SCI: Unknown "hoyle" game or demo that I think uses SCI

[eriktorbjorn]

I recently acquired a copy of "Sierra's School House: Math". Unfortunately I don't have the box or the manual, but the discs turned out to be something of a treasure trove, containing what appears to be at least two complete games that I didn't have before. (EcoQuest 2 and Pepper's Adventures in Time.)

There are also "Science" and "English" versions that I don't have. I'm guessing they have the same set of extra games, because I was tipped off that "Science" had EcoQuest and Pepper, and only the main game differs? (The extra games are all on the first CD.)

One of its remaining mysteries is the "hoyle" directory. ScummVM doesn't recognize it, but suggests it may be a "hoyle5" game. I have not been able to get it to run in Wine, so I can't say for sure. The file sizes suggest that it might be a demo, perhaps?

Matched game IDs for the sci engine: hoyle5-fallback

  {"resmap.000", 0, "ed75b87fd5b69097e3a09dd39de7e2fe", 3697},
  {"ressci.000", 0, "cbfe69aa4b9e23ddbf640301709a65eb", 2478642},

Adding it anyway, it does start and runs long enough to display a "hand" cursor. But then it immediately crashes:

ERROR: [hoyle5-fallback 900 sierra::doit @ 01bc]: [VM] kPalCycle: subfunction ID 112 requested, but not available!

This is a complete list of the files:

   3697 Jul 11  1995 resmap.000
   3697 Jul 11  1995 resmdt.000
2478642 Jul 11  1995 ressci.000
 142934 May 18  1995 scidll.dll
 167091 Mar 27  1995 sciw.map
   8475 Aug 12  1994 sierra.err
 803092 Jun 23  1995 sierraw.exe
 167292 Jun 23  1995 sierraw.map

The .map files are output from WATCOM Linker Version 9.5, so presumably not part of the game. The sierraw.exe seems large enough that it might contain debug information.

MD5 checksums for the files:

ed75b87fd5b69097e3a09dd39de7e2fe  resmap.000
52a7e7dff0671acb4c151fa64ab78136  resmdt.000
48c53529d2fd41dcc69433737be7a457  ressci.000
ba6735f0ccafbac86e70ece0921ee34b  scidll.dll
040f6446e72a22bd68521edd625451a6  sciw.map
4d9122131775e6349c3c8b6574ec612c  sierra.err
d709c2f8c49a1406b599bb59cf28c1c5  sierraw.exe
9830f9a47fc321f3e63141d9d70afcca  sierraw.map

[eriktorbjorn]

Apparently this one is just too weird for ScummVM.

[OmerMor]

Actually I believe this is a previously unknown Hoyle 4 (Classic Card Games) variant!

The installer puts 5 INI configuration files for the following card games:

1. Adi's Solitaire (game id 600, called Klondike in the original)
2. Adi's Old Maid (game id 200)
3. Adi's Hearts (game id 300)
4. Adi's Crazy 8's (game id 100)
5. Adi's Cribbage (game id 500)

The games resources also contains the scripts for Gin Rummy (game id 400) and it's possible to run it with a custom configuration.

The game is missing the Bridge and Euchre games from the original. It is also missing all the character selection as well as other options. It comes with custom fixed Adi related characters.

It is also possible to launch the main menu (game id 002) and game selection screens (game id 975), which mostly work (but some of the buttons will crash the game).

[sluicebox]

Yup, that's the exact analysis that led me to say this is too weird for ScummvM a few weeks ago =)

Or rather, that it would take a lot of work that I don't think will get done, for a result that makes fun screenshots but isn't something anyone would want to play. Maybe I'm too pessimistic; I'm listening!

What do you even call this game? (I don't know, so I haven't added it to my sci-scripts repo yet!)

What game ID would you give this? It's SCI32, so I say it's a Hoyle5 variant, because Hoyle5 is a SCI32 port of Hoyle4 with new graphics. This one has unused SCI32 versions of Hoyle4 graphics and menu resources floating around in it, plus some SCI16=>SCI32 script mistakes that make it appear that it was created while they were in the process of porting to Hoyle5.

How do you make the menus work, given that so many resources are missing? I hacked this thing into loading a card game in ScummVM a few weeks ago and I wasn't optimistic. Disable a bunch of menus like we do for the Hoyle5 floppy variants? This is going to be a very different experience from how this software actually ran.

What about all the script patches and workaround signatures? We already have Hoyle4 and Hoyle5 versions for many of them, because the Hoyle4 bugs continued on into Hoyle5 where they were compiled with SCI32 bytecode. If we have to rewrite any of those for this then... shudder. I couldn't make it through the one card game I tried without tripping an error for something I knew we'd fixed.

At least in the card game I tried, they ripped out all the in-game controls, and you can't restart, or return to the menus, so you're just stuck until the slow game ends. No options, you can't even increase the speed, just have to wait for the game to be over.

I know that all sounds pessimistic, which is why I've been avoiding writing anything about this because I hate pouring cold water on fun things. I hope I've demonstrated *some* of the work that would be necessary to make this weird thing run. Who will do it? I think it's likely that the best case result is that it will look broken and no one would want to play. That sounds like a recipe for a ticket that will never get closed, hence why I proposed it's a wontfix now instead of years from now when I randomly lose patience after no activity. =)

It's a cool Weird SCI find though! I reserve the right to lose my mind and just make it work one day, despite everything I said. But I have more fun things to do, so someone give me hope that this isn't such a big deal. (Guys we don't even have Hoyle5 POKER working yet!)

Now get my name off this ticket!

[OmerMor]

So... it's a yes? :D

Seriously, it's been worth re-opening this ticket just to get that rant...

[sluicebox]

dbb93adee424c29f0d934468aae1e3c57139cd22
283a9022bd041bdbf4f3609efb0e3e6ecae2ff8e

(it was a rainy day)

[OmerMor]

You're so awesome!

I have a couple of questions / observations:

1. Rain in mid-June?
2. You're naming the game "Hoyle School House Math" which is appropriate, but I suspect it was also present in the other 2 School House games. ​The manual is the same for all 3 games, and lists the 5 Hoyle games there:

However I'm not sure because it also notes that not all games may be present in each package:

My point is that I think a better name would be "Hoyle School House"