ScummVM 0.5.0 Out, With Some Official Game Support 153
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 :)"
I love it :) (Score:5, Interesting)
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)
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.
Re:I love it :) (Score:2)
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)
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]
Re:I love it :) (Score:1)
Re:I love it :) (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I love it :) (Score:2)
Re:I love it :) (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:I love it :) (Score:2, Insightful)
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)
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
Re:I love it :) (Score:2)
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 Scummy joke (Score:2, Funny)
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
Re:A Scummy joke (Score:1)
Re:A Scummy joke (Score:2)
Damn... (Score:5, Funny)
<whispers>
Huh? Oh.
Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
Work-around for Amiga garden crash. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Work-around for Amiga garden crash. (Score:2)
LOL
Re:Finally! (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Finally! (Score:2)
It was all a dream. Your char wakes up and finds Patrick Duffy in the shower.
Survival horror, they call it.
Re:Finally! (Score:2)
More abandonware games (Score:5, Informative)
Re:More info (Score:3, Informative)
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)
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!
Re:ScummVM is amazing (Score:1)
Re:ScummVM is amazing (Score:2)
Re:ScummVM is amazing (Score:1)
They has a few usefull tips. However in a few years the only way to play any of those games will be through some sort of full on DOS emulation. Not the cheese version built into NT. Or just keep an old 486 around for these sorts of things. Not that I would ever do that.
Re:ScummVM is amazing (Score:1)
I could never get Full Throttle to work under ScummVM. It would always crash on the long video sequences, which I could skip of course... but that spoils the game. It also seemed to quit at the same points when trying to run the old DOS version under Windows NT.
It was great for playing tonnes of other Scumm games, though. When I found ScummVM, I started buying all of the old games from budget labels just to get the game code to play them. At about 2 a game it was great to get into the adventure genre again
My Impressions (Score:4, Informative)
Re:My Impressions (Score:5, Funny)
Max: "Out the window, Sam. There's nobody but strangers out there."
Re:My Impressions (Score:1)
Sam: "I hope there was nobody on that bus."
Max: "Nobody we know, at least!"
Re:My Impressions (Score:2)
Re:My Impressions (Score:1)
I thought it was "Can't think of a reason not too".
Re:My Impressions (Score:1, Funny)
For chrissakes, the game came on a CD! And had speech from first version onwards (not a crappy voice remake)..
The copyright on the CD says 1993..
um.
I feel old.
And there's more! (Score:5, Informative)
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
Re:And there's more! (Score:1)
Now I can put it into my Mame cabinet!
Re:And there's more! (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:And there's EVEN more! (Score:3, Interesting)
Lure of the Temptress [revgames.com]
What a wonderful game company.
Re:And there's EVEN more! (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:And there's EVEN more! ( how to get sound) (Score:1)
Get it at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vdmsound/ [sourceforge.net]
From the Vdmsound page:
VDMSound is a program that overcomes what has probably been the most exasperating limitation of DOS boxes since Windows NT -- sound support. VDMSound is an open, plug-in oriented platform that emulates an MPU-401 interface (for outputting high-quality
very cool (Score:3, Interesting)
Open letter to Lucas Arts (Score:5, Interesting)
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!)
Re:Open letter to Lucas Arts (Score:2, Insightful)
No Monkey Island for ME! (Score:2)
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!
Re:No Monkey Island for ME! (Score:1)
Z-Code, along with TADS [tads.org] and a couple other formats, is still used by enthusiasts today via the Inform [inform-fiction.org] compiler.
Check out some of the five-star games at Baf's Guide to the Interactive Fiction Archive [wurb.com] if you're curious! A few of these are at least as good as Infocom's best efforts.
Re:No Monkey Island for ME! (Score:2)
BTW, you can run THAT game in a VM too...why run in two tiers of emulation? Look for "WinFrotz".
And ZORK I-III (on the same VM as LGOP) are freeware
-uso.
Re:No Monkey Island for ME! (Score:1)
-Peter
PS: The Secret of Monkey Island is the best game ever. I'd gladly pay LucasArts $50 for a "SCUMMpack" of all those games.
-Peter
Re:No Monkey Island for ME! (Score:2)
Still, it took me awhile to
Re:Open letter to Lucas Arts (Score:2)
Re:Open letter to Lucas Arts (Score:1)
I thought they were planning a new Full Throttle [lucasarts.com] and a new Sam and Max [lucasarts.com]
Re:Open letter to Lucas Arts (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Open letter to Lucas Arts (Score:2)
Re:Open letter to Lucas Arts (Score:1)
Yes, I didn't really like MI4, but they did a pretty good job on Grim Fandango.
Re:Open letter to Lucas Arts (Score:2)
Any way to extend this to modern games? (Score:2, Interesting)
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?
Not in the same way (Score:2)
Re:Any way to extend this to modern games? (Score:2, Interesting)
The original Sim City ran on the Amiga. I don't think it was even all that late in the Amiga's timeline.
