[Scummvm-devel] Adding Frotz engine to ScummVM

Eugene Sandulenko sev at scummvm.org
Sat Sep 5 12:11:30 CEST 2009


On Sat, 5 Sep 2009 11:10:53 +0200
Max Horn <max at quendi.de> wrote:

> I have my reservations about adding an Infocom engine, too.
Although being one of the proponents for adding new engines to ScummVM,
and that adding IF to the project would seemingly "complete" cycle of
supporting all "old-style" adventures, I would say no in this case.

> a  good text adventure "emulator" has different needs -- like
> high-quality anti aliased text rendering, etc.
Exactly. Current approach with ScummVM fonts spoils the idea of IF,
that is to be an interactive book. One of the best implementations of IF
engines is Gargoyle (http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/), and as you may see,
it turns all around topographic which makes it so outstanding.

> Of course Paul already spent a lot of time on this engine, and it's  
> not nice to get that work rejected. However, that's why it's always
> a good idea to ask before starting work on any patch whether that
> patch has any chance of being accepted... ;)
Yes, that's a pity, and if Paul would at least give hints about his
plans, I would give my answer right away.

Still I understand the benefits of having an Infocom engine based on
OSystem, as it brings tons of portability and hardware abstraction. So,
thus perhaps it is a good time to work a bit on our open task"Improve
the ScummVM build system" and particularly "Modify ScummVM build system
to add ability to build engines ourside of the main source tree." In
this case Paul's effort could continue to evolve as a spin-off project
based on OSystem. Also I know that there are at least some
non-adventure projects which are based on OSystem, and I myself would
gladly port my puzzle game to OSystem for portability.


Eugene




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