Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

ScummVM 0.5.0 Out, With Some Official Game Support

Posted by timothy on Sat Aug 02, 2003 08:15 AM
from the appropriate-recognition dept.
Entertainment Games
Ndr_Amigo writes "ScummVM (an interpreter for several different adventure game engines, like Simon the Sorcerer 1 and 2, the LucasArts' SCUMM adventures and Beneath a Steel Sky, earlier Slashdot story) just released version 0.5.0. Among the usual bugfixes, new game support, etc, the interesting thing about this version is that the developers of one of our target games (Beneath a Steel Sky, by Revolution Software) actually supported us. To the extent of not only supplying us with the original assembly source code, but later deciding to release the game as Freeware to coincide with our reimplementation of their engine. This is a complete turnaround from our prior experiences, and shows that there are still a few smaller active game developers out there that are willing to help keep the classics alive for their fans... And of course you can download ScummVM and the freeware release of Beneath a Steel Sky from the ScummVM homepage :)"
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

ScummVM 0.5.0 Out, With Some Official Game Support 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • I love it :) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by IIRCAFAIKIANAL (572786) on Saturday August 02 2003, @08:27AM (#6595125) Journal
    I feel that if a game is old you (as a developer/publisher) should either:

    1) Re-release it periodically. If it's worth buying they'll make money.
    2) Give it away.

    Companies like Nintendo are doing the former and others are doing the latter (didn't looking glass studios give away system shock?).

    It's too bad that a lot of companies choose to keep an iron grip on their intellectual property instead of using it to increase their reputation, especially since fans are downloading these classics anyways - why not make it legitimate?

    • Re:I love it :) (Score:5, Interesting)

      by moosesocks (264553) on Saturday August 02 2003, @08:32AM (#6595136) Homepage
      Indeed. Companies could make humungous profits by re-releasing old games. Many games are often pulled from shelves before they become popular.

      Examples which come to mind are the SNES game 'Chrono Trigger' (has sold on Ebay for up to $150), and the 'Freespace' series of PC games which cost about $10 in retail at the end of their shelf life, but now sell for over $60 on ebay.
      • Examples which come to mind are the SNES game 'Chrono Trigger'...

        Don't forget the Final Fantasy series for SNES. Those are nearly impossible to find now, as no one in their right mind wants to sell their copy (much like Crono Trigger)

        Re-releasing any of those games (or bundling it with a re-release SNES) would likely make Nintendo and Squaresoft a fair hunk of money for what the technology costs nowadays

        • Re:I love it :) (Score:5, Informative)

          by RedK (112790) on Saturday August 02 2003, @09:41AM (#6595319)
          Don't forget the Final Fantasy series for SNES...Re-releasing any of those games

          But, they did re-release those games, playable on your Playstation or Playstation 2. Look for Final Fantasy Origins, Final Fantasy Chronicles and Final Fantasy Anthology. With those 3 collections, you get Final Fantasy 1-6 (except 3), all in english plus Chrono Trigger! And better yet, Final Fantasy 1 and 2 have received much needed graphical overhauls.

          Links : Origins [ign.com], Chronicles [ign.com], Anthology [ign.com]

      • Indeed. Companies could make humungous profits by re-releasing old games. Many games are often pulled from shelves before they become popular.

        Yes, Blizzard has done this:
        http://www.blizzard.com/blizzclassic/

        However, for some strange reason, they're releasing it only to GameBoy. :-/

        Anyway, perhaps this is why they're protecting their IP's just in case they would think about re-releasing the games. But I doubt any game company will go through the work of re-releasing the games in enhanced versions with im
    • I think a lot of companies think along the lines of "If we give away our old games for free, why would anyone buy our new games?"

      Given the level of innovation in recent games, I think this might be a valid concern for most game publishers.

    • Re:I love it :) (Score:3, Interesting)

      by slim (1652)
      1) Re-release it periodically. If it's worth buying they'll make money.

      I bought a new copy of Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max on a single CD a few months ago (the mind plays tricks, but I'm sure it was no more than a year ago). So someone recognises that the property is still worth money.

