WIP Atari ST ScummVM-lite

[terriblefire]

Got it going in Hatari... sorry to be an "end user" but does MI1 work?

[agranlund]

I've been messing about manually processing images and converting them down to 8 and 16 colours with the STE palette, more out of curiosity than anything else.

These actually look really good, especially considering they are only 8 colors

Yep, the problem is exactly what you described. Made a little bit worse here because I've removed the original fit-sprite-colors code and the sprite virtual palette -> scene palette lookup to make the sprite drawer faster.

But still, it looks like backgrounds could be improved as long as there is still a big enough fixed range for the sprites.
X fixed colors usable by sprites and Y unique colors per room would be doable. The resource converter would calculate the best Y colors and the BG could use X+Y.

Doesn't have to be an 8/8 split either, even something like 4 unique colors per room would probably help.
A blue dominant scene would get some extra blue shades etc..
And like you pointed at, it would be fairly easy to hard code a table with known spriteless rooms that can have 16 unique colors for the background.

Dithering background wouldn't add anything to either disk, memory or performance cost so it's also an option.
Sprite dithering would add to both disk & memory size, plus introduce a significant performance cost (in the current scheme, stretches of same color is extremely good for performance)

[agranlund]

Got it going in Hatari... sorry to be an "end user" but does MI1 work?

Nice!

Nope I removed all support for v3 games at the first pass simplifying the ScummVM codebase, thinking all those games already have official Atari ports anyway.

I am starting to regret that now though.. would be nice with MI1 Ultimate Talkie edition.
Thinking of diffing to see how bad it would be taking it back.

[terriblefire]

Ah fair enough.. the talkie version is what i was looking for

[agranlund]

Ah fair enough.. the talkie version is what i was looking for

The VGA version appears to be a v5 game.. it's definitely going back in

[EvilFranky]

These actually look really good, especially considering they are only 8 colors

Yes I think considering the limitations they are pretty solid! There are a few exceptions, Phatt Island Dock in my examples is missing a LOT of greenery.

Yep, the problem is exactly what you described. Made a little bit worse here because I've removed the original fit-sprite-colors code and the sprite virtual palette -> scene palette lookup to make the sprite drawer faster.

But still, it looks like backgrounds could be improved as long as there is still a big enough fixed range for the sprites.
X fixed colors usable by sprites and Y unique colors per room would be doable. The resource converter would calculate the best Y colors and the BG could use X+Y.

Doesn't have to be an 8/8 split either, even something like 4 unique colors per room would probably help.
A blue dominant scene would get some extra blue shades etc..
And like you pointed at, it would be fairly easy to hard code a table with known spriteless rooms that can have 16 unique colors for the background.

Yes! I'm glad I managed to convey what I meant haha. I'm not savvy enough to have a go at making some examples based off fixed palettes, I'm not really up to speed with using GIMP etc. I may try and have a look online and see if I can find any tutorials on colour reduction using fixed palettes. I don't know if there is a specific program anyone can recommend for this, as the tricky bit would be providing 4/8/12 fixed colours and asking the tool to build the scene with those and then selecting 12/8/4 additional colours...

Dithering background wouldn't add anything to either disk, memory or performance cost so it's also an option.
Sprite dithering would add to both disk & memory size, plus introduce a significant performance cost (in the current scheme, stretches of same color is extremely good for performance)

I actually think basic colour reduced sprites would be fine, they are small, not likely to benefit much from dithering and would probably contrast nicely against the dithered backgrounds.

[EvilFranky]

The VGA version appears to be a v5 game.. it's definitely going back in

Great!

[agranlund]

Ok, so its only going to be the 256 color CD-ROM version that will be supported.
This is the version that is packed inside the Special Edition anyway so it's easy to get hold of.
The floppy releases are all based on various older scumm interpreters and would involve a whole lot of work due to different data formats and it's just not worth it for me at least.

Realistically, you'd only want to play the Ultimate Talkie edition since it patches in midi music as well as the speech.
While the stock CD-ROM version is playable it is completely silent due to lacking midi support (same if you manually pull the data from Special Edition without using Ultimate Talkie Builder)

The colors may need a little tweaking perhaps but it appears to run fine here
Will package this up later today/tomorrow!

(I noticed the audio is converted to 22050hz for the Ultimate Talkies and I think I'll have a look at those scripts if it can easily be changed to 11025 to halve disk access/memory - it's being outputted at near 11025 for STE, or below that for ST, so most of those bytes are being thrown away anyway)

[agranlund]

Monkey Island 1 supported in the latest version:
(all thanks to @terriblefire)



Grab it from here:
http://www.happydaze.se/scummvm-lite-atari/

Ultimate Talkie Builder from here:
http://www.gratissaugen.de/ultimatetalkies/

Needs "Monkey Island Special Edition".
(Got mine from GOG.com for £3)


It has some obvious graphical glitches in the title screen. This is good since it's quick and easy to repro, the bug is there in all games but not this obvious)
Perhaps the color palette needs some tweaking to fit the darker setting?
I didn't play very far so I'm not sure how well it runs or if there are any major issues with it.

[nemo]

@agranlund

Marvelous! My all time favorite adventure game. Got to try to build this Ultimate ST versions now

(edited the post to make it a lil smaller and easier to read, PhilC)