[Scummvm-devel] Contributing to ScummVM with an interpreter for Magnetic Scrolls?

[Filippos Karapetis]

Hello, and glad to hear about your interest in ScummVM, and your work on
the Magnetic Scrolls games!

It's great that you are working on this. Bear in mind, though, that there
has been extensive work on the Magnetic Scrolls games, which has been
integrated into the Gargoyle interpreter:
http://ccxvii.net/gargoyle/

Gargoyle is being integrated as a subengine into ScummVM, in the glk
engine. The glk engine is a port of the Gargoyle engine into ScummVM.
There's an extensive wiki for Gargoyle, here:
http://ifwiki.org/index.php/Gargoyle

So, my advice would be to make your engine part of the glk engine, and base
your work on the already working Magnetic Scrolls interpreter from the
Gargoyle engine. The interpreter is open source, and can be found here:
https://github.com/garglk/garglk/tree/master/terps/magnetic

The list of supported Magnetic Scrolls games can be found here:
https://github.com/garglk/garglk/blob/master/terps/magnetic/Generic/games.txt

And there's an archive about interactive fiction games, where a lot of
resources about the Magnetic Scrolls games can be found, here:
 http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archive/magnetic-scrolls/

Thanks for your interest in these games! It would be great to see your work
on them :)

Regards
Filippos Karapetis


On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 10:08 AM dettus <dettus at dettus.net> wrote:

> Hello.
>
>
> My name is Thomas, I am a big fan of ScummVM.
>
> Currently, I am in the process of writing an interpreter for classic
> text adventures from Magnetic Scrolls, such as "The Pawn" or "The Guild
> Of Thieves".
>
> Even though I am not saying that it SHOULD be integrated into ScummVM, I
> would like to think that it COULD. It is WAY to early to really start
> integrating it, but I like to be prepared.
>
>
>
> So, the reason why I am writing this mail is because I would be
> interested as on how I would have to design my code to make it possible.
> Currently, my interpreter needs a couple of hooks into any form of GUI:
>
> - Initialization, where pointers to the original binaries are being
> provided
>
> - Callbacks for textual input (strings)
> - Callbacks for textual output (strings)
> - Callbacks for textual output (characters)
> - Callbacks for drawing a picture (XPM)
>
> My code is purely C, so callbacks I am using function pointers. Said
> functions are, at the moment, doing nothing more than just a simple
> printf() and fgets(). The games I can play so far are "The Pawn", "The
> Guild of Thieves" and "Jinxter". HOWEVER, later games, such as
> "Corruption", "Myth", "Fish!" and "Wonderland" added features such as
> animation and music.
>
> SO MY QUESTION is this: How would I best design the callbacks for
> animation and music in way so that it MIGHT be integratable into ScummVM?
>
>
>
> Dettus
>
>
>
> P.S.: My interpreter is available at http://www.dettus.net/dMagnetic.
>
> (Hopefully this link, and the fact that this is my first email will not
> make this spam. ;) )
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Scummvm-devel mailing list
> Scummvm-devel at lists.scummvm.org
> https://lists.scummvm.org/listinfo/scummvm-devel
>


-- 
"Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes" - Oscar Wilde
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