Addenda to maze of twisty little scripting langauges all alike

[jack]

* I'll no doubt need PERL (or equivalent) as well to tie everything together.
* I have successfully run my gimp export script from the command line (the trick was to give it an .scm rather than .scn extension)
* I downloaded the development release of the gimp to do it though. It's always a very pleasant feeling when you think "Hey, there should be new features in this program," and you go check the website, and there they all are :)
* Step 1, blah. Step 0, setup. Step 00, config. Doh.

Comments

[robhu.livejournal.com]

With a web game you could checkpoint everything every few minutes to guard against lock ups.

I'm surprised there isn't a file format / byte code / thing for modern graphical adventures. If there was someone could write a Flash VM.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

With a web game you could checkpoint everything every few minutes to guard against lock ups.

Oh yes. But it still doesn't *feel* clean, though I know it could be done completely reliably. It's more of a at-the-moment personal preference really.

I'm surprised there isn't a file format / byte code / thing for modern graphical adventures.

There is ScummVM, I suppose :) It's not modern, but there's no reason it couldn't be. But I didn't feel like trying to write a compiler.

I suppose:

* Many commercial adventures have *some* personal UI tweaks so you can't have a pure interpreter VM.
* It might be possible, but if the graphics aren't designed for flash I'm not sure it could cope -- the winnie-the-pooh game, trying to animate 10x14 tiles ran out of steam. There's lots of optimisation tricks, but that all feels like you're fighting the program rather than using it. The modern flash might be better, I don't know.

You could certainly write a java port of the VM. That oughtn't to be very bad at all -- the graphics library ought to be already ported, and the rest is all native language, so you just need to change the names of all the control structures :)

[robhu.livejournal.com]

There is ScummVM, I suppose :) It's not modern, but there's no reason it couldn't be. But I didn't feel like trying to write a compiler.
Someone has already written a http://alban.dotsec.net/7.html'>ScummVM compiler.

Many commercial adventures have *some* personal UI tweaks so you can't have a pure interpreter VM.
Mmm... it depends. I suspect ScummVM gives you a lot of room to maneuver. Anyway, there's something to be said for having a UI that is similar to Monkey Island / Loom.

It might be possible, but if the graphics aren't designed for flash I'm not sure it could cope
The latest Flash VM is quite fast. I believe it does JIT compilation. The previous VM was very slow IME.

Although writing a VM for the format is probably highly time consuming, especially for Flash.

OTOH there are lots of platforms that have a ScummVM implementation (e.g. phones etc).

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Someone has already written a http://alban.dotsec.net/7.html'>ScummVM compiler.

Oh yes. It looked kind of... alpha, though. If it were in good working shape, I should have been using it, maybe.

Mmm... it depends. I suspect ScummVM gives you a lot of room to maneuver.

Yes. And of course, you can edit the ScummVM engine to support more things (it supports other similar things as well as SCUMM). It probably requires (or at least wants) development of ScummVM as well as development of a compiler, but if you have that, it'd be a good plan.