably find most of them if you do a spell-check on the text 🙂 But looking great!

Yeah, you can be pretty sure that DREAMM won't introduce such changes. 😂 But that aside, I've seen maybe one ribbon on a real book (late 1800's) that was attached to the bottom. In some ways, it's more practical - the end doesn't get creased under the book, and it's slightly easier to remove it from the pages if the book is large (downwards rather than upwards). 😋 However, as far as I'm aware, book ribbons weren't even a thing in the 1700's anyway (not making an appearance until around 1850). But then, neither were grog machines or audio books-on-parrot.

They actually weren't. Ever since Maniac Mansion on PC, save/load screens have been rooms with SCUMM scripts like everything else (heck, I think in the case of save/load that wasn't even hardcoded on C64 - can't check now, though). (ETA: Well, except for SCUMM 5-6, where they aren't rooms). But other than that, great summary of the differences. 😁

I don't think you need to rebuild the leaf - it's a relatively common glyph in fonts, called a "hedera" or "fleuron" or "aldus' leaf" or - in unicode - "floral heart", and although I'm not sure where this exact design originated, many fonts copy it - or try to. One of the ones I think does it best is "Symbola" (free): https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/symbola But there are many others copying the same design. You'll also find copies of this design in MS Gothic (not quite as well drawn), or in Deja Vu Sans (really badly drawn) and somewhere around hundreds of other fonts (although some will obviously do their own design fitting with the general font design). The sharp corner towards the top of the left glyph here is intentional - and it looks like it's also in the MI manual - an "ink trap". The glyphs are at U+2766 and U+2767 - or you can try just copy/pasting these, and changing the font: ❦❧ A pretty nice version without the ink trap (although I'm not particularly a fan of the way the swirl and the heart meet in the upright glyph) is Bainsley: https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/bainsley

Looking good - a quick look, and added a few typo/OCR corrections - sorry for possibly ruining the pristine preview for others. 😉 I'm guessing the difference in character width may simply have to do with PostAntiqua not really being owned by a single foundry, so there'll likely be slight variations between them. Or they might have done a slight no-no, and stretched the design in the original manual. The flowery bullet is a "bit" low-res - but that may be the Adobe previewer. In any event, very well done so far - impressively accurate! 😁

Indeed. And of course I couldn't resist to take a look... A lot goes on during those first frames, other than just showing the logo. The machine rating is measured, based on how long it takes to first draw the logo room - but that's not what causes the speed-up - but rather this (pseudo-SCUMM, as per usual): override skip-intro ; some stuff to wait for the music here... run-script sparkles sleep-for 1 second override skip-intro sets up where we'll go, if ESC is hit. "sparkles" is the script that does the sparkles ("run-script" means this script won't continue running until "sparkles" is done - or the override key is hit). At the beginning of the "sparkles" script: min-jiffies = 5 Yes, that's for "high frame rate". It sets the minimum jiffies (60ths of a second) for a frame to 5 - i.e. 12 frames per second. At the end of the script, when the sparkles are done, it's set back to 6 (10 frames per second - also the initial value for MI1). If you hit ESC in the meantime, the script will be stopped before it reaches the end, and "min-jiffies" will stay at 5. So you have to wait until the sparkles start - when it's set to 5 - and hit ESC before they end, when it's set back to 6.

Without having looked much at the data (or your conversion) - or knowing much about how BG's template works, I'm pretty sure the .wav files are standard WAV (containing ADPCM data, which is just compressed) with no extra info - if memory serves, the loop points are defined in the .xsb file (which is a relatively complex format), not the xwb file. So if you're not replacing that one, I'd expect it to really just use the loops from the old music. The .csv file might be telling the iMUSE-wannabe engine where to jump (haven't looked at that either), but at least where to jump from is likely handled by events defined in the .xsb. But I could be completely wrong about that, since - again - I haven't actually looked much at it at all. 🙂

Not sure what you're asking about 😋 But Laserschwert's video does indeed look great - rarely see upscales that really work for me. 🙂

Inventory icons are a bit of a special case in SCUMM. They're object images, but they have special status in SCUMM - where everything else is mostly unloaded when you leave a room, inventory icons have their own behaviour, but - at a quick glance - they're actually present on at least disk 1, 2 and 11 (haven't checked others). The special room - called, fittingly, "all-disks" (the index file has original room file names for the game) - has global scripts, costumes, sounds etc. No object images, though (and obviously no background for the room) - because normal objects cannot actually move between rooms. The hamster in Weird Ed's cage is not the same one you see when you put it in the microwave - they're two entirely different objects. Yeah, there's some "The Prestige" level existential dread there.

