[Scummvm-devel] "Flight of the Amazon Queen"

[David Eriksson]

On Wed, 2003-08-27 at 06:34, J.Brown (Ender) wrote:
> > First, the obligatory thanks for writing ScummVM, it is a truly valuable
> > piece of software!
> 
> Your welcome!
> 
> > Second, as you are expanding the project to support other adventure
> > games, I wondered if someone ever thought of investigating the
> > possibility to support "Flight of the Amazon Queen"?
> 
> The general answer here is 'No'. We're already working on two new games
> (Sword 1 & 2), maintainence of three existing engines (SCUMM, Simon
> and Sky)... not to mention that most of the reverse engineering types are
> working on Residual (Grim interpreter).
> 
> But, that aside, there is quite a fair chance we could obtain the
> source-code for Flight. Just as it so happens, the lead programmer at
> Binary (later Gee Whiz! and now called Krome Studios, based in Brisbane
> IIRC) writes a webcomic I read occasionally. So getting in touch with him
> is easy, and as the company still-kinda-exists, there is actually a
> reasonable chance of getting it. Not to mention that John was a big fan of
> LucasArts adventures himself. :)

It would be very nice if you could investigate that possibility!

> There are a few questions that need answering first, however.
> 
> Can we absorb the code bloat from Yet Another Engine? At this point, I
> doubt it. We really need to look into dynamically loading engine modules
> at run-time. This has been on the todo list for a while, and is starting
> to get a little more urgent with the recent expansion of the codebase.

You have probably already done this before I have come very far in my
studies of this game... :-)

> Do we WANT to support the game? Given how thinly stretched at the moment,
> if obtaining the source code is not a possibility... I'm unsure if anyone
> currently on the team is willing to do the RE work. If somebody else wants
> to send us a nice commented IDB or something.... well, we wouldn't
> complain, but I still think we are stretched a bit too thinly in this
> area.

Don't you worry about the RE work. I did not mean to suggest that you
guys would do all the fun stuff! :-) I merely wanted to know if anyone
would care before I started studying the game.

A commented IDB might be possible to provide, and probably documentation
and decompiler for the engine language. Maybe even patches for ScummVM,
who knows? It may take a little longer for me who is not familar with
the internals of other game engines, but it can't be impossible.

> How can we make Flight begin with S?!? Supporting this game will break our
> naming scheme :)

So many letters and not a single 'S' :-P

> Also, whilst we appretiate your intrest, please do NOT post links to
> Underdogs on this mailing list. Whether morally okay or not, most of the
> games on that site are still illegal copies (including Flight) and do NOT
> put us in good light with development companies we may want to cooperate
> with.

Sorry about that! :-(

-- 
Regards,
               -\- David Eriksson -/-

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