      But getting Sam & Max running in Windows 2000 with full speech and music was difficult, and I never managed at all with DOTT. Getting it doing with ScummVM, however, was a breeze. LucasArts should bundle ScummVM
    • It's too bad that a lot of companies choose to keep an iron grip on their intellectual property instead of using it to increase their reputation

      I suspect that re-releasing or giving away a bad game would decrease, rather than increase, a company's reputation. Most games should stay dead.
  • A pirate walks into a bar with a steering wheel tied to his crotch. The bartender says "Why do you have a steering wheel tied to your crotch." The pirate responds:

    1. "-1 Flamebait"
    2. "-1 b4d gr4mm4r"
    3. "Arrrg it's drivin' me nuts"
    4. "-1 Troll"

    Ahh the fond memories of insult sword fighting :)

  • Damn... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Soulfader (527299) <`sig' `at' `sigspace.net'> on Saturday August 02 2003, @08:31AM (#6595132) Homepage Journal
    Initial unplayable support for V1 version of Maniac Mansion/Zak McKracken
    Is there anything vi won't do?

    <whispers>
    Huh? Oh.

  • Finally! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Snaller (147050) on Saturday August 02 2003, @08:34AM (#6595140) Journal
    I bought Beneath a Steel Sky for the Amiga many moons ago... but it kept crashing in the garden .. now i might actually be able to finish it! (Don't tell me how it ends!)

  • More abandonware games (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mwongozi (176765) <slashthree@NOSPaM.davidglover.org> on Saturday August 02 2003, @08:44AM (#6595168) Homepage
    If you have the UAE Amiga Emulator [linux.de], you can find hundreds of legitimately-released games at Back 2 The Roots [back2roots.org], enough to keep you entertained for years!
    • "UAE" is free and legal as is the software at "Back 2 The Roots" but what you still need is a legal version of the Amiga Kickstart.

      Fortunatly, the people behind Amiga Forever [cloanto.com] have you covered. They sell a licensed copy of the Amiga's Kickstart and it's OS. Actually, their package has several versions of the Kickstart/OS so you can pick and choose which Amiga flavor to emulate including the A500 (which most games were designed for), CDTV and CD32. The disc even contains an interview with Jay Miner!

      Suppo

  • ScummVM is amazing (Score:5, Informative)

    by whitmer (142924) on Saturday August 02 2003, @08:53AM (#6595193)
    I'm still able to play good ol' Lucasarts adventures like DOTT, Sam'n'Max and Full Throttle even though I don't have "compatible hardware" for running them in "native DOS mode".


    Previously I tried to play them under Win98s DOS, but audio and especially speech support was flaky because I have SB Live 1024. Now with ScummVM, no problems at all. Props to the development team!

  • My Impressions (Score:4, Informative)

    by Jagasian (129329) on Saturday August 02 2003, @08:55AM (#6595197)
    I used a previous version of ScummVM to play one of my favorite childhood games: Sam and Max (talkie version). ScummVM worked perfectly. I highly recommend it to anyone trying to enjoy an oldie but goodie. I haven't tried this latest version yet, but I am sure it is at least as good as the version I used for Sam and Max.

    • Re:My Impressions (Score:5, Funny)

      by macgyvr64 (678752) on Saturday August 02 2003, @09:14AM (#6595235)
      Sam: "Where should I put this thing so that it doesn't hurt anyone we know or care about?"

      Max: "Out the window, Sam. There's nobody but strangers out there."
      • "You'll be of no use, Freelance Police! With the flip of a lever my ungrateful lunch date will be reduced to a half-cup of diorientated atomic mat-tahhh!" "Should I confront, subdue, and pummel the suspected perpetrator, Sam?" "Sick 'em up, little buddy!"

  • And there's more! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dasaan (644170) on Saturday August 02 2003, @08:55AM (#6595198)
    Not only has beneath a steel sky been released but Revolution are also helping [sourceforge.net] the scummvm team to add support for broken sword 1 & 2.

    IMO this is a great move as it makes some of the coasters sitting on the shelves of linux converts into much more useful items again.
    Go Revolution
    • Yes, its also a lot of directx code to sort through for people who aren't familiar with directx. If anyone wants to help out grab CVS or a source code snapshot and look in the bs2 directory. All the rendering functions and a few other things are currently stubbed out. Patches are very welcome :)

      The playable demo should work as well as the game for testing things out.

