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Maniac Mansion Creator Supports Indie Ports
trueneutral writes "SCUMMVM is a project that has