FreeSCI Sierra Adventure Game Interpreter

[ArnimS]

Testing build of the FreeSCI Sierra Adventure Game Interpreter is available for... well testing.

On 770 / IT2007HE I get very choppy performance and sound during heavy animation, but very good playability and sound during the game.

This is a much improved version (current Darcs checkout) of the FreeSCI interpreter. For the earliest Sierra games, ScummVM is definitely better, but this one handles later SCI games up to Space Quest 3 at least.

Testing, comments, suggestions for improvements in this thread, please.

http://pupnik.de/freesci.html

[THX1138]

Sorry I'm a Linux n00b and can't figure out how to install this. I untarred it but I don't see a README or INSTALL file as your homepage says to look at. Can you give me some instructions on how to get this working. Thanks

[ArnimS]

Trying to work out the sound performance problems with the developers and integrate a working keyboard (not working in fullscreen yet).

Are you on a N800?

[Schprlock]

I am also a Linux newbie. Please someone tell me how to install this, as I can't find a repository or a deb package.

I have a 770.

I can also not see any README or ISTALL. There isn't any maemo build on the project page and I really want this!!! I love SCI games!

I have been using a Freedom mini keyboard with ScummVM and it works great for AGI games.

Thanks for your help

[eonman]

The way to run the software is basically to unpack the tar ball (tar xvzf freesci_maemo_armel.tgz), and then executing the freesci executable. Check out the command line options with ./freesci -help, or run a game with ./freesci -d <gamedir>. You'll need an X terminal. Personally, I also copied the freesci over to /usr/bin so that it's in my path.

I tried running FreeSCI on my Nokia 770 2006 SE, and found that it seems to work great if you don't use sound (-q on the command line). With sound, there is some stuttering. All in all, very promising!

I played Leisure Suit Larry 3 for awhile, and things seemed to be running smoothly (without sound). I ran into a hickup when I tried to restore a game, though. Choosing the "restore game" option from the SCI menus and picking a save causes a crash. I can see the score indicator being updated just before crashing. After trying saving in different rooms, I found that one save out of four worked (inside the lobby of Fat City).

I also tried running FreeSCI, entering the debugger with ctrl-~ and doing a "restore_game save_6" and that gave me a segfault. Running with the gamesave on the command line, like "freesci <gamedir> LSL3 save_6" gives me an error saying it's not possible to use quick restore before VM initialization is complete. Any ideas?

Too bad about this problem, otherwise the whole thing seems to be working pretty flawlessly - I was pleasantly surprised to see how well you can run the old Sierra adventures on the tablet.

[ArnimS]

"I can see the score indicator being updated just before crashing. After trying saving in different rooms, I found that one save out of four worked (inside the lobby of Fat City)."


Thanks for the feedback! Thanks for reporting that clue re: score indicator - that is how to report problems!

Unfortunately the freesci bugzilla is broken so I can't search it. I've reported the problem and hope for some feedback today.

Can you duplicate the problem on another game?

[eonman]

I´ll have to look for my old Sierra games to copy more resource files onto the tablet, but I haven´t had the chance to do that yet.

I did, however, spot this in the FreeSCI output: every time I restore a game (even if it works), this is printed:
Attempt to set invalid attribute of menu 4, item 1: 0x001a

Then, in the cases where it crashes, this is the last output:
klists.c, L86: Attempt to use non-list 0000:0000 as list
acc=0003:0100 prev=0000:ffff &rest=0
pc=0003:00ef obj=0003:0100 fp=ST:0004 sp=ST:0006
Step #2184655
00ef: 43 12 02 callk AddToPic[12] 02
Kernel params: (0000:0000)

I hope this could maybe provide some clue (at least to the developers) as to what is going on inside the game engine.

[ArnimS]

I hope this could maybe provide some clue (at least to the developers) as to what is going on inside the game engine.

Thanks again, your feedback has been forwarded to the developers.

As a 'reward', I have spent the evening tweaking (with hours of kind help from waltervn, creichen and lskovlun) and can release a new freesci binary (http://pupnik.de/freesci.html) with stable adlib sound.! :) :)

http://pupnik.de/Freesci_maemo_xkbd.png
These games are sooo much nicer with good sound.

I'd be curious to hear if it works for the n800 users.If you get no sound, try setting sound_server = unix in the ~/.freesci/config

cheers!

[iball]

Is the keyboard app built-in to this one or linked to it so it's called automagically?

[ArnimS]

Is the keyboard app built-in to this one or linked to it so it's called automagically?

Nah, you can write a shell script to start the keyboard in the background with the one-line config file, then start freesci if you want.

Please test - primarily with SCI0 and SCI01 games - not SCI1 games.

We're looking for crashes and hang reports - specifically using save/restore (F6/F7) in various games.

I'm also interested in hearing from people who find interesting configuration tweaks - right now transitions from room-to-room are fairly slow, as are the heavier animation sequences.

Since most animations don't redraw the whole screen, and the game uses an efficient 'dirty rectangle' screen update algorithm, using XSP doubling is not going to buy much in the way of speed increases.

I find performance to be perfectly adequate, but it is odd that the game never uses more than 50% cpu, yet can't update animations very quicly. Again, if you want to help, get it and do some testing.

[eonman]

You're definitely right about music improving the games, and I can confirm that Ad Lib tunes play perfectly now, without slowdowns. Great job! The bad news is, that when I try to navigate the menu bar on the top of the screen to restore a game, the game crashes every time with this as the last output on the console:
FSCI: kNOP: Warning (kernel.c L719): Warning: Kernel function 0x71 invoked: unmapped
Segmentation Fault

I wonder what could've changed in the build that would cause this? Sorry to bring bad news! I got this with Quest for Glory and Larry 3, those being the only games I've been able to test so far.

[ArnimS]

You're definitely right about music improving the games, and I can confirm that Ad Lib tunes play perfectly now, without slowdowns. Great job! The bad news is, that when I try to navigate the menu bar on the top of the screen to restore a game, the game crashes every time with this as the last output on the console:
FSCI: kNOP: Warning (kernel.c L719): Warning: Kernel function 0x71 invoked: unmapped
Segmentation Fault

I wonder what could've changed in the build that would cause this? Sorry to bring bad news! I got this with Quest for Glory and Larry 3, those being the only games I've been able to test so far.

This bug is known to the developers.

The menu bug was introduced a few weeks ago and will be fixed. Freesci on maemo is tracking the 'development' tree, which means bugs will occur, but we also get the best performance and latest features, and our issues get dealt-with by the core developers.

(edit) I'd be interested to see 'top' cpu usage figures from N800 owners. On the 770 I see two processes which generally use less than 50% total CPU. How much cpu does freesci use on your device? At what part of what game? -- cheers :)

(edit) Aug 21: I spent a few hours today getting 0.35 stable tree buildable and packaged and tried tweaking the sound backend for playable speed. No luck - blerpy sound no matter how i adjusted buffers, samplerate, mono/stereo, or sdl/alsa backend.

[eonman]

Ok, good effort but no luck I see. Well, let´s hope that´ll be dealt with soon.

[ArnimS]

Ok, good effort but no luck I see. Well, let´s hope that´ll be dealt with soon.

New version of freesci - load/save fixed. Now as an installable .deb. Check the page for insructions.

http://pupnik.de/freesci.html

enjoy - i'll be testing with sq3 this afternoon

(edit) correction: menu select is fixed. Save seems to work but not all loads are working :/ More news later - pls test of course :) Check freesci homepage for game compatibility.

[Onesimus]

I would really like some very clear and profound instructions of how to get FreeSCI to work on my N810. I really don't have any clue, how to install it, and what to download.