      Above comments relate to Broken Sword II which is being worked on first.
    • Revolution Games have also released their first game as freeware:

      Lure of the Temptress [revgames.com]

      What a wonderful game company. :-) I'm tempted to send them an e-mail, thanking them for this initiative they're taking, only hoping others will follow in their step. I would really like to see a boom in legit abandonware.
      • Agreed, they're a nice company. I actually did my secondary school work experience there a few years ago in York, UK.

        They're a great bunch of people and definitely have that friendly feel to them (relatively small group when I was there). If I remember correctly, the 3 owners of the company are actually the director, lead programmer and tools programmer who used to work out of a flat many moons ago. Nice to see them supporting their old games.

        Check out Broken Sword 3 [revolution.co.uk] currently in development.

  • very cool (Score:3, Interesting)

    by oohp (657224) on Saturday August 02 2003, @09:02AM (#6595210) Homepage
    This is very cool stuff. I'm using ScummVM to play Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, a game which I loved back some years ago when I had more time on my hands and still love now. Great job!

  • Open letter to Lucas Arts (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WeeBull (645243) on Saturday August 02 2003, @09:08AM (#6595223)
    Dear LucasArts,

    Six minutes ago, I learned of ScummVM's 0.5.0 release. I downloaded and installed it, and pulled my Day of the Tentacle CD from my shelf.

    As I am typing this, I'm watching the full talkie introduction playing in a window on my desktop, and I am looking forward to spending some quality time with Hoage, Laverne and Bernard.

    I you at Lucas Arts were to support the ScummVM project, I am convinced you would be able to sell your entire back-catalog of SCUMM games to a wide audience - Macintosh users, Linux users and Windows users alike, especially considering the ease at which I got ScummVM to work, compared to the struggle I faced trying to get DOTT to run in a DOS window under Windows XP.

    In the meanwhile, I'm of rooting through my two shoeboxes of old 3.5" floppies looking for Monkey Island I and II. Ah, the memories!

    (Speaking of Monkey Island - that "monkey wrench" stunt you pulled in II was entirely uncalled for, btw...)

    Sincerely,

    et cetera, et cetera

    (PS - to the ScummVM team: Top job! Props!)

    • You think the monkeywrench gag was evil? Try figuring it out in a localized version, when no translation of "monkeywrench" exists at all that would give the joke any meaning. :)
    • I know it's bad form to reply to my own message, but here goes anyway -

      So I rooted through the old disks. Sadly, no Monkey Island.

      HOWEVER - I did find a copy of good old Leather Goddesses of Phobos, and it plays just DANDY in an XP command window (once you've downloaded and run ansi.com from here [ev1.net])!

      I feel an urge. Suppose I should head northwest!

    • Indeed, I hope they realize there's still a market for adventure games. If everyone bought their old games, they might even start making new ones. They don't even have to be pretty, with adventure games it's the story and puzzles that count not the graphics.
        • Ah pants...they're still going with the 3d games.
          Like MI4 wasn't bad, but it looked a bit crap compared to the lovely artwork of MI3.

          Same with the screenshots of Sam and Max. The 2D concept looks like it could be a much prettier game to play than the 3D version.

          Or maybe I just hate having to use a joypad to play adventure games...I wanna point and click where I walk to.
          • I think QFGV was the ultimate in 3d adventure games. The camera was fixed, and they still used the beautiful hand painted scenery we've grown accustomed to. The characters and items were all rendered. Getting rid of the sprites is great. The gameplay was awesome. The story was true to the originals. A great game from the (IMHO) best adventure game series of all time.
  • Am I totally off base in wondering if the Virtual Machine stuff they've developed to mimic the DOS environment can be extended to more "modern" games instead of just these old Amiga era games? Stuff like the original SimCity that ran under DOS

    Perhaps that's an impossibility due to the"non-freeness" of lots of more modern games. How supposrtive are game companies of this sort of work? Most of the games supported now are "abandonware" right?
    • It isn't a DOS emulator -- SCUMM games are written in a cross-platform format -- that way LucasArts didn't need to write, for example, completely different versions of a game for DOS and Amiga -- they just had to write a SCUMM interpreter for each platform. It's basically the same strategy that the Infocom people did for text adventures like Zork.
    • Am I totally off base in wondering if the Virtual Machine stuff they've developed to mimic the DOS environment can be extended to more "modern" games instead of just these old Amiga era games? Stuff like the original SimCity that ran under DOS

      The original Sim City ran on the Amiga. I don't think it was even all that late in the Amiga's timeline.
    • Isn't it easier just to run DOS in VMWare or Virtual PC?

