Here is a list of things we plan to do in the future. Note that we
don't promise to do any of these, nor when we will do them. It's just a
list of what we hope to be able to do one day.
If you want to dig in, this is the stuff where you might make the most
useful contribution. Note that this list is never complete, and may be
partially outdated, so just because you don't see something here doesn't
mean it is not important.
Before you start work on something, you should first talk to the team!
Ideally ask on scummvm-devel, our mailing list. This will help us to
prevent double work, i.e. several people working on the same stuff at
once without knowing about each other. Furthermore, sometimes entries
on our list are actually obsolete (because the feature has been
implemented, or because for some reason we no longer think it to be
desirable). Special caution should be taken for TODO entries that say
"we may want to" or similar things; that usually means that we aren't
sure whether we really want to implement that feature.
So, to repeat it: Always talk to the team before implementing a change
on this list, or else risk having your patch rejected :-/.
Finally, always make sure to check out our bug tracker and our feature
request tracker for things that need work.
#######################################################################
# Docs, Web site
#######################################################################
General
========
* Add port specific user documentation (dreamcast/palm especially). That
would include things like:
- How to use ScummVM on system XYZ
- Which Palm / WinCE devices will run ScummVM, which definitely will not
run it (or with which limitations)?
* Update/enhance man page
* Write a high level overview of how ScummVM and its engines work?
README / Manual
===============
* Ender is working on a new multi-format manual/readme.
Since so far we haven't seen anything of that, Fingolfin has started a
DocBook based manual (and FAQ, and Developer's Guide). You can find it in
the CVS module "docs".
Finally, there is a LaTeX based version of the README in the "doc" subdir
of the "scummvm" CVS module, but it tends to slip out of sync with the
plain text README, and it's not really a manual, it's just the README
in a different file format.
* Everybody is welcome to start helping out with the public manual project
in the "docs" CVS module. You can either reuse content from the README,
or replace it with new, better written stuff. Contact Fingolfin or our
mailing list, scummvm-devel, if you are interested in helping out.
* It would be greate to have a "Developer's Guide to ScummVM" which explains
the ScummVM framework, and also the engines, i.e.
- stuff in common/, like the config manager etc.
- the backend API, and how to create new backends
- the sound system
- how to create a new engine
- a chapter for each engine, with as many/little details as the resp.
engine teams deem appropriate...
- ...
Code
====
* Add more Doxygen comments. However, quality is preferable over quantity
* Document the OSystem overlay API, it badly needs it...
Web site
========
* Add the "Manual" / README to the site
* Redo the screenshots. Mostly this means adding more (and maybe removing or
replacing a few). What I have in mind are that we follow these guidelines
(which aren't set in stone nor laws, just guidelines :-)
- For each unique game, provide 2-3 screenshots
- Have at least one shot for each major variant of a game (with major variant
I mean visibly distinct versions, like Zak V1 vs. V2 vs. FM-TOWNS; or
Monkey Island EGA vs VGA vs CD).
If I am counting right, that should place us at about 2*(18+2+1+1+1)=46
screenshots, compared to the current 32 (and more if we start adding HE
games).
#######################################################################
# Common code, infrastructure
#######################################################################
General
=======
* Revise the way "quit" is handled. Maybe add a global variable "g_quit" which
we set when the application should be quit (e.g. when an EVENT_QUIT is
received). This is useful if multiple levels of event loops have to be ended
* Fix the Map<> template, make it more robust; maybe use a red-black tree?
* Make some generic "EventLoop" API/class which all backends and the GUI
use. Initially this would just call the backend poll_event() etc. methods.
But eventually the EventLoop object(s) could be made by the backend.
This may allow for more efficient CPU usage etc.
The current event handling model essentially is polling: the engines run
some kind of main loop, which, besides many other things, also polls and
dispatches events. The idea is to turn this around: the event loop
frequently gives the engine time to do these "other things".
* Make the autosave interval configurable (via GUI, command line, config file).
