Linux SCUMM Interpreter

Captain Zion writes "A portable, SDL-based SCUMM interpreter is available at sourceforge. With AGI and SCI interpreters available, do we have alternative interpreters for all major adventure systems?" I never got as hooked on the SCUMM games as the other systems, but Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle were smooth back in the day.

Comments

First-Hand Experience

[Angry Black Man]

From my first hand use of the interpreter, there are two major things I'd like to see: 1) It would be nice with a more smooth scrolling method, like creating the whole background as an SDL_Surface, if that will cause no problems with the other objects which need to be drawn. 2)Any chance of putting sound support into the next version? Speaking to Serge (of SCUMMRev fame who also attempted a similar project to this) he says that although this would be hard to implement, it would fix a lot of timing errors in iMUSE games, especially MI2 which features heavy iMUSE usage. Also, I couldn't get FOA (CD or Floppy Disk) nor MI1 (White Label CD Edition or Bounty Pack edition) to work. It comes up with this error for MI1: 1 1, 2 2, 4 4 4, 20 38 21 10 20 19464 Error(0): askForDisk: not yet implemented! Press a key to quit. I'll answer any questions you guys have about it, and anyone else have any experience or can help me out? Thanks.

Re:First-Hand Experience

[akawaka]

I finished DOTT on this earlier this week, so what is there is pretty complete. Also, Ludvig and I implemented the voice and sfx stuff earlier this week, though its not in CVS yet.

Hooray!

[k98sven]

Now Monkey Island lives again!

Just one question: Does this violate the DMCA? Given the copy-protection schemes in the games, that is.

OK, we have an interpreter

[lightspawn]

Now we just need a GUI development environment.

Let's face it: the person who has the talent and time to code a game is not always the same person who has the talent and time to script a story, draw the graphics or create sounds. We "need" tools to let these people work together to create the next Loom / The Dig / Monkey Island etc. And a way to get the story writers interested in the first place.

I've got a question....

[unformed]

I'm just a beginning programmer, so maybe I'm missing the point...

But how exactly do you go about finding the detailsof the SCUMM syntax so you can make an interpreter for it. Is it all reverse-engineered or is there actually a doc available on it.

Also, is the purpose of the interpreter so you can play the game on multiple platforms? If so, that's pretty cool: the fact that the game is written in an interpreted language and you just have to create an interpreter for the macinhe...

anyways, it'd be nice if someone could answer those questions. Thanks

Re:I've got a question....

[Masem]

Well, for example, I got MI1 and 2 through a deal with the MI3 package, but both are DOS games. While they run ok, there's now a problem with sound in DOS games, particularly with most SB cards and newer mobos (generally, you always diable SB16 emulation, which disables the ability to use sound in games).

With a Windows or Linux based system, the sound can now be processed by the modern drivers, and thus avoiding this problem with lack of sound. So being able to play these old games, just for the fun of it, is now possible again.

Re:I've got a question....

[eddy]

It's reverse-engineering all the way. I know this because I've been doing a little of it myself for the old original-SCUMMs (Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken).

Check the code if you don't believe me, you don't produce code (or identifiers) like that below from reimplementing something the clean way:

if (dseg_4F8A) { screenEffect(_newEffect); dseg_4F8A = 0; clearClickedStatus(); }

Good work, Ludvig.

Only one thing to say

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to bring on the PIRANAHA POODLES...

for all those who don't know...

[recursiv]

ScummVM is an implementation of LucasArts's SCUMM interpreter, used in games such as Monkey Island and Day Of The Tentacle.

Reverse engineering vs. clean-room

[jameson]

Reverse-engineering is the 'straightforward' path. The problem with this is that it raises copyright problems; if LucasArts cared, they might try to sue them (the Win32 only NAGI interpreter has the same problem).

The FreeSCI project (and, for the most part, Sarien) have chosen the more painful path of a clean-room reimplementation for this reason: One group does the decoding and documents everything, the other group implements (and, occasionally, guesses). IANAL, but as far as I know, this is perfectly legal.
(OK, reverse engineering for interoperability purposes is legal anyway, but not in some foreign countries like the US).

Yay! Win2K!

[kreyg]

That's pretty sweet - Windows 2000 really doesn't get along with a lot of the old LA games. Now I might actually have a chance of finishing Sam & Max!

