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

[J.Brown (Ender)]

> 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. :)

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.

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.

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

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.

Cheers,

 - James 'Ender' Broen
   Project Leader Thingy,
    ScummVM (http://www.scummvm.org/)