Ubuntu Manpage: freesci - free interpreter for SCI bytecode

NAME

       freesci - free interpreter for SCI bytecode

DESCRIPTION

       FreeSCI  is a portable interpreter for SCI games, such as the Space Quest series (starting
       with SQ3) or Leisure Suit Larry (2 and sequels); see below for a complete listing.

       freesci is the main executable which loads, links and runs SCI bytecode.

SYNOPSIS

       freesci [options] [game [savegame]]

OPTIONS

game An identifier describing the game to start. This identifier (GAME_ID) must be
declared in the configuration file. If omitted, the interpreter will attempt to
read resource files from the current working directory (or the directory specified
by the --gamedir option). If that fails, it will present a graphical game selection
screen for the games listed in the config file and the games located under
~/.freesci/games (or the directory specified by the --menudir option).

savegame
If this option is specified after the game name, the interpreter will attempt to
quickload the savegame with the specified ID (see the --list-savegames option).
This is technically different from restoring a savegame from within the game (as it
does not re-start the game script state afterwards), but it should work just as
well.

--version, -v
Display version number and exit. Also the supported graphics drivers, sound
servers, midi and midiout drivers are reported.

--help, -h
Display a short help text and exit.

--run, -r
Do not start the debugger; only run the game. This is the default action.

--debug, -D
Start up in debug mode.

--list-savegames, -l
This option instructs the interpreter not to run the game, but rather to list all
savegames stored for it, including their in-game descriptions where available.
This is relevant to figure out savegame names for quickloads. The usual in-game
savegames are labelled “save_0” through “save_j”.

--gamedir dir, -ddir
With this option, games resources will be read from the directory dir. Default is
the current directory, unless a directory has been specified in the config file
(see below).

--menudir dir, -Gdir
This option sets the directory that the graphical game selection menu recurses to
look for SCI games. Default is ~/.freesci/games, unless the menu_dir option is set
in the config file (see below).

--sci-version version, -Vversion
This option sets the SCI version for freesci to emulate. Acceptable version
numbers are of the form x.yyy.zzz, where x is the major number, yyy is the minor
number and zzz the patch level.

Note that currectly only SCI0 and SCI01 (major/minor=0/000) games are supported.

Normally, the version will be autodetected from the game resource files.

--disable-mouse, -m
Many SCI games handle the mouse pointer differently if no mouse is present in the
system. This option instructs the interpreter to tell the games that no mouse is
present whenever they ask for one; the actual effect depends on the individual
game.

--scale-x xfact, -xxfact
--scale-y yfact, -yyfact These options allow to explicitly specify the horizontal
and vertical scaling factors. The resulting size of the game window will be
320*xfact x 200*yfact, plus any window decorations.

--color-depth bpp, -cbpp
This sets the number of bits to use per pixel. Some visuals/graphics drivers
support several color depths, so that auto-detection may not yield the desired
effects.

--graphics gfx, -ggfx
With this option, you can specify which graphics driver is to be used.

In this release, sdl, ggi and plain xlib are supported.

--midiout driver, -Odriver
This is the output driver or interface to use. Currently, unixraw, alsaraw, null,
ossopl3, and ossseq (an OSS sequencer driver) may be available on your system,
ossseq being the default.

--mididevice driver, -Mdriver
SCI was designed to support a variety of physical output devices. FreeSCI currently
supports the Rolant MT-32 (mt32, the default), an Adlib device (adlib) and it also
offers an MT-32 to General MIDI translation layer (mt32gm).

--sound-server server, -Sserver
This option may be used to explicitly specify a sound server to use. The sound
server is an asynchronous process or thread that issues sound output events and
reports sound cues back to the interpreter; if you have both possibilities (unix
and sdl) for your system, you may have to experiment to find out which works best
for you.

CONFIG FILE

When run, FreeSCI will create a directory called .freesci in your home directory (unless
this directory already exists). If you run an SCI game, this game will create another
directory inside the .freesci directory, to store its save games in.

Also, if a file called config exists in this directory, it will be read and parsed by the
interpreter after the game has been loaded. This configuration file can be divided into a
global section and various game-specific sections. Within the config file, comments must
be preceeded by a hash “#” sign. Empty lines are ignored.

Game-specific sections are marked by a text string like [GAME_ID], where GAME_ID is an ID
to use for the game. If the section also contains a resource_dir entry, the ID may be
passed to freesci as a parameter to start the game by its name.

The config file section before the first game-specific section is the global configuration
section; anything specified here will be used as the setting for any game that does not
explicitly request different settings.

It is possible to include other files with the %include<#> directive. FreeSCI will
automatically detect and warn about circular inclusions.