Had another look, and yeah, the script is just moved out of the bar (where it lives in other versions) and into a special "room" that's on all the disks - so that you don't have to swap disks to mix the drinks. 😂

Strange - it's completely missing from my Amiga version (although I guess it might just have been moved to a different room, don't remember if it's a local script - but also don't remember seeing it anywhere else)

The Governor Marley song is in the Amiga version. The one thing I remember from the scripts (other than some iMUSE stuff being reduced, and palette colors obviously having to be changed) is that the mixing of different-colored drinks in the Woodtick bar was removed.

Yeah, but elTee said it around the same time, while we were investigating the Amiga thing... Not sure which of you was first. 😁

Nah, the distance based lighting isn't something that was disregarded - it was never there in the original version. That all comes from LogicDeLuxe's mind. 🙂 The "palette intensity" verb was added in the first VGA SCUMM game and is used for lots of other things - including many of the fade-ins/fade-outs (e.g., as mentioned, at the end of MI2, and probably the FOA feature elTee mentioned) - it wasn't specifically intended for adjusting light, although it's also used for that in MI1 in lots of places - although just as an immediate change in costume intensity from one room to another - not a gradual thing. It's also used a lot for gradual changes in e.g. CMI - along with its (later added) cousin, "palette saturation" (used e.g. for muting Guybrush's colors when he walks from the Plunder Island Fort beach towards the Voodoo Lady's swamp). elTee showed me extracted costumes from the two versions, and Guybrush's costume is definitely different between the two - much whiter shirt in the CD version than in the original VGA. It may have been an artistic decision, or the CD version was made from a different build of the VGA version. I haven't compared the actual scripts to see if there are any differences there (other than the things needed to make the icon based inventory work, CD playback etc.) - but just the fact that the shirt is whiter means that even if the commands to adjust the intensity from room to room are still there, they have limited (bordering on unnoticeable) range to work within, because the shirt starts out close to completely white in the first place.

Just to demonstrate what SCUMM was capable of without any changes to the engine - here's the simplest of LogicDeLuxe's scripts - the one from the alley - reconstructed by me for a glimpse into Actual SCUMM™ Syntax (variable names and script name are obviously lost on compilation, so those are my inventions). I hope Logic will forgive me for giving his secrets away 😋 LucasArts/Disney may not for giving away a bit of theirs. script distance-based-lighting min-intensity, max-intensity, multiplier, target-x, target-actor { do { distance = ((actor-x target-actor) - target-x) value = distance * multiplier if (value < min-intensity) { value = min-intensity } if (value > max-intensity) { value = max-intensity } palette intensity value in-slot 208 to 255 break-here } } The lookout scene is made in a similar way - although that one is written to specifically target Guybrush - and reused in the circus and this alley - while this one is more general (hence target-actor), because in this case it's actually targeting Fester Shinetop (i.e., it's called like start-script bak distance-based-lighting 192 255 -1 376 fester ) Lots of this kind of stuff is possible with SCUMM, although it's rare to see a fan actually do it so cleverly and subtly. As other examples, the dialogue system that appeared first in Indy 3 was pretty much written in SCUMM, making use of its capability to define the verbs in script - in other words, dialogue choices were just verbs. Little was added to the engine to actually support it, other than a way to save the default verb setup and restore it when the dialogue was done. elTee also told me something I've never noticed - that the brightness of dark rooms in Fate of Atlantis is slowly increased, as Indy's eyes adjust to it. Also handled by SCUMM, not hardcoded into the engine itself.

There are indeed quite a few clever additions in the Ultimate Talkie version - and yeah, at least some of the lighting changes (if not all of them) are added in it. The basis for it is the same color-lightness command discussed in another thread (oh heck, I'll slip up sooner or later, so let's just call it by it's real name now... palette-intensity - the name is in the CMI debug info anyway). I.e. the one also used when fading the "post-credits" at the end of MI2. As well as more "simple" single color changes when entering rooms, e.g. changing guybrush's shirt color when entering the jail. The alley also has a new script adjusting the palette-intensity based on distance from the light, there's a fix of the intensity at the Voodoo Lady, and it's also used to improve (yeah yeah, subjective) the fireworks at the end. There's a global script that's used for palette-intensity based on distance in the alley, the lookout, and the circus tent too. Plus (just things I spotted at a quick look): The insanely slow Fettucini brothers talk has been adjusted to a more fluent speed by changing a lot of "wait-for 1 second" calls to "wait-for-message"; and there's a nice HighLand Productions credit inthere too. 😁 Thanks! I'll have to try this version. To be clear - all of that is stuff added by LogicDeLuxe in the talkie version.

