SCI Utilities

[TheReturnofDMD]

Hey

As some of you may know, there's a lot of SCI (Sierra Creative Interpreter) Utilities out there now. SCI, for those who don't know, was the engine which ran Sierra's games produced between 1988 and 1997. This includes KQ's 4-7, SQ's 3-6 (and the VGA remake) and many other Sierra games.
The utilities are: SCI Viewer, with which you can view the resources (sound files, script data files, pictures, animations etc, pretty much everything in the game); there's SCI Companion, with which you can view and EDIT the games' data, even the script (this could potentially be used to make mod packs of KQ games) or even change the games completely. For example, if you're proficient enough in programming and whatnot, you can change the whole storyline or even create new subquests in KQ4. I edited KQ4 so that Graham has a long bushy beard and wizard hair now when I play KQ4. There's also:
SCI Studio, with which you can do the same thing except with SCI Studio you can alter the VGA games (like KQ's 5, 6 and 7) in any way you want. However, the guy who made it didn't implement it fully so you have to fool around with it yourself in order to get it working properly.

My point is, if more talented, programming knowledgable fans took more use of these three programs, they could potentially, with effort, reverse engineer Sierra's old games' source code and scripts and make them truly compatible with XP, Vista and 64-bit systems.

They could also make mods of already existing games (for example, say, you'd be to download a mod sub quest and add it to KQ4 wherein Rosella has to explore an underground city) or change the plot of KQ5 where you don't have to rescue Cedric in order to win; instead, you could create a cutscene where he is slowly eaten by the harpies (or even add an easter egg where the Sarlack from Star Wars RotJ eats him) That to me is very exciting!

We basically hold all of Sierra's old technology with which they created their masterpieces; we should use it and make this classic games even better and make them compatible so our children and ourselves can play them in the future.

So, technologically talented Sierra fans, get to work!

[MusicallyInspired]

The only problem with adding things to original Sierra games is that neither SCI Studio or SCI Companion can edit game scripts, unless the source code is already provided. There doesn't exist a good enough script decompiler to make games editable.

I'm working on a King's Quest II SCI remake, however. The thread is in this forum somewhere on the first page. I'm also working on a Space Quest 1 VGA "Retro Patch" that will replace the graphics with the old AGI style kind (eg. replacing the blue space suit with the old AGI red and grey flight suit, and changing Roger's uniform to white instead of the purple-sleeve kind). http://brandonblume.commerceculture.co.uk/sq1retro.php

There are people currently working on a program called FreeSCI which is similar to ScummVM except it plays SCI games in Windows and Linux. Check them out as well.

[TheReturnofDMD]

The only problem with adding things to original Sierra games is that neither SCI Studio or SCI Companion can edit game scripts, unless the source code is already provided. There doesn't exist a good enough script decompiler to make games editable.

I'm working on a King's Quest II SCI remake, however. The thread is in this forum somewhere on the first page. I'm also working on a Space Quest 1 VGA "Retro Patch" that will replace the graphics with the old AGI style kind (eg. replacing the blue space suit with the old AGI red and grey flight suit, and changing Roger's uniform to white instead of the purple-sleeve kind). http://brandonblume.commerceculture.co.uk/sq1retro.php

There are people currently working on a program called FreeSCI which is similar to ScummVM except it plays SCI games in Windows and Linux. Check them out as well.

Interesting. But isn't there any way to reverse engineer the KQ, SQ and other Sierra games so that native compatibility can be added into the games? Like for example, couldn't we reverse enginner the windows version of KQVI to make the high res version compatible with Windows XP+Vista, rather than Windows 3.1? There has to be some way to reverse engineer the source code.

[MusicallyInspired]

The Sierra Windows SCI interpreter is a lot more different from the DOS SCI interpreter. And most people don't care about it and simply focus their efforts on the DOS interpreter, since it's the best one. I'm sure it's possible, but nobody cares enough to work on it .