* Maybe add ways to modify the game configs via the command line. E.g. allow
./scummvm --add new_target --path=/foo monkey2
./scummvm --remove new_target
* Maybe allow launching games even if no target is specified? I.e. the user
only has to specify a path (or run ScummVM from the right directory), and
ScummVM auto-detects the game in that location
./scummvm --auto-detect
Of course, if we do it, it has to be done so that the launcher is still
reachable :-)
* Some source files should be moved. But that's a pain with CVS, so let's
wait until we switch to something better, like Subversion. In particular:
- common/scaler* stuff should either be moved to graphics/, or maybe
to backends/ (while it is portable code, it's something to be used by
the backends only)
- consider moving the MIDI stuff from sound/ to sound/midi/
- move fmopl code to softsynth dir
- move fonts to graphics/fonts/ dir
- move all the game engines into a new dir engines/
- maybe common/system.h / system.cpp should go to backends/, too ?
- move the iMuse source files in scumm/ to a new dir scumm/imuse/
* The following things should be put into namespaces:
- AudioStream and subclasses into Audio
- MIDI related classes either to Audio, or a new "MIDI" namespace
- backend specific stuff into ??? (maybe new namespace "Backends" ?)
not sure about this one.
Build System
============
* Add test(s) for backend usability in the configure script.
* Enhance the Makefile-based build system to support VPATH and stuff, so that
one can compile scummvm in a directory tree separate from the source tree.
That would make it possible to build ScummVM with different build options,
e.g. have one debug build and one optimized build.
Fingolfin implemented most of this; the only thing missing is that configure
should detect when it is run in a directory outside the source tree, and in
that case generate a custom Makefile, with content like this:
srcdir = /path/to/source/dir
vpath %.cpp $(srcdir)
vpath %.h $(srcdir)
include $(srcdir)/Makefile
* Allow automatic re-runs of configure (this would have to 'save' the values of
env vars like CXXFLAGS and also command line params)
* Add an install target to the Makefile - Copy binary, install manpage, add
menu items, install README. See also patch #891909 (Gnome/KDE .desktop file)
Audio
=====
* Get the high quality resample code to work
[Fingolfin has started work on this]
* Consider changing the mixer volume to use range 0-255, for sake of
consistency (but at a slight loss of efficiency). Note that this requires
changes in at least rate.cpp and mixer.cpp.
* MIDI: Add API to OSystem which allows client code to query for "native"
MIDI drivers (like Windows, ALSA, Zodiac, CoreAudio). Then change the
MIDI interfacing code (GUI, command line, config file, etc.) and also
MidiDriver::createMidi() to use both that list and the list of
'emulated' MIDI devices (Adlib, MT-32, PC Speaker, etc.) in an appropriate
way.
Config Manager
==============
* Add a 'notification' system. E.g. the SoundMixer could request to be notified
whenever the value of the "volume" config option changes. In other words,
instead of a "pull" approach (where each subsystem has to check whether any
config option relevant to it has been changed) we use a "push" approach.
Of course the current approach is "push", too: whenever e.g. the volume
setting is changed, the code doing so has to updated the SoundMixer etc.
That's cumbersome, and error prone. Would be much nicer if updating the
volume config value automatically notifies the SoundMixer, iMuse etc.
* Split it into a Config Manager, and a Config File class. Maybe even follow
the pentagram (http://pentragram.sf.net) approach and have three class:
- SettingsManager (like our current ConfigManager)
- ConfigFileManager (manages a set of config files, possibly merging the data
from multiple config files)
- INIFile (a simple .ini file accessor).
This makes it easy to add additional config sources (e.g. XMLConfigFile);
makes it possible to treat the command line data like another config file
(CommandLineConfig); and simply follows the good old MVC approach, which
is always a good idea.
Files
=====
* Add a FilesystemManager or FileManager or so which should unify and/or
replace the current File/FilesystemNode classes (and maybe SaveFileManager).
The goal is to make these things as portable as possible while keeping it
easy to use for the coder. Some new functionality we need:
- check for existence of file/directory
- check whether given directory is readable/writeable
- convert FSNode into a string representation (for prefs file)
- convert said string representation back to FSNode
Of course that can be added w/o a FileManager class, too - but it might be
nice to have all of these integrated.
* Get rid of the incRef/decRef API of class File. Instead, add a clone() method
which generates a new (independant) File object for the same file (only would
work for files in read mode, obviously). Convert the audio code to use this
instead of the ref counting.
