[Scummvm-devel] PS2 ScummVM 0.11.x updates!

[sunmax at libero.it]

Hello everybody,

> I'd like to address some of your questions.

Thanks Eugene & Max (sounds like Sam & Man, no? ;-) for your explanation!

> In our svn tree we have special vendor/ module which contains some of
> the upstream sources. So you may put those there and even build from
> that place.

Will do. One point: I assume we are not supposed to build the entire
ps2dev there (which is ps2sdk + quite a few libs), but only the
libraries not available in that one of that we modified, right?

Thanks for spreading some light on the video issues, I feel
much more confortable with it now.

Why the size of the DXA archive is so much bigger that the old one?

See:

 Broken Sword 1 Cutscene Pack (English, DXA compression) -> 58.5M

 Broken Sword 1 Cutscene Pack (German) -> 32M

It's ~2 times the size! Is that because DXA is lossless?


One questions about sound:

which of the games supported by ScummVM use MIDI to offer a better
quality soundtrack or as an exclusive music system?

If it's alredy in the docs or discussed in the forum jut point me there.

MIDI on PS2 is pretty good with fluidsynth, but it's still a EE-only
solution. IIRC Miles Sound System for PS2 uses the SPU, but it's not
free (I think it used to run for 3 grand for the PS2 SDK), dunno about
PS2 Fmod. I will keep an eye to see if I can find a better solution,
but I am fully satisified with Sam'n'Max + Fluidsynth.

Robert, you were right, you reworked something to get SJPCM IRX
playing smoothly. Cause if I use the binary version you provided
to me, the sound of the games is very smooth, otherwise with the
vanilla from PS2SDK it will get very cranky (e.g. MK2 intro).
Could you please send me a copy of your patched source? Thanks!


> > What I am supposed to do? To #ifdef it for the PS2? Or could
> > we just add an extra letter to _open (you choose it!) Well
> > it could be something like _ps2sdk_sucks_open too ;-)
> I recommend to rename this variable. This is a routine situation for
> us, many platforms and compilers brought us similar surprizes.

Done that. It will be in the PS2 patch I am going to send later this 
week.


> Go to http://www.wyrmkeep.com/ite/, downloads section and get Inherit
> the Earth demo. Try to run it in your port. Without proper exists()
> implementation games just do not start.

Mmm, like : "Error loading game resources."?

I get that with Inherit demo (I am using the Linux version) when
trying to load "scriptsd.rsc"

With some demos (e.g bs2) the installer requests me to choose
between the "Demo" or the "Full" version, as if it was not
able to figure it out... I guess that's an evidence that there
are still some glitches to smooth in the ScummVM PS2 backend ;-(

I will focus on that later tonight!

It's even trickier on the PS2 cause we get different games behaviour
depending on the medium you are starting them from. Examples:

-> comi:

   HD : good!
   USB: fail to locate comi.la1
   CDROM: runs but slow, audio skips [*]

[*] I tried to burn a single CD with all the data from the original
    compressed... maybe I did not do a too great job. So I will
    still have to investigate this,

-> dott:

   HD: good!
   USB: no way...

   ... SCUMM gameid 'tentacle', file 'tentacle.000',
   MD5 'd41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e'

   (of course it's the same version, cuase after I copied it from
    the USB to the PS2 HD it worked)

With kyra I get:

 Error: assertion `length < fileSize' failed in
  ../../../engines/kyra/sprites.cpp:445

When trying to load 'trunk.pak' (both running from USB and HD are affected),
is that a know issue or is it just PS2?

Oh, the kyra intro plays just great, I got that when is trying to start
the game after.

I will try to make a list per game (at least the ones I have,
few Amiga ones, some VGA/CD) + the demos I can download from our
site. It will be organized in HD, USB, CD with an evaluation of
how the engine/game is performing (or not) on PS2 backend.

NOTE: some of the above issues were already in the last PS2 binary
      scummvm (scummvm-0.9.1-ps2.zip) so they don't seem 0.11.x
      specific, e.g. comi from USB, dott from USB, etc.

I got the PS2 HD working fine with 0.11.x and -using usbhdfsd.irx
in place of usb_mass.irx- I was able to get quite a few games
happily running from the USB too (yeah, copying data from the USB
stick to the PS2HD is a royal pain...)

It would be nice if we could add (maybe as a developer feature) a
way to run the games from host: e.g. from your computer hard disk
over the network cable, this would -greatly- speed PS2 ScummVM
development up, anybody out there have some experience about this?

Thanks!

I will send another e-mail with some more updates later tonight
(Florida time).

Ciao,
 -max