LIXOO stands for Lightweight Interpreter, eXtensible and Object Oriented, and it means "SCUMM" in Galician. I've decided to start it on June 28th, as I'm busy till that date. Maybe I'll get some help from two friends of mine (well, some help may be needed from others, too).
It'll be under the GPL :), and it won't be only the engine: there are project for an IDE, too ;)
The engine is being designed on paper, suggestions are welcome, BUT, please keep in mind the following:
- I'm not going to clone SCUMM, so LIXOO won't run SCUMMish games at all (ScummVM actually does this, no need to do it in LIXOO)
- I'm not planning to make a SCUMM to LIXOO converter, but others could do it when the specs for LIXOO are ready.
- LIXOO will be intended exclusively for 2D adventure games (no GL, no D3D, no RPG games with LIXOO, etc :)). This makes LIXOO easier to understand and develop, specific things sometimes are good.
Hope you'll post your comments, buddies :)
It's good to know you're working on something concrete, please don't stop development as many other projects did. After all, you don't need to make anything special. 2D ag is good enough, of cource hi resolution :)
I'm proud to announce that Lixoo's life has started at SourceForge now I'm decided that it'll be OpenSource (under the GNU GPL :)). I've also started the design of the webpage (
http://lixoo.sourceforge.net).
I think the design is quite nice & simple. Thanks to ScummRev there are some curly CMI images on the navigation bar :)
Serge: I want to link to the SCUMMBag page, hope you agree. The link is currently on the page, but I'll quit it if you want me to. You may give me a little description of SCUMMBag if you want the text on the page to be changed (I don't like the current text too much)
Well, first... I'm not known as SCUMMLord :) That's just my self-assumed title :) Secondly, may not be a good idea to link to SCUMMBag. It's another of those projects that may never happen. As usual, I'm too busy with other stuff to actually having worked on it for the past month or two... :P
- Serge
Ok, I'll put away that link for the next update, no matter at all; but I will keep track of SCUMMBag hoping you will release it someday. Don't give up, dude.
I was thinking a lot about what system could be better to develop Lixoo for. It's not easy to make a choice: the best programming tools are available for Un*x, so Linux could be a good choice (I love Linux); in the other hand the Lixoo IDE would be a easier thing to do under Windows (C++Builder might do a good work with the IDE).
I've been also thinking on Macistosh (yes!), especially after taking a look at Drigo Zoxx's MacScumm page. I think I'll get an iBook next July, and OS X has the best of all worlds. But I can't wait for the iBook, I feel like I can't wait so I'll start the platform-independant parts of Lixoo just now.
What to do? It's not easy to decide. I think that it's very interesting to have Lixoo ported to other platforms rather that the one I'll be working on. The most platform-dependant parts of the thing are sound & graphics, so I'll try to keep the code portable so others might port it to other systems just by adding specific support for the system's media subsystem.
Someone could tell me to use Glade and GTK+ to develop the IDE for Linux. I just can say: "great, Glade is cool, but I haven't enough GTK+ knowledge". If I had time to learn GTK+ before the IDE is started, then be sure that I will be using GTK+ 2.0 as it's available for Un*x, Windoze and other OSes.
Advices? Opinions? Questions? Requests? They all are welcome.
Look at wxWindows and FLTK - both are cross-platform GUI apis
Thanks Endy, I'll take a look at them after the exams :), but I think I'll want to learn GTK+ even if I use one of that toolkits.
Well, there is a Win32 port of GTK - I'm not sure if there is a Mac port.
Personally I detest GTK, for a UI toolkit - it's bloatier than Windows :P
Originally posted by moebius
Thanks Endy, I'll take a look at them after the exams :), but I think I'll want to learn GTK+ even if I use one of that toolkits.
I'm spanish, and there's a lot of english expressions I don't know nothing about. What do you mean with "GTK is bloatier than Windows"?
I suppose that you mean than the look&feel of GTK isn't good enough. If that is what you think, I can tell you that things have changed with version 2, which even features antialiased fonts (this was the thing I missed a lot in the 1.2.x series).
If you mean that coding with GTK is such a damn hell, I only can say that coding styles are a matter of preference: I have a little knowledge of it and I think that it's easier to code with plain GTK rather than with plain Win32 APIs. Plain Win32 APIs are the *real* hell (I know it as I started programming for Windows: the only rational way of Windows programming is by using Delphi, C++Builder or similar packages, but these have their own inconvenients).
I think it's possible to compile GTK for the Macintosh, at least with OS X. The core of OS X is built on top of a BSD kernel, it has full POSIX compliance and the Quartz system is some kind of X server especially designed by Apple for their OS. There shouldn't be any problem to run GTK over OS X.
Sorry. Bloat means, basically overly large. GTK is very big for a toolkit that provides the features it does - just like Windows :)
I LIKE the look-and-feel, and it's nice to code with. But it's just too big. That's not a problem on linux/bsd because you generally have GTK anyway.. but for other platfoms it's annoying to have to install 10+ megabytes of libraries just to run maybe one or two applications.
Originally posted by moebius
I'm spanish, and there's a lot of english expressions I don't know nothing about. What do you mean with "GTK is bloatier than Windows"?
Endy: thanks for the explanation. You're right, sure that GTK+ is a quite big library. It can be a good choice for Un*x systems, anyway. I'll try to do static linking with GTK under Windows, and if the resulting executable is not a fat beast, maybe I'll use GTK; if not... I'll have to find a solution. Time will say what to do :)
moebius, you're right, MacOSX is Unix after all.
So you're spanish, then tell your team that they got to smash Korea in the WC :))))
ITALY__!!!
Sorry, but it was not possible to beat Corea, as you know. I don't like football so much, but I think there were some injustices in the match; and as we all know, penalties are a kind of lottery. We had bad luck.
It would be intereseting if we had an Italy vs. Spain, it might be an interesting one...
Question about IRC: is there a channel on any IRC network related to SCUMM and/or adventure games?
Yes, Spain vs Italy'd be a "real" match, i mean where "real" soccer teams plays. No offense for korean peoples, i'm just objective. :)
I guess there's a channel named #scumm or maybe you can join the developers channel for ScummVM
Hi,
john_doe the Necromancer here :)
I just came across this engine again while looking for something completely unrelated and wanted to ask if it's still being worked on?
I know, 5 years have passed, but that's nothing with one-man open-source hobby projects.
Thanks for mentioning that you dug up an old post. I never look at the date of the forum threads. If his website is dead, which is seems to be, and his last post here was over three years ago, I would assume it is safe to say that the project is dead.
While were digging up dead posts, hows ScummBag coming? :xp:
What was ScummBag supposed to be? I don't remember anyone getting a straight answer...
What was ScummBag supposed to be?Awesome.
That's about all I learned about the project. Someone find Serge!
Met is right in saying it was going to be awesome, it really was. When Serge put up the ScummBag site on Mojo with this image (
http://quick.mixnmojo.com/temp/guybrush_poster.jpg) he created a bit of a buzz, no-one really knew what ScummBag was. I don't think he ever got around to explaining it publicly. I was one of the people let into the 'secret' of ScummBag and I'm sure Serge wouldn't mind me talking about it now.
The people who knew about it at the time are listed on the poster I linked to above: Andrew Langley (Telarium), Jake Rodkin, Ben Gorman (me), Michael Smith (Murray-Mint) and Tomas Mahlberg (webmaster of LucasHacks). I cant remember why it was such a secret, perhaps Serge didn't want to raise expectations.
ScummBag was the name for a suite of programs that Serge was making/planning to make. There was:
WinSPUTM, which was essentially the same thing as ScummVM - a SCUMM engine for windows.
Scumm Revisited, which everyone knows about.
ScummIDE, for creating SCUMM games.
I think there was also an iMuse tool planned - to let you play the iMuse music from SCUMM games, but choose the cue's that get played - essentially a sort of iMuse emulator. I cant remember if it had a name or not.
As we know, a new version of Scumm Revisited was eventually released as ScummRev 5. WinSPUTM was begun but never finished - it could boot SCUMM V5 games and process the boot scripts but games were never playable on it. There was some work done on ScummIDE, mainly on the structure of the scripting language (called LeChuck) that was going to be used with it but I don't think it went much beyond that and some basic design of the GUI. As far as I know the iMuse player was never worked on.
[Edit] I've uploaded some screenshots of WinSputm, you can see the ScummBag reference in the 3rd image - 1 (
http://quick.mixnmojo.com/temp/winsputm1.jpg) 2 (
http://quick.mixnmojo.com/temp/winsputm2.jpg) 3 (
http://quick.mixnmojo.com/temp/winsputm3.jpg)
I was also able to test WinSPUTM (Version 0.0.2.31 Pre-release), ScummIDE (version 0.0.1.8 Pre-release) and Scumm Revisited 5 on very early stages. I still have all of them on my computer.
Scumm Revisited 5 was pretty useful because it could get some MI3 sprites (or maybe it was another version I can't really remember).
It's a shame Serge didn't have the time/mood/patience to finish them :)
Met is right in saying it was going to be awesome, it really was. When Serge put up the ScummBag site on Mojo with this image (
http://quick.mixnmojo.com/temp/guybrush_poster.jpg) he created a bit of a buzz, no-one really knew what ScummBag was. I don't think he ever got around to explaining it publicly. I was one of the people let into the 'secret' of ScummBag and I'm sure Serge wouldn't mind me talking about it now.
This post made me miss the golden old days so much. Here's another one of those SCUMMBag promo posters, that I made (which was never used). Had to dig around quite a bit to find this one. Obviously a spoof of a well-known game cover. :) I believe there was also another one made which was a spoof of the original Jaws poster, showing Max emerging from the abyss. That poster I believe was made by Paco Vink. Anyway, here's mine:
http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/7981/scummbagxe5.png)
And hi by the way. Long time no see. :)
EDIT: Wow, just realized that I last posted here 3 years ago. Three years!?
Hi Tomas :) This thread certainly is nostalgic. Its hard to believe that Scummbag et al was 5 years ago.
Tomas! Nice to see you're still around :)