[Scummvm-devel] Smacker to DXA conversion

[Max Horn]

Am 24.01.2007 um 19:41 schrieb Keith Scroggins:

>> Thoughts?
>>
>> Also, would it make sense to create a seperate DXA SF.net project,  
>> where
>> documentation for DXA and a simple encoder / decoder, plus  
>> possibly more
>> advanced codecs for it, would be hosted?
>
> I think it is a good idea, but why not make this part of the tools  
> chain
> already in existance for ScummVM?  What is the major drawback  
> behind this
> being part of ScummVM?  The tool chain is 'basically' unsupported,
> correct?

The tool package contains tools which are very useful and sometimes  
essential for ScummVM users. They directly aim at supporting users  
and enhancing their ScummVM "experience", to use marketing speech.  
OTOH, it is unclear to me how a DXA player would enhance the gamer's  
experience in any way. As such, it's IMHO out of scope for the tools  
package, or ScummVM as a whole.

> As far as being a separate project, it might be useful as such as  
> long as
> companies continue opening their older sources up for the general  
> public,
> then people can continue either porting these sources to modern OS,  
> and
> not have to worry about having the RAD libs to use the smacker  
> content.

Well, maybe DXA could also be part of the libsm(ac)k project, or so.  
Like, one could maybe arrange it to have a lib that has identical  
APIs for both Smacker and DXA playback. And users of the lib (like,  
potentially, ScummVM) then could choose between "only SMK", "only  
DXA" or "DXA+SMK". The "only DXA" would be those afraid of legal  
issues; for the "only DXA" apps, one could use the transcoder  
provided by the project.

Anyway, I am just dreaming aloud again, I guess ... In an ideal  
world, we wouldn't have to worry about all this and could just play  
back Smacker videos directly *g*.


Cheers,
Max