Re:Any way to extend this to modern games? (Score:2)
Re:Any way to extend this to modern games? (Score:1)
Re:Any way to extend this to modern games? (Score:4, Informative)
VMWare will still cost you a pretty penny and it's not open source like ScummVM.
And it's probably faster to use ScummVM too because once you set up your shortcut or whatever the equivalent is on your platform then you just click it and it starts instantly instead of having to wait for the whole VM to boot up.
VMWare may cost money.. (Score:2)
Re:VMWare may cost money.. (Score:1)
Maybe you chose the wronc ones. (Score:2)
DOSEmu is also free as in freedom and free as in beer. VMWare is fairly expensive if you aren't a student.
Re:Any way to extend this to modern games? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Any way to extend this to modern games? (Score:1, Informative)
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.
A fair set of DOS games work well with dosbox [sourceforge.net] which emulate in one set the hardware (x86, vga, sound) and software (DOS) for those DOS time games.
About the demise of adventure games (Score:1)
The reason that these things are getting ported is that no one is making adventure games anymore.
I think Old Man Murray explained it [oldmanmurray.com] best.
Re:Any way to extend this to modern games? (Score:2)
Re:Any way to extend this to modern games? (Score:2)
PocketPC version (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
Re:PocketPC version (Score:1)
ScummLinux LiveCD (Score:3, Informative)
Only right thing to do (Score:4, Insightful)
I just find what many game companies do with those ancient games no one will ever care about again being so incredibly silly...
Re:Only right thing to do (Score:2)
Yes, re-released for free, I'd like to add. I couldn't care less about them if they sold them. They aren't really worth much to me except for a nostalgy trip. That's what I meant in my comment; I don't think many would care about purchasing their games if they sold them since they're of inferior quality and barely even work on today's hardware, probably even less on tomorrow's. They often require third party software like ScummVM and/or
Mac vs PC (Score:1)
Also makes me want a dreamcast.
Mac? Yes. (Score:1)
Re:Mac vs PC (Score:2)
-uso.
Game manual (Score:2)
Multi platform rocks (Score:1)
Are there any new games for it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank you ScummVM team! (Score:1)
Exult (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Windows SCUMM (Score:2, Informative)
Jac
SE P800 version (Score:1)
Let's hear it for open source! (Score:2)
Building a better tomorrow by cloning obsolete engines!
Given that you need a copy of the original game to play it, and given that wine has been around for a good few years now, this is a vanity project. Good for them, but it just reenforces the impression that open source is largely imitative rather than innovative.
Re:Let's hear it for open source! (Score:2, Informative)
Thanks for your wisdom which enlightens us. I knew this ScummVM stuff must be a sham. Oh, BTW, can you please point me again at those instructions to get WINE running on PalmOS, MorphOS, DreamCast, WinCE or Mac OS X? I just can't seem to find them right now.
Hmmm, and how again do I activate the aspect ratio correction and Scale2x for Maniac Mansion?
Oh and while you are at it, please tell me which program I need to use my Amiga version of Mi2 with Wine?
I am looking forward to your helpful answers, oh gr
Re:Let's hear it for open source! (Score:2)
Re:Let's hear it for open source! (Score:2)
Re:Let's hear it for open source! (Score:2)
No, it's not. I've had a lot of fun recently playing Monkey Island on my Sharp Zaurus, which doesn't run Wine and doesn't have an i386 processor. Oh, and, yes, it is a legal copy of Monkey Island.
Bravo! (Score:2)
Tech support (Score:2)
Okay, I'm done plugging.
But seriously, check it out. We're a year strong and, not suffing from complete mental breakdown, yet.
embarrasing moment (Score:2)
Re:IDSA bastards won't care... (Score:1)
Erm... the A stood for association; in the new acronym it ALSO stands for association (ESA, Entertainment Software Association).
Re:WAREZ please (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:WAREZ please (Score:2)
Couldn't get it to run on Windows XP, but perhaps I can just use SCUMMVM on the installed datafiles...
Re:WAREZ please (Score:2)
These things are available. Legally. Don't start pirating until you've got the game.
Re:WAREZ please (Score:2)
unfortunately ebay is the only way to go in the UK for older games like this; the bigger stores like virgin and hmv are mostly sold out of the lucasarts bundles, but you might get lucky in some stores.
Re:WAREZ please (Score:2)
No. Firstly, the Amiga files are different (one's a 16/32 colour game, the other's a 256 colour game with a CD soundtrack). Should I be allowed to copy someone's CD album because I bought a tape version in the 1980s?
Secondly, nobody but the copyright holders (Lucasarts) are allowed, legally, to give you a warez copy.
We can generalise:
Q: Is there some loophole that makes WAREZ l
Re:WAREZ please (Score:2)
Hint: if any CD retailer tells you you haven't "bought" the CD you've bought, trading standards would be round in a flash.
Any "license" would be for the stream of data on the tape, which is a different entity from the stream of data on the CD. Both are seperate copyrighted works.
Re:Whats the point (Score:2)