Here is a complete listing of all options supported:

GENERAL OPTIONS:

resource_dir
Read the game's resource data from the specified location. Must not be used in the
generic part of the config file.

menu_dir = dir
Specifies the directory that is recursively searched for SCI games when the game
selection screen is invoked. Should only be used in the generic part of the config
file. Defaults to ~/.freesci/games.

version = x.yyy.zzz
Emulate SCI version x.yyy.zzz. The version number is sometimes printed on game
discs, or can be found out by grepping your main executable for "0.000." (for SCI0
games). It is also displayed if the built-in debugger is activated in the Sierra
SCI engine. See also the --sci-version command line option.

console_log
Sets a logging file for FreeSCI's console output (by default, this is disabled).

mouse = yes | no
Specifies whether the interpreter should report to the game that it has a mouse.

GRAPHICS OPTIONS:

pic0_dither_mode = dither | flat | dither256
dither: draw in 16 colors, same as Sierra SCI; flat: interpolate colors (256
colors); this improves some graphics; dither256: dither in 256 colors; a compromise
between dither and flat.

pic0_dither_pattern = scaled | unscaled
scaled: perform picture dithering to blocks with a width of the horizontal and a
height of the vertical scaling factor; unscaled: dither single pixels (same as
scaled if the game is being run unscaled).

pic0_brush_mode = scaled | ellipses | random-ellipses | more-random
Affects how semi-random brushes (used mostly for dirt and foilage) are drawn in
SCI0 background pictures. scaled: scale every semi-random pixel to a rectangular
block; ellipses: scale every semi-random pixel to a filled ellipse;
random-ellipses: as ellipses, but slightly shift ellipse offset and size;
more-random: add more random pixels to the whole area.

pic0_line_mode = correct | fine | half
Specify how lines are drawn when background pictures are rendered in SCI0.
correct: draw lines appropriately scaled; fine: don't scale lines (thin lines, may
cause problems); half: draw lines at half width (may cause problems).

dirty_strategy = 1 | clusters
The “dirty strategy” is the strategy used to collect modifications to the screen
content. Modifying this may affect performance on slow or networked systems. 1:
collect everything in one dirty region; clusters: cluster non-overlapping modified
regions into a set of regions.

pic0_scaled = yes | no
Whether SCI0 background pics should be scaled (may look better) or not (faster,
looks more like the original games). By default, it is disabled.

pic_buffer_size = #
Number of background pics to store in an LRU buffer. Increasing this value will
increase the amount of memory used, but may considerably speed up changing back to
rooms you visited not too long ago.

view_filter = none | linear | trilinear
Specifies the way views (non-background images) are scaled (this obviously does not
affect unscaled images): none: no filtering is performed (default); linear: a
simple linear filter is applied; trilinear: views are passed through a trilinear
filter.

pic_filter = none | linear | trilinear
Specifies scaling for background images; see view_filter for a description of the
options.

cursor_filter = none | linear | trilinear
Specifies scaling for mouse pointers; see view_filter for a description of the
options. This option does not apply to graphics drivers which handle the mouse
pointer explicitly (currently, only the GGI driver is affected).

text_filter = none | linear | trilinear
Specifies scaling for text; see view_filter for a description of the options.

pic_antialiasing = none | simple
If activated, this option will do an extra pass over background images to
anti-aliase them, usually improving the overall picture quality. This is set to
none by default.

animation_delay = #
This chooses the amount of microseconds to wait between each sub-element of a
transition animation (also see animation_granularity). Setting this to zero will
disable transition animations completely. The default is 5.

animation_granularity = #
This sets the amount of steps to execute simultaneously for each transition
animation. If transition animations seem too slow on your system but you don't want
to disable them completely, you might want to try increasing this value. The
default is 4.

alpha_threshold = #
When using filtered images (specifically views, text, and cursors where used by the
graphics driver), this value is used to determine when a part of the image should
be drawn and when it should be omitted. The definition space of this value is 0 to
255, where larger values cause more to be drawn. This value does not affect
unfiltered images or images drawn with alpha blending. Default is 129.

SOUND OPTIONS:

midi_device = driver
Chooses the default MIDI device; this can be mt32 for plain MT-32 output, or mt32gm
to use FreeSCI's MT32 -> General MIDI mapping algorithm. Also Adlib (adlib) is
supported. This defaults to mt32gm.

midiout_driver = driver
Selects the output device to use. Available options are alsaraw (using ALSA's raw
MIDI output devices), unixraw (using /dev/midi-style raw MIDI output devices),
ossseq (for OSS sequencer devices) and win32mci on Win32 systems. The default on
UNIXish systems is ossseq.

sound_server = server
This chooses one of the asynchronous sound servers. For sound output, FreeSCI uses
an asynchronous process or thread; currently two implementations of this mechanism
are available: unix, which forks off a separate process, and sdl, which uses
libsdl's threading mechanisms. Defaults to unix, where available.

DRIVER-SPECIFIC OPTIONS (GRAPHICS DRIVERS):

gfx.xlib.disable_shmem = yes | no
Can be used to disable support for MIT Shm support on the X11 Windowing System in
cases where detection fails. This is off by default, enabling SHM support.

gfx.sdl.swap_caps_ctrl = yes | no
This option instructs the SDL driver to swap caps lock and ctrl when reading input.
Disabled by default.

gfx.sdl.fullscreen = yes | no
Toggles the SDL graphics driver's fullscreen option. Disabled by default.

