Cheats, Hacks & Hints/Cheats_Hacks_and_Hints.bin/more/sdv/sdv.doc

Text File | 1993-01-16 | 9KB | 168 lines

                             Hermetic Software
                                 presents

                              SCI DECODER VGA
                                  v. 1.0

                     (c) Copyright 1993 Carl Muckenhoupt


What Is SCI Decoder?
--------------------
    SCI stand for Sierra Creative Interpreter.  It is the name given by
Sierra On-Line, Inc. to the system they use to develop their graphic adventure
games, notably the King's Quest series.  SCI was first used about five years
ago , when it replaced the less-powerful AGI (Adventure Game Interpreter).
Since then, it has undergone continual fine-tuning, but the only major change
made to it was the introduction of VGA graphics and the elimination of the
type-in parser in "King's Quest VI", cs. 1990.
    SCI Decoder is an independently-written shareware program that decodes and
displays certain types of data from SCI games.  There are two versions: one
for the older, EGA-only games, and one for the current batch.  This file
documents only the VGA version.
    Anyone who has ever gotten stuck in one of these games will immediately
recognize one use for SCI decoder: cheating.  Even if you don't cheat,
viewing the data provides insights into how graphic adventures are implemented,
as well as letting you see special scenes and "easter eggs" you may have
missed.
    WARNING: Since Sierra is constanly making small changes to ths SCI
system, there is no guarantee that this program will work on the latest
games.  If you have trouble, contact the author; quite likely your problems
have already been fixed in a more recent release of SCI Decoder, available
in return for your registration fee.

How To Use It:
--------------
    To run SCI Decoder, type
        sdv [path]
where [path] is the directory where the game is stored. If the game is stored
on floppies, specify the drive and insert the startup disk before beginning.
    A menu will appear on the left side of the screen.  Use the cursor control
keys to select an item from the menu.  The left and right arrow keys will
move you to the last and next data type, respectively.  (Sorry, no mouse
support yet.  Maybe in the next release.)
    Each item in the menu indicates a piece of data, identified by its type
(text, sound, etc.) and an ID number. They will be displayed in one of two
forms:
        view.016  0
          16.v56  0
    In either case, the number on the right indicates the number of the
resource file in which the data is stored.  This usually corresponds to the
number of the floppy disk it comes from, with 0 reserved for the startup
disk.
    To view the data, select it and press <ENTER> (or <RETURN>).  Of the
sixteen data types, only four are viewable: view, pic, text, and palette.
More details are available later in this file.
    Any item can be dumped to a file by pressing the D key.  These files can
then be examined by the curious, or used to override the data normally
used by the games.  (When SCI games load data from disk, they first look for
an appropriately-named file to read the data from, then check the resource
files.  If there is an appropriately-named file of your creation, it will
trustingly read it, even if it originally came from a different game. I leave
the potential uses up to the user's imagination.)
    Likewise, unencoded files may be loaded by pressing the L key.  This can
be used to view files dumped by SCI Decoder, or simply unencoded data files
included in the game. (Look for files with names that look like the menu
entries.)

Data Types
----------
    There are sixteen data types known to SCI games, four of which can be
viewed using this version of SCI Decoder.  (I have already started working
on the remaining twelve, but not all of them are used in the games I have.)
These four are marked with a * in the following list.

   *- view (v56): Animation cells.  Each file provides several views of an
      object or group of related objects to be overlaid on the background.
   *- pic (p56): Background graphics.  One screen per file.
    - script (scr): The guts of the game.  Contains instructions to the
      game interpreter, including which data files to load and what to
      do with them.  I am very interested in figuring these out.
   *- text (tex): Self-explanatory. Contains all the text in the game,
      with the exception of a few small bits in the script files.
    - sound (snd): Music and sound effects, apparently stored in some
      device-independent manner.
    - memory (   ): This is not used in any game I know of, so it's probably
      a relic from the development process.
    - vocab (voc): In the older games, these held the list of words
      acceptable for input.  Now, they seem to be mostly used for internal
      bookkeeping purposes.
    - font (fon): Another self-explanatory one. The shapes of the letters.
    - cursor (cur): The shapes for the mouse cursor.
    - patch (pat): This seems to be a catch-all for unique data types. The
      specifications for the instruments in the soundtrack, for example,
      is stored in a patch file.
    - bitmap (bit): I have no idea. Like memory, it isn't used.
   *- palette (pal): Color tables. Since most pic and view files have their
      own color tables, it isn't used much.
    - cdaudio (cda): Since I don't have a CD-ROM drive (yet), I can only
      assume that this is what the name implies.
    - audio (aud): Presumably digitized sound effect, although such things
      seem to usually go in the sound files.
    - sync (syn): See memory.
    - message (msg): See memory. Possibly error messages and other debugging
      info, but most of that seems to be stuck in text data.

Viewing Data
------------
    In general, you view data by pressing <ENTER>, and stop viewing it by
pressing <ESC>. The viewers are pretty simple; the only one that really
needs any special comment is the viewer for the view (v56) files.
    View files consist of one or more groups of images.  However,
only one image is displayed at a time.  Pressing most keys will advance you
to the next image, so that you may view all the images in all the groups in
sequence. The following keys act differently:
      <right-arrow>: advance to next image, but do not leave current group.
      <left-arrow>: go to previous image within group.
      <up-arrow>: advance to first image of next group.
      <dow-arrow>: go to first image of previous group.
      <F1>: Animate the current group.  Displays all the images in the current
            group in order, then stops.
      <F2>: Animate current group in a loop until a key is pressed.
      <+>, <->: Increase and decrease animation speed, respectively.
      <ESC>: As always, returns you to the main menu.
    Most view files contain information about what colors to use; however, a
some are set up to get their colors from some other object that is supposed
to be on the screen (for instance, a close-up window of a character's face
can get its colors from the full-length picture of the same character.) If
the colors are garbled, try loading other view files first.  The right one
is probably nearby.  Alternately, you can try loading palette files. In
either case, the colors will be preserved.

Shareware
---------
    Shareware is freely-distributed, user-supported software.  In the case
of SCI Decoder, this means the following:
    The author, Carl Muckenhoupt, retains copyright of SCI Decoder.  However,
you may copy and distribute it, provided that this file accompanies it, and
that you do not charge money for the program or alter it in any way.
Shareware dealers should contact the author before selling it.
    No payment is required for use of this program.  A voluntary
registration fee of $10 US funds is requested.  There are several reasons
you should register your copy.  For one thing, it's morally right.  The
author worked long and hard on this project, and deserves some compensation.
After all, it is only with your support that he can continue to produce
quality products li