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As far as the "universal game format" goes, I would still maintain that it's an impossible task. But, if anyone did manage to actually create something like this, then we could certainly consider an export feature from AGS

On the more general open source question, one possibility would indeed be to open source most of the engine except the code that reads in the data files. But then you'd have a pretty useless open source game engine that couldn't play any games, and it'd be unlikely that anyone would go to the effort of writing a separate data importer and compiler to use with it.

The other argument against open-sourcing the engine code is, well, the current state of it. The design of the code was reasonable back in 1999 when AGS 2.0 was created, but now it has got into such a state that I really wouldn't wish trying to decipher it on anyone. Put simply, it wouldn't be easy to understand and therefore trying to merge it into something like ScummVM would be a nightmare.

What about having two kind of different game formats?

- open format: it will be compatible with the open-source one. This can be used in the AGS version of ScummVM, but the "second runner" thing can be a problem here (maybe the solution could be a fork with AGS on it).
- closed format: only compatible with the closed-source AGS implementation.

Of course both engines will be 100% compatible. If developers prefer the open format, then maybe the closed-source version could be canceled in the future.

About source code: maybe the ScummVM Team already had to deal with certain spaghetti code from some game that their main devs gave them the source code for easier support. I think messed code could be easier than reverse engineering.

Boy, I hope something can be worked out.  I would really like to see this happen. 
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Btw johnadv, thanks for comming here and engaging us in this discussion.   I hope CJ will consider cooperating with you in some way that would allow SCUMMVM to support games made with AGS.

Well, I think you are a bit confused. I'm not a developer, just found an interesting topic and created a forum thread to debate it.

About finding help for this possible thing, it's just a matter of ask to the community. I'm sure as AGS being one of the most popular tools for creating adventure games, there will be some volunteers out there for help with the effort of porting to the ScummVM infrastructure.

SSH: I don't understand your decision of a "Flash backend". Can you explain it a bit more? I inform you Adobe Flash is not supported by all devices and there could be certain feature and performance limitations (limited versions of Adobe Flash for slow devices, old versions, not enough CPU...). Compiling AGS to Flash could be a difficult task, there are certain Flash generators but those are open-source and being unsure of the flexibility of them.

This makes a lot of assumptions about how the AGS source code works and how well AGS would fit into the SCUMMVM scheme.

Each version of AGS engine can only run games made with a narrow window of previous engines, sometimes a few releases, sometimes none. You couldn't take a snapshot of the code and support even 20% of AGS games with it. A widely compatible AGS engine would require months of dedicated work and lots of reverse engineering, even if the AGS source code was released.

It's mainly for that reason I don't think SCUMMVM compatability is a good idea. Users would expect most AGS games to run, when they probably wouldn't.

That's not to say I think open sourcing the engine would be a bad idea, if CJ wanted to do it. It would make the existing ports easier to maintain for a start, as well as allow people to make their own if they're desperate for that.

But I'm sure the source code of all AGS versions are stored by CJ, so maybe it's possible to support all AGS versions in some way after doing research analyzing the differences between different AGS versions.

I'm sure this is a task os some months as minimum, but I personally consider the final result quite interesting. It would allow to play AGS games on a lot different platforms, with the actual platform maintainers of ScummVM doing the work and maybe having a few new devs for the AGS engine like others said.

Regardless, you might find it more productive if you did as good a search in these forums as you did over at ScummVM - this is by no means a new issue, and I'm sure there's been lots of discussion already.

I tried but found a lot of threads about SummVM on PocketPC and posts of uninformed people thinking ScummVM was like an universal adventure game emulator, or just references to ScummVM but not directly related to this idea/concept.

It could be fine if you find some interesting thread about this and putting in this thread the URL.

[We do not want to do anything in this regard without his permission. Then, it would be much easier if he would hand his source code and allow it to use under GPL.]

Hello.

There are people on ScummVM forums asking a lot about ScummVM supporting AGS. Just want to make people on the AGS community say their opinions about this, and if the developer of AGS say his opinion related to this long question by user from both communities (ScummVM and AGS).

I see ScummVM Team has nothing against a future merge of AGS into ScummVM if the author agrees. They just not want to try to "catch in" the official AGS implementation all time

First thing you need to do is talk to AGS author. We do not want to do anything in this regard without his permission. Then, it would be much easier if he would hand his source code and allow it to use under GPL.

Neither of which is likely to happen, according to the aforementioned AGS FAQ.

If you get permission from the author of AGS then that's great, but on the other hand he distributes AGS as closed source for his own reasons, and I'm not sure how his work could be tied into an open source project, unless he wants to open some parts of the AGS source code to the public (which he is reluctant to do).

I can look the FAQ up in the wayback machine and find it identical in 2002

That's understandable. But since he did not update it, we just assume that those statements are still valid.

I guess there must be some kind of grudge against AGS people or something here.

Not at all. We point to AGS on a regular basis as to a reliable and most up-to-date way to create adventure games without paying any kind of royalty. From the other hand we regularly, perhaps each other month receive a request about adding AGS to our engines collection. Whereas we ourselves do not see any problems with it from technical side, our policy is not to merge maintained projects without author's permission and if possible, collaboration. That is, we got FOTAQ, Reinherit, Gob, Sarien, TrollVM, CinE, CruisE, Igor engines only after they were either completely abandoned by their authors or their authors joined our team. And even in case of abandoned projects we always contact their authors beforehand.

So, take a look at AGS situation now. We have their FAQ. We see requests about merge with ScummVM both on our forms and on AGS forums as well. Still we saw no reply from the AGS author. This leads us to conclusion that he does not want it. Simple as that.

Again, we have nothing against if Chris will switch to our infrastructure and join our project. It will make great number of excellent games available to bigger masses and I am sure will make AGS even more popular. (Consider iPhone ). Of course, it will require some tweaks, as, for instance, current AGS implementation supports external modules via precompiled DLLs which is not portable, but all those questions could be resolved. So talk to Chris


Eugene

Still, to once more reiterate: You will have to fork ScummVM if you want to make a AGS engine, as we won't accept one, unless the AGS author explicitly gives written permission to do so. Even then, personally, I would be very reluctant to accept such an engine unless the AGS author goes even further and starts to collarborate himself. The problem being that AGS is actively developed, so if we tried to implement a second version of the engine from scratch, we'd always play "catch me" with him while trying to achieve compatibility.

Seconded. I.e. as I told above, we would not object if Chris himself will decide to switch development to the new platform. He will definitely benefit from that, and even I think he will get more engine developers from AGS community. But the on-going efforts of a second runner following AGS development is not an option.

Eugene

Here is the forum thread in ScummVM:
http://forums.scummvm.org/viewtopic.php?t=4294&start=60#29373

Here are others forum posts like this:
http://forums.scummvm.org/viewtopic.php?t=4458&highlight=ags


You can see conversation from devs (it seems everything was said before, but to proving they have nothing against AGS becoming part of ScummVM) : http://sand.enderboi.com/scummvm/log.php?log=scummvm.log.02Dec2007


Regards.