A similar project worth mentioning

[mrAgreeable]

Is Exult, at http://exult.sourceforge.net. It's an intepreter for the Ultima 7 series of games. It's nearly perfect, and in many ways improved over the original. (Characters open doors, improved combat, higher res, antialiasing, etc)

The copy protection is worth mentioning in those games. It wasn't built into the .exe so much as it was built into the game's scripting system, so to accurately port the game they had to port the copy protection. I actually had to go cosult the original docs to get past the copy protection. Which seemed crazy since the game was written for a different OS 12 or so years ago.

You'll need the original data files to play it, of course, which I'm sure is the same with scummvm.

Running on OS X

[Ford Fulkerson]

I got it running on Mac OS X, using the data files from the mac version of Monkey Island 2. I guess they are the same as the DOS version.

I used Project Builder and the OS X version of the SDL Devkit.

It seems to run ok! I changed it to run in fullscreen mode and it works without problems. (SDL is great!)

VDMSound

[bis]

This is somewhat offtopic, but if you're running some version of NT (4.0, 2000, XP), you can just run most DOS games with support for sound, using VDMSound.

I've played both Monkey Island and Monkey Island II with it; hearing the music and sound effects for the first time EVER almost brought a tear to my eye. (When I first played them, my PC didn't have a sound card, so it was all PC Speaker blips and beeps...)

For Linux' DOSEmu, there's SBEmu.

Never having used that, I can't vouch for how well it works, but I don't think it's quite as advanced as VDMSound.

Linux?

[thallgren]

Not to be an antagonist, but why does the title say "Linux SCUMM Interpreter" when in fact I'm sure this works on most OS's?

Regards, Tommy

ScummVM patent issues

[strigeus]

Hello!

I'm the author of ScummVM.

I've support for iMuse (which is the music engine used in some SCUMM games) almost finished, but since iMuse is patented by LucasArts, I'm worried about releasing it because of possible patent infringements.

Does anyone know anything about this, and if it's safe for me to release this source code?

I do live in Sweden in Europe, and as far as I know, Europe is not covered by us patent laws.

Regards,
Ludvig Strigeus

Re:ScummVM patent issues

[Peter K.]

Hi Ludvig,

I'm not sure whether or not there would be any issues with patent infringement, but it might be a wise idea to host the iMuse file on thefreeworld.net as a precaution. This way, Americans would be prohibited from downloading the file, which would help to avoid problems from US patents.

Best Regards,
Peter Knowles

P.S. I look forward to giving ScummVM a test sometime. I've got a whole box of LucasArts games just waiting to be played. Thanks for giving me the opportunity.

Re:ScummVM patent issues

[spagthorpe]

Just remember to stay out of the US if you do....

Re:ScummVM patent issues

[sela]

IANAL, but it seems like since you are not living in the US, you are not facing any real risk.

The only legal base ofr the prosecution of Dimitry was that he was allegedly traveling to the US to promote a product that violated the DMCA. If you distribute your code on a european server, then traveling the US should pose no problem as long as in have nothing to do with distributing your code.
As long as you never knowingly distribute your code to the US, no violation is done.

And anyway, it seems to me like, while LucaseArts are not likely to licence their patent to you for free, they are not likely to persue it vigorously either.

My advice is: publish your code on a european server.
In any case they are not likely to sue you without first sending you a warning. In case you get a "cease and desist" letter from LucasArts attornies you may decide to disable iMuse support and remove the old code from the server.

Re:ScummVM patent issues

[jovlinger]

That advice is so bad it is almost legendary. One day, it will be ranked among the greats like "It's only a wooden horse, albeit somewhat large and unexpected. Let's bring it inside the gates and go to sleep!" or "Go ahead, taste it, it won't kill you!".

Or have you forgotten the fate of Jon Johansen and his reverse engineered DeCSS code? I believe he was in Norway at the time.

Normally I wouldn't flame, but c'mon, that was a Big Deal and it wasn't THAT long ago. And more than a little pertinent.

Not just Linux

[Mwongozi]

Yes, it runs on Windows too.

SCUMM interpreter?

[Old Wolf]

Isn't that the guy who translates bin Laden's press releases..?

Re:It works! Screenshots

[pigeonhk]

More screenshots...

3 games together :)
http://pigeond.net/images/scummvm.jpg

Semi-related question

[Anthracks]

I'll probably get modded down for this, but has anyone seen an interpreter that can run the original Gabriel Knight, from Sierra? It's one of my all-time favorites, but it doesn't get on well with Windows 2000. None of the Sierra interpreters, like FreeSCI, seem to run it either...has anyone had more luck than me in getting it to run?