Reason: Using a shared file object can lead to race conditions if multiple
threads try to use it at the same time; on some systems (Symbian) it is
apparently not even possible to do it; iahd t can also cause problems even in
non-threaded code, when we seek in one block of code, and then try to access it
from another block, w/o reseeking first.
GUI
===
* Remove hard coded 320x200 assumptions, use game screen size. In particular,
all the dialogs should be rewritten to allow for that. At this point, most
(all?) dialogs are able to scale themselves, but the way they do so is
sometimes a bit hackish, the layout could be improved, and there are glitches
with the small version of the GUI.
* EditableWidget: Make it possible to specify a min/max length for the text
* EditableWidget: Let setEditString filter the string it gets
* EditableWidget: Right now, custom filtering requires the user to subclass;
it would be nice if there was simply a "validator hook" or so.
Maybe take some inspiration from Java's Swing in this matter.
* Improve EditTextWidget::drawCaret and ListWidget::drawCaret support for
alternate fonts (the current code overdraws chars partly, and relies on the
fact that our default built-in font has a separation pixel column on the
*left* side; most other bitmap fonts have it on the right, though). To this
end, we maybe should backup the background before drawing the caret, and
restore it when erasing the caret.
* PopUpDialog: Must be able to handle longer lists (by adding scrolling?). The
language popup currently doesn't fit in the small version of the GUI.
* Add a new "options" dialog which is used by all frontends: for this, we'd
agree on a hotkey used in all engines to invoke that dialog; it would sport
settings for the volume, graphics, paths, etc.; it would co-exist with the
engines "native" option dialogs.
The about dialog would be reachable from here, too, as well as a quit button.
Justification: This ensures that all settings are really reachable from
all of the engines, which is not the case currently.
Problem: It's not fully clear to me how to "best" deal with global vs. local
settings here...
* Maybe add the ScummVM logo (+typeface?) to the about dialog
* There is currently no way to unset the SoundFont from the GUI, if any was
set. Maybe add a 'clear' button for it? The same holds for other path
settings.
* ScrollBarWidget: Add auto-repeat: if user clicks & holds on one of the
arrows, then after a brief delay, it should start to contiously scroll.
* AboutDialog: Add a "fade" effect for the top/bottom text lines
* AboutDialog: Maybe prerender all of the text into another surface, and then
simply compose that over the screen surface in the right way.
Graphics
========
* Add some more fonts/font variants? Maybe a tool like ttf2bdf could be used
to convert on (free!) TTF font to both a small and a big font for the GUI,
maybe including bold/italic variants
* Allow loading external fonts (BDF format?). Useful for GUI customization.
* Use 'complete' fonts, encoding wise. In particular, we should probably pick
one encoding (e.g. ISO Latin 1) and standardize on it. Oh yeah, a map from
the SCUMM encoding to that encoding would be useful.
That way, we can at least all systems/languages which use that encoding.
Of course, kyrillic and asian users, amongst others, wouldn't be helped
by this, but there is nothing we can do for them anyway, short of
implementing an UTF8 based font rendering engine. (And no, there is no way
we are going to do such an absurd thing. Better to implement native GUIs
than to write our own OS :-).
* Consider implementing a new internal font format which
- takes up less space in the executable (ascii vs. binary encoding)
- allows for multi-color/anti-aliased fonts
Launcher
========
* Add more options to global options dialog
* Add more options to game target options dialog
Plugins
=======
* Add a plugin API that allows querying a plugin for the savegames associated
with a given game; that is, you pass the name of a target from the config
to the plugin, and it returns a list of savegames. How that list would look
like exactly is debatable; but it should be possible to extract a user
friendly name; a slot ID corresponding to the "-x" command line param;
and possibly a filename.
Justification: This API would make it possible to directly load savegames
from the launcher.
* This savegame API could return additional (optional) information for each
savegame entry: name; creation date; thumbnail screenshot
* When building with the fake static plugins: instead of hardcoding the list
of plugins, plugins should automatically be "hooked in". This can be achieved
by modifying REGISTER_PLUGIN to insert special code into the plugins.
UPDATE: I tried this, but it doesn't really work due to constraints
imposed by the way most C++ compilers/linkers out there realize global
constructors.
