Quest For Glory: Shadows of Darkness.

[Kocta]

Hello, my foreign friends

Maybe my topic is illegal, or criminal, but...

I have a dream to translate a QFG4 on a Russian language for my children can play it freely. But I'm not a hacker or programmer or some kind.
I can not disassembler, decompile or doing something of that kind.

But I think here is some people of that talent.

And I want to ask some things:
- How to redraw QFG4 fonts?
- Is it possible to add cyrillic symbols, or I can only replace latin symbols? Cyrillic alphabet consists 33 symbols instead of 26 latin.
- How to extract text and graphic information out of the game?
and finally,
- How to pack it back in the game?

Thank You,
Kocta

[DrJones]

If it were easy (in a you-can-do-it way), some people would have already done that.

There's a tool that does the third step called Sierra SCI studio VGA or so, it was never finished but allows you to view the resources. Probably you can only replace the letters on the second step, that's too bad for cyrillic unless you have the luck of having unused characters like @ or $ in the font, in that case you could replace them for cyrillic letters.

To redraw QFG4 fonts, you need to know the font format (i.e. how is it stored internally). If it stored outside the executable, you might be able to alter it by hand - they are usually pretty simple, even when they have some form of anti-aliasing. If it's stored inside the executable, that's way harder for you to alter.

The last step is totally impossible for you to do without knowing the format of the resource files. Directly modifying the text with an hex editor will have you end with a corrupt file that won't load, and there's no tool to insert back the text/graphics.

[MusicallyInspired]

Unfortunately, development of engine-hacking programs that do the things you mentioned stopped short as interest decreased in the SCI community. I wish those who were once interested in developing such programs were still interested today but there just aren't any around anymore. Even SCI Companion (developed by troflip and based on Brian Provinciano's SCI Studio code) has been abandoned for a while now. If I knew how to program as easily as those did I'd be doing things myself. But my experience in programming is rather limited and I haven't had much time to devote to really progressing my knowledge.

[Kocta]

Three first steps done. I found how to make it

Final task left: how to pack it all back... I need resource remapper...

[MusicallyInspired]

If you've already done all the steps but the last one, you don't actually need to repack them in. Just drop the files in the game directory (or wherever resource.cfg points to the specific folders it requires) and the game will load them in place of the files embedded in the resource file.

[Kocta]

Really? Thanks, I will try it!

[added]
No. It doesn't work... Or I do something wrong.

I extract a text file (.msg), changed you on YOU. Not working.

[MusicallyInspired]

Must handle it differently for SCI32 and up then.

[Kocta]

Where to get SCI32? I got only SCI30.

[MusicallyInspired]

There is no SCI30. There's SCI0, SCI01, SCI10, SCI11, SCI32, and LSCI.

[Kocta]

SCI Studio
Version 3.0.1.29 - March 16th, 2003
By Brian Provinciano
Copyright © 1999-2003 Brian Provinciano

Web: http://www.bripro.com

[DrJones]

He is not talking about the SCI studio version, but the Sierra's Creative Interpreter version. That was the "engine" used by Sierra in their games, and SCI32 was the one used in Shadow of Darkness.

I would have been totally surprised if, like MusicallyInspired says, you only had to put the extracted images and text on the folder for the game to run, because if that were true, the coder of SCI studio wouldn't have needed to program a resource inserter at all.

Edit: It looks like the FreeSCI project includes some tools to work with SCI resource files, take a look at it because it looks like it can insert back things you previously extracted, though it might be limited to just SCI0 games (and for what I've read, only inserts back audio if you have installed GNU libc, which is the C library used by Linux)

[MusicallyInspired]

You definitely need an inserter for SCI Studio because there would be waaaaay too many files otherwise. It doesn't require them to be inserted, though (it does require a RESOURCE.MAP file, however, which is generated when you compile resources). This is how Sierra themselves patched their games. By simply dropping replacement resources in the game folder. It works for SCI0 games up to SCI11, anyway.

[Kocta]

Wow! Thanks!
"Babies, we have new toys here for supper!"