SCI, which Sierra referred to as both the “SCript Interpreter” and the “Sierra Creative Interpreter”, is a p-machine style virtual machine for executing platform-independant, object-oriented code. SCI was designed for 16 bit little endian computers, although there were later attempts to create 32 bit versions, LSCI, and SCI32. SCI was exclusively used by Sierra On-Line, Inc., to run its computer game series, with titles like Leisure Suit Larry 2-7, Space Quest 3-6, King’s Quest 4-6, Quest for Glory 1-4, and several others.

FreeSCI can decompress and load SCI0 resource files, load and link position-independant SCI scripts, execute SCI bytecode, display SCI0 pic, view, and cursor graphics, draw text according to information stored in the font resource, interpret SCI0 sound resources, and provide input events to the SCI bytecode. In short, it can run SCI0 games, although it still has a few bugs.

Release notes:

FreeSCI 0.6.4 has been released; this release supersedes all previous releases. 0.6.4 is mostly a bugfix release, finally rendering most SCI0 games beatable (SCI0 games that have been confirmed to be beatable include LSL2, LSL3, QfG1/HQ and SQ3).

Even though 0.6.4 is not quite as stable as our previous stable branch, we have decided to have it replace the stable branch due to potentially unclean code (code that may have been derived directly from SCI interpreter disassembly). Since FreeSCI is intended as a clean-room re-implementation of Sierra SCI, we do not permit such code in our code base; we have therefore replaced it with clean code (thanks to help from Max Horn).

FreeSCI 0.6.4 further includes some improvements to the audio subsystem, but please note that all of these still require manual source code changes in order to be enabled:
– MT-32 emulator support (Walter) (note that this requires MT-32 ROM files)
– General MIDI support for SCI1 games
– a CAMD MIDI driver for newer AmigaOS versions

Thanks to http://www.aep-emu.de for the news.

http://freesci.linuxgames.com/?page=main