Sierra Creative Interpreter

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SCI - short for S ierra C reative I nterpreter - is a programming tool and a game engine made by Sierra On-Line developed and for a newer generation of graphics Adventures was used from 1988 to 1996.

In contrast to its predecessor, the Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI), which is a procedural scripting language, the Sierra Creative Interpreter is completely object-oriented. In addition to the platform-independent development and, thanks to the support of modern hardware, not only improved graphics, but also sound output in a previously unknown quality, the change from parser to point-and-click control by players or the specialist press was considered to be of secondary importance.

SCI was developed by Jeff Stephenson, a senior programmer at the company who had also made a decisive contribution to the further development of AGI. The original name was Large-model Script Code Interpreter (LSCI), but was subsequently changed in marketing. The costs are to 400,000 USD amounted to.

SCI was first used for King's Quest IV. The game was also produced as an AGI version at the same time, as Sierra assumed that it would have to offer a "light" version for less powerful systems. The AGI version was quickly discontinued due to low demand and is now considered a collector's item.

Versions

In addition to smaller extensions that were integrated into the system for each new game development project or for porting and translations, Sierra developed the following main versions:

  • SCI0 (from 1988): With a resolution of 320 × 200 pixels, the graphics could be displayed in 16 colors ( EGA ), 4 colors ( CGA ) or 2 colors (Hercules).
  • SCI01: An improved compression algorithm was used and the source data for sound could contain both MIDI and PCM data (digitized sound effects).
  • SCI1 (from 1990): 256 colors ( VGA / MCGA ) could be displayed with the same resolution of 320 × 200 pixels .
  • SCI11: Animated film sequences and pseudo-3D effects, like a player character that becomes smaller when moving into the background of the picture.
  • SCI2 (from 1993): Change to 32bit via DOS / 4GW-Extender or Windows 3.1 and a higher resolution of 640 × 480 pixels.
  • SCI21: Increasing integration of video data (robot videos). Integration of pre- rendered 3D graphics in comic style or scenes filmed with actors.
  • SCI3 (from 1996): In addition to MS-DOS, the games could also run directly under Windows 95 .

Engine remake

The FreeSCI open source project, started by Christoph Reichenbach in 1999, gradually made it possible to run SCI0 / 01 games on newer hardware platforms and additional operating systems. Early versions relied heavily on the SCI resource decoder and SCI image viewer of the SCI Decoding Project , which their developer Carl Muckenhoupt had initially distributed as shareware from 1992 onwards. In view of the high effort to keep up with further developments and the ongoing changes to the code by Sierra's development department, Muckenhoupt soon turned to other tasks and released his code under GPL in 1997 .

Support for SCI1 games was still in development when the FreeSCI developers decided in early 2009 to join the team behind ScummVM . The first common ScummVM version 1.2.0 therefore appeared in October 2010 as "FaSCInating release". All SCI2 and SCI3 games are now supported by ScummVM.

Development tools

The SCI Studio , developed by Brian Provinciano and released as public domain , allows you to create your own games based on the SCI0 engine. The last version appeared in January 2003. According to its developers, the SCI Companion 3 , which appeared as open source software in January 2016, offers a more up-to-date development environment with support for SCI1 and SCI2 .

SCI games

A selection of games that have been developed with different versions of the SCI interpreter.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Richard Moss: Level up. A truly graphic adventure: the 25-year rise and fall of a beloved genre. In: Ars Technica . January 27, 2011, accessed September 16, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Jeff Stephenson. Developer Biography. In: MobyGames . Retrieved September 15, 2019 .
  3. ↑ The years 1987 to 1988. The Sierra Study: Part 04. In: adventurecorner.de. December 7, 2009, accessed September 16, 2019 .
  4. ^ Sierra Creative Interpreter (SCI). In: SCI Programmers Wiki. Retrieved September 15, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Howard Wen: FreeSCI: Rebuilding Sierra's Classic Quests. In: linuxtoday.com (original article at O'Reilly ). February 8, 2003, accessed September 16, 2019 .
  6. ^ Peter Steinlechner: Adventures with the "Fascinating Release". ScummVM 1.2.0. In: Golem.de . October 18, 2010, accessed September 16, 2019 .
  7. ↑ SCI Companion 3 released! In: scicompanion.com (developer website). Retrieved September 16, 2019 .