DRIVER-SPECIFIC OPTIONS (SOUND DRIVERS):

midiout.alsaraw.card = #
This specifies the ALSA card to use for raw MIDI output; the default is 0.

midiout.alsaraw.device = #
Specifies the ALSA device, relative to the card, for raw MIDI output. It also
defaults to 0.

midiout.unixraw.device = device
Sets the device file to use for raw UNIX MIDI output. This defaults to /dev/midi.

midiout.ossseq.device = #
Selects the OSS sequencer device number; this defaults to 1.

midiout.ossseq.recorder = file
Chooses a file the OSS sequencer should print debug output to. This is not
particularly helpful for everyday use, and disabled by default.

PER-RESOURCE COLOUR CUSTOMISATION:

FreeSCI allows the brightness and hue of in-game images to be customised. A complete
description of this mechanism can be found in the accompanying README.

EXAMPLES

       Here is an exemplary configuartion file:

              # FreeSCI configuration file
              # For FreeSCI version 0.3.5

              # default values:

              console_log = /home/user/.freesci/log
              pic_buffer_size = 4
              pic0_brush_mode = more-random
              pic_antialiasing = simple
              pic0_dither_mode = dither256
              pic0_scaled = yes
              pic0_line_mode = normal
              pic0_dither_pattern = scaled
              text_filter = trilinear
              cursor_filter = trilinear
              pic_filter = trilinear
              view_filter = trilinear
              midi_device = mt32
              midiout_driver = alsaraw
              alpha_threshold = 140
              sound_server = unix

              gfx_driver=ggi
              animation_delay = 1
              animation_granularity=4
              gfx.ggi.swap_caps_ctrl=yes
              gfx.xlib.swap_caps_ctrl=yes
              gfx.sdl.swap_caps_ctrl=yes
              midiout.alsaraw.device=0
              midiout.unixraw.device=/dev/midi
              midiout.ossseq.device=1
              midiout.ossseq.recorder=/tmp/recorder

              [LSL3]
              resource_dir = /usr/share/freesci/lsl3

              [KQ4]
              resource_dir = /usr/share/freesci/kq4
              version = 0.000.502

SUPPORTED GAMES

       The following games have been tested with FreeSCI and are known  to  give  some  level  of
       interactivity.  In  theory, FreeSCI should be able to let you complete all of these. Games
       marked with [c] have been completed using FreeSCI.

       •      Hero's Quest / Quest for Glory 1 [c]
       •      Space Quest 3 [c]
       •      King's Quest 1 (SCI version) [c]
       •      King's Quest 4 [c]
       •      Leisure Suit Larry 2 [c]
       •      Leisure Suit Larry 3 [c]
       •      Police Quest 2 [c]
       •      Codename: Iceman
       •      The Colonel's Bequest [c]
       •      Conquest of Camelot
       •      The Fun Seeker's Guide (from the SQ Collector's Series)
       •      Hoyle's Book of Games (volume 1) (*)
       •      Hoyle's Book of Games (volume 2) (*)
       (*) Due to differences between the way Sierra SCI and FreeSCI  handle  graphical  widgets,
       these  games  may cause an accumulation of widgets in the widget subsystem, resulting in a
       slowdown and some increased memory usage.

BUGS

       This release has the following limitations (plus some bugs):
       •      Only SCI0 games (and some SCI01 games) are supported
       •      The SCI debug functions aren't fully supported (and probably never will  be,  since
              FreeSCI uses its own debug functions).

       Please  refer  to  http://freesci.linuxgames.com's  bug  list section for a listing of all
       known and current bugs.

AUTHORS

       FreeSCI is copyright (c) 1999-2006 by the following people:

       •      Christoph Reichenbach <creichen@gmail.com>
       •      Carl Muckenhoupt <carl@wurb.com>
       •      Dmitry Jemerov <yole@exch.nnz.spb.su>
       •      Magnus Reftel <d96reftl@dtek.chalmers.se>
       •      Petr Vyhnak <pvyhnak@attglobal.net>
       •      Sergey Lapin <slapin@karelia.ru>
       •      Lars Skovlund <lskovlun@image.dk>
       •      Matt Hargett <matt@use.net>
       •      Solomon Peachy <pizza@shaftnet.org>
       •      Rickard Lind <rpl@dd.chalmers.se>
       •      Rink Springer <rink@springer.cx>
       •      Hugues Valois <hugues_valois@hotmail.com>
       •      Ruediger Hanke <tomjoad@muenster.de>
       •      Alexander Angas <wgd@adelaide.on.net>
       •      Walter van Niftrik <w.f.b.w.v.niftrik@stud.tue.nl>

       This man page was written by Bas Zoetekouw <bas@debian.org> and Christoph Reichenbach.