* On OSX: Support a plugin build in the bundle target: *.plugin files should
be put into ScummVM.app/Contents/PlugIns/; this also means that the loader
needs to search in the plugin dir of the active bundle. So use the
CF bundle API, inside a #ifdef MACOSX block.
* When creating an engine instance, there is currently no way for the plugin
to indicate an error, except for returning a NULL value. It would be nice
if the engine could specify why creating the engine instance failed (e.g.
due to lack of memory, because a file couldn't be found, because the game
was not recognized, etc.).
OSystem
=======
* Right now gBitFormat is part of common/scaler.cpp; we might want to move it
to common/system.cpp, or replace it with something better.
No hasty changes here, please, make sure you understand how it is used right
now before messing with it ;-)
* Document key codes to be used for special keys, like F1-F15 etc.
#######################################################################
# Engines / frontends
#######################################################################
General
=======
* Fix engines so they clean up after themselves, to allow proper re-entry
to the launcher. See "FIXME: LAUNCHERHACK" in base/main.cpp
SCUMM
=====
* Make it possible to restart games properly
* Add method of setting initial debug channels from command-line
* Possibly implement a new resource manager, which then also could be shared
by ScummEX. [Jamieson has some ideas about this].
* Figure out how to extract resources from Apple II versions
* Figure out how to extract resources from Turbografx/PC Engine version of Loom
* Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade EGA: Add inventory support for Macintosh version
* Loom EGA: Add support for music and sound effects in Macintosh version
* Add support for handling Kanji in FM-Towns games (foreground is rendered on a
second plane at 640x480), text uses Shift_JIS encoding
[implementation now that currently depends on font rom, not needing the rom
would be preferable]
* Add support for TFMX music format in Amiga version of Monkey Island 1
Check http://darkstar.tabu.uni-bonn.de/~neo/audio.html for music format
details
* When SMUSH movies end, their music track sometimes should last a bit longer;
currently, we stop the audio together with the animation, leading to cut off
music.
* Clean up class Gdi. This class right now mostly is about decoding various
graphic formats. However some other functionality has crept into it, too.
It would be nice if class Gdi would only contain the GFX decoding code, and
nothing else (assuming that is feasible w/o too much trouble).
OTOH, the code which is responsible for managing virtual screens, rendering
virtual screens to the real display etc. could be grouped into a new class
(e.g. VSManager or so).
Broken Sword 2
==============
* Enforce ScummVM code formatting guidelines. (Mostly done?)
* Encapsulate the code into sensible objects. (Partly done.)
* Enable the CD swapping code. (Partly done.)
* Fix the credits so they look more like the original. (Did we ever get the
source code for that?)
* Eventually I would like to get rid of the "driver" sub-directory. We already
have a cross-platform infrastructure for ScummVM, so this separation is not
necessary.
* Maybe work around script bug which causes the mop to disappear briefly when
trying to pick it up from the top of the boat at the London docks. (The event
to hide the mop is sent too early.) See bug #1214168.
SIMON
=====
* Add support for auto decrunching the gameamiga file of demo version of Simon
the Sorcerer 1 (Amiga) via decrunch_file_amiga()
* Add support for dictionary files in Amiga and Macintosh versons of
Simon the Sorcerer 2
* Add support for Protracker music format used in Amiga versions
* Add support for drawing main graphics correctly in Amiga versions
SAGA
====
- legacy items -
* Remove any traces of the additional level of abstraction reinherit used
* Remove homerolled high level data structures like stacks that should
be provided by ScummVM if they aren't already.
* OO'ify (blah_mod.h contains public stuff, blah.h private stuff) [almost
done]
- bugs/misfeatures -
* Make actor animation Event-driven. See FIXME in actor.cpp. Maybe it
should be INTERVAL_EVENT
* No script func should use ScriptDataWord directly. All of them should
be converted to appropriate data types via getTYPE() functions
* Fix the usage of Rect so that it's more consistent with the rest of ScummVM,
e.g. a rectangle covering the entire ITE screen should have right=320 and
bottom=200. (eriktorbjorn, partly - mostly? - done)
* Inspect Font module - free memory, GameFontIds <-> FONT_ID
* Walk bug. When announcer puts medallion on Rif he should go backwards
instead of turning and walking faced to screen
* In many places RSC_LoadResource() is called but memory is not freed
afterwards, i.e. there is a huge leak
* Optimize screen output. Now we blit whole screen for each frame.
* When using the original XMIDI music resources, some songs play at the wrong
speed. The worst example I've heard of this is the "Elk Fanfare" during the
intro. It could be the meta events we don't handle, but at least the tempo
event doesn't seem to make any difference. Maybe something in the data
header instead...?
* In the dog's castle at guards' room (scene_change 177 ang go down) subtitles
aren't shown. In floppy version there is complete silence both textual and
audial. Looks to me as if subtitles are drawn outside the screen. Are the
coordinates calculated wrong, or should the text drawing code compensate?
* Sound in old Win demo is all wrong -- either there is some unique sound
format or I didn't guess it correctly
* Up and down keys ('u' and 'd') in converse panel do not work properly
- plans -
* Remove use of floating point, especially doubles.
* Implement Verbs (h00ligan)
* Implement ShowSaveReminder(), that is that diskette
* Implement Save/Load
* Finish inventory code
* Implement ISO path finder
* Hook conversations to scripts (partly done)
* ISO - tile scene implementation
* Puzzle
- features -
* Add sound/voices compression. Should _considerably_ save space.
* Add support for Mac versions. All data is in BE mode and structures are
aligned. (h00ligan, partly done)
* Support for later Win32/Mac/Linux demos where some scenes are substituted
with LBM images, tables are in place.
* Amiga ITE support
* Support for Dream Guild's Mac ITE
* Support IHNM
#######################################################################
# Backends
#######################################################################
General
=======
* Several of the backend factory functions take config parameters. It should
be possible to get rid of those once the config system rewrite (see above)
has been done. In that case, the backends simply can query the config
manager for these parameters (or any others they might like :-).
* Change backends to directly access the config manager
* Add API to query backend for a list of available music engines
Useful for Options dialog
* MS DOS port using Allegro and
DJGPP ?
* Intent port (already done by David Given, merge?)
* Digita OS port? (play games on a select few digital cameras...)
X11 backend
===========
* Update it to support the latest OSystem changes
* Make it work with multiple bitdepths
* Add frills used by SDL backend like graphic filters usage and CD audio
SDL backend
===========
* Right now, the WinCE backend subclasses the regular SDL backend. The
Symbian backend will do that, too (it is not yet in CVS, though).
They both overload a lot of methods (mostly the graphics stuff). Since
graphics.cpp uses the scalers (e.g. hq3x), these derived backends
carry that baggage around, too, even though they don't need that code.
Idea: split the SDL backend into two classes, one base class which only
has the code which is used by all subclasses; and a "desktop" subclass,
which implements the rest. Then WinCE/Symbian would only subclass the
"base" SDL class.
#######################################################################
# Tools
#######################################################################
General
=======
* Try to unify the usage of the compression tools, where possible /
necessary.
* Make compress_san use the common encoder "API" in compress.c
* Make compress_queen use the common encoder "API" in compress.c
* Add FLAC support to compress_sword1 (and the sword1 engine)
* Consider using library APIs to encode data, instead of invoking the
lame/oggenc/flac binaries.
Pro: Tighter integration, no need to create temporary files.
Con: Requires the resp. libs/headers to be compiled in, and the resulting
binary would only run if all needed shared libs are present
(unless we static link), whereas the current binary will work even
if lame/oggenc/flac are missing
Descumm
=======
* Turn it into a library, to be used by a command line frontend (like now),
ScummVM debugger, and ScummEX. Basically, the API could consist of a single
function, which takes a pointer to a memory buffer, its length, the Scumm
version and optionally a game id. Also, it would get a pointer to a print
function (in the case of the CLI tool, print to stdout; for ScummVM, print
to our GUI console; for ScummEX, append to some window/widget)
* Rewrite code to use 2 passes; first pass builds an intermediate graph, the
second pass then tries to detect loops, break/continue statements etc.
* Proper implementation of o6_startObjectQuick decompilation (see comment in
descumm6.c). May requre rewrite of core program logic