Right 🙂 - but there are always these kinds of strange choices and mistakes in any programming - not least in SCUMM (Maniac Mansion, for example, has several different ways of waiting for actors to finish their dialogue, probably because things were implemented as they went along). There might have been a performance issue with fading just at that point, for whatever reason, and it might even have been fixed, but no-one remembered to change the code.

elTee just said it, about the other dialogue. 🙂 It's definitely a bug - even though the Amiga only had the 32 colors (using the colors 16-48 in a 256 palette, with the rest unused), the intention was clearly to either: Not cut to black until Elaine was done talking (like the EGA version), or Cut to black, but keep Elaines talk colors so the sentence would be on black (like it is in the PC VGA version). Both could be done, either by: Putting wait-for-message before the cut, or Changing all colors (16-255) to black, then changing color 46-47 (the talk colors) to their actual colors - then wait-for-message. In pseudo-SCUMM without the choices between display mode, and with a totally made-up color-lightness command (which isn't what it would actually be called or look like, but something like it): say-line elaine "I hope LeChuck hasn't cast some horrible SPELL over him or anything." wait-for-message color-lightness of 16 to 255 is 0 ; only change colors to black when Elaine is done talking or say-line elaine "I hope LeChuck hasn't cast some horrible SPELL over him or anything." ... color-lightness of 16 to 255 is 0 color-lightness of 46 to 47 is 255 ; undo the blackness of those two colors wait-for-message ; NOW we wait for Elaine to stop talking - her dialogue will be visible on black background Instead, the wait is after the cut, and the talk colors are "fixed" after the wait. 🙂 The actual Amiga code: say-line elaine "I hope LeChuck hasn't cast some horrible SPELL over him or anything." ... color-lightness of 16 to 255 is 0 wait-for-message ; all colors are now black, and we wait for Elaine to stop talking ; another command here to deallocate the Elaine actor color-lightness of 46 to 47 is 255 ; now we change the colors of a dialogue line that's no longer displaying, hrm... See, it's close (although trying to do both things at once) - just the order that's wrong. Probably someone not quite remembering exactly what wait-for-message actually does, or when screen updates are done.

My old account seems to be hard to reach, so... Just to add some nerdy details to elTee's explanation, and some things I noticed when I looked at it again. SCUMM has a wait-for-message command (Ron explains it a bit in the Video Game History Foundation video). It causes the script to wait until dialogue is done displaying before continuing. There are two things Elaine can say at that point (won't spoil the other one, just in case), and in the case of the "spell" line, there's no wait-for-message immediately after her dialogue. That's intentional: In PC VGA mode, the line is followed by a fade-out to black (fade all colors to black) over 25 frames, and then we have the wait-for-message call. Meaning it will fade out while she's talking. In EGA mode, the screen immediately cuts to black, with the wait-for-message coming before that cut (otherwise, we might not see the text at all). And then there's the Amiga graphics mode. Which does exactly the same as the EGA mode - it cuts straight to black - but with wait-for-message after the cut. Meaning the script will tell the engine to display the line, and immediately change all colors to black - in the same frame. Which doesn't give Elaine much time to finish talking (none at all). The thing I realized when looking again is that - like most fades in SCUMM - the low 16 colors in the palette aren't faded. Those are colors used for (among other things) dialogue lines (they're mostly the typical EGA palette). Meaning Elaine's dialogue line will stay on screen all the way through the fade. The Amiga version actually does the same - it cuts all 256 colors to black except the low 16 colors - but the Amiga version doesn't use those colors for the text (or anything at all, actually). So that won't help either. It then looks like they tried to fix it by changing two colors back to full color intensity - probably the colors used for the text (but haven't looked further to be sure about that - may also be two colors used later). If it's intended for letting her text show, the problem with that is that that color change command comes after wait-for-message. So Elaine will be done talking before the two colors come back. So: 1. Elaine says the line 2. Colors 16-255 are changed to black 3. Wait for Elaine to be done talking 4. Colors 46-47 are changed to full color again ETA: Looked at colors 46-47 in the palette, and sure enough, they're dark gray and magenta = the color of Elaine's dialogue. So seems point 4 likely really was an attempt at a fix.