0.6.0 has been released

[Arisme]

btw here is 0.5.1 with the new scaler, since it wasn't too hard to adapt it's a bit depressing to see how good it runs on a 2003 PocketPC compared to 0.6.0

http://arisme.free.fr/PocketScumm/binar ... Scaler.zip

[Arisme]

mmh whoops, I removed the optimizations to locate FOTAQ bug, and it seems my project wasn't saved when I enabled them again ... anyway, here's the new attempt with full optimizations and additional Smush tweaks !

http://arisme.free.fr/PocketScumm/binar ... PC_ARM.zip

[pauli]

Im getting pocketscumm caused an illegal operation in fotaq at the point near the start when you succesfully get past the heavies to go to the truck outside the hotel. This is with the release from yesterday and the updated one from this morning. Is anyone else getting this? I'm using the free talkie version on an ipaq 3970 win ppc2002

[Marconelly]

Arisme, scaler in 0.51 seems to be partially fixed. 0.60 still scales better. It's quite obvious on the conversational text and character sprites that 0.60 does a better job at filtering the image. It's as if 0.51 now scales properly horizontally, but still looks a bit 'raw' when scaling vertically. I can't quite pinpoint it, but it's still a bit off compared to 0.60.


Now, for the new 0.60 release, it's a giant step forward from all the old builds. It runs quite fast (still a bit slower than 0.51, though) videos run very good - even better than 0.51 I'd say, as there are less skips and no voice loops that are present in COMI intro when run on 0.51. Sound sampling quality is as usual, better than 0.51, but there are still a bit more hickups. Some more bad things: skip button still doesn't work, and it still asks me to assign zoom up/down every time I start it, although they are already assigned.

[Arisme]

pauli> could you send me (arisme at free dot fr) a saved game at this point ? FOTAQ is quite new, and it's still possible to have some incompatibilities with the engine as I saw previously

Marconelly> I'll have a look on 0.5.1, but focus on 0.6.0 of course it's quite normal than the other bugs are not fixed, since I didn't look into them for the moment. I don't think the playback can be improved much, but at least it is better (with less sound loops) than 0.5.1 on my A620 and Ipaq 3630 now ... we'll see if I have new ideas ...

[Marconelly]

To tell you the truth, those trivial button issues aside, the only problem with 0.60 worth talking about are those sound hickups. They are better than they were with initial 0.60 release, but voices still hickup a bit too much. Weird thing is, it happens in some scenes more than on others. On some scenes it doesn't happen at all.

[Arisme]

Timers issues over again ... when the engine performs more computation, the audio callback timers lose accuracy, causing the hickups - and if you're really unlucky, the code called on this timer will need some additional CPU power, slowing down the next timer call, and so on ... typically what happened in video playback , because my blitting + scaling code is too slow.

To sum it up : it's not a good idea to have a piece of code taking >100 ms to run in a function called every 40 ms

btw I'd be interested to know where these hickups are more noticeable (with a saved game if possible) to perform my next optimization tests.

[Marconelly]

Hickups are quite noticeable in the very first screen with Wally and his cannon. No need for gamesave for that, as that's the very beginning of the game. Just try conversing with Wally for a while.

[Pauli]

Here is the saved game - if load it and then walk to the truck I get the error (the screen darkens as though some dialog is about to take place and then the crash).

I was able to load the game into an earlier build I had a copy of called 060pre which worked okay until the discussion with Anderson by the plane when it suddenly dropped out of the game with no warning or error message. Oddly, though I cant see how it can possibly be related, my clock then disappeared from the today screen title bar and I havent been able to get it back even with a reset.

[Arisme]

I'm working on it. No idea about the clock problem though (the title bar will be disabled if PocketScumm crashes, but it should reappear when performing a soft reset or just when opening and closing PocketScumm again)

[Arisme]

fixed (simple alignment issue) - new build coming tonight ...

[s.c.s.i.]

Arisme, I just downgraded to PPC2002 on my LOOX, due to some problems with WM2003 that I am waiting for Fujitsu-Siemes to fix.

I am not sure, but I believe you said that it was hard finding people with ppc2002 to try things, so if you still need something tested, just tell me.

I tryed the 0.51-build you just updated, and the 0.60 build, and one thing I noticed, that no one seems to have mentioned, is an issue with the menu.

I just got COMI, and gave it a run;
In 0.51, the menu (the one with save, load, keys, etc) looks fine, but in 0.6, it is shrinked to the upper left side of the screen, and is extremly small. This is not a real problem, since it is still big enough to see and use (perhaps becouse I am used to how it looks, maybe someone new to pocketscumm would have problems), but none the less, I thought you should know.

I will not start to play the game untill you release the new build (the one you preliminary said tonight). I will be glad to report how the game runs with that build.

//Daniel

[Arisme]

yes, I know that, but it seems to be a GUI issue

[Marconelly]

Yeah, I noticed the shrunken GUI myself, but I thought it was intended to be that way. Not a big deal, IMO. It IS hard to read, but not impossible.

[pauli]

Many thanks for working on it. The obvious fix for the clock would be a hard reset, before I do that though, does anyone know what might cause the clock to disappear - a registry entry or corrupted file or a setting somewhere? I can probably live without a clock until I've time to back everything up.

Many thanks to Arisme for all the hard work on all the coding and fixes