    • Re:Any way to extend this to modern games? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Hatta (162192) on Saturday August 02 2003, @09:47AM (#6595339) Journal
      As I understand it ScummVM, FreeSCI, etc. are not really virtual machines, but command interpreters. Kind of like the 3d engine/front end game model we see today, except these are adventure game engines. The reason that these things are getting ported is that no one is making adventure games anymore. This very sad fact forces fans to reverse engineer, document, and implement the engines to preserve these games for posterity. This is encouraged by the separateness of the engine and the game. You don't have to port every game individually, though slight modifications of the interpreter were common. I think if you want to play the original game you're gonna have to download a pc emulator like plex86 or bochs, install MSDOS and play from there.
    • Try VDMSound [mcgill.ca]. Despite its name, it emulates more than just sound, making it possible to play quite a few otherwise unplayable games under 2000 or XP. It only works with these two flavors of Windows, though. And it does not fix the problem with old Sierra games and processors over 500 MHz.

  • PocketPC version (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cothol (460219) on Saturday August 02 2003, @09:21AM (#6595253)
    I use the pocketpc version to play Day of the tentacle. while I'm on the train.
    Works wonderfull on my Axim, I got a cheap 512MB CF-card so now I can play the full cd vesion I got and get all the voices.

    • Re:PocketPC version (Score:4, Informative)

      by Ndr_Amigo (533266) on Saturday August 02 2003, @09:30AM (#6595271)
      I use the pocketpc version to play Sam and Max on the train :) I only have a 256mb CF card tho, but I just use the MP3 compression. - Ender Lead Monkey Wrangler, ScummVM

  • ScummLinux LiveCD (Score:3, Informative)

    by g_dancer (308076) on Saturday August 02 2003, @09:37AM (#6595303) Homepage
    The ScummLinux [sourceforge.net] project allows you to play your favorite ScummVM-supported games anywhere; just boot the CD, choose a game, and enjoy. It supports all the soundcards supported by the Linux kernel and TV-Out for some graphics cards, so you can even play on a television set.

  • Only right thing to do (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jugalator (259273) on Saturday August 02 2003, @10:04AM (#6595383) Journal
    I think Revolution Software is only doing this right thing by releasing it as freeware. I mean, does those old Sierra games even *work* on a modern Windows installation to 100%? They aren't sold and build on ancient technology, so why should they not just upload it all to their FTP and say "here you go, if anyone want it"?

    I just find what many game companies do with those ancient games no one will ever care about again being so incredibly silly...
  • I put a copy of Beaneath the Steel Sky manual on my web site [netgate.net]. The useful summary is "try to right click objects" which wasn't obvious on my Mac. The game looks fantastic.

  • Are there any new games for it? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by vadim_t (324782) on Saturday August 02 2003, @12:29PM (#6595862) Homepage
    I mean, did anybody write a completely new game for ScummVM? Or, are there any tools for making them at least?

  • Exult (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    People who like ScummVM may also like Exult [sf.net], a GPL'd reimplementation of the Ultima 7 engine. Not only does it run on modern hardware and a bunch of operating systems, it also implements modern scalers so that the ancient 320x200 game looks good to modern eyes as well.

    Sarien [sf.net] runs even older Sierra AGI games. You know, like Leisure Suite Larry.

    Are there any other games which were reimplemented like that? I know someone wrote a System Shock browser that some day could some day become a full engine, and it

    • Run out to your nearest UK games shop. Lucasarts have released a whole bunch of packs, including the Monkey Island Bounty Pack (Monkey Island 1, 2 and 3). 20 quid to you, guvnor.

      Then there's the Sam 'n' Max / Day of the Tentacle pack.

      Then there's the Grim Fandango / Sam 'n' Max / The Dig / Full Throttle pack.

      If you don't see them on the shelves, just ask. They're available all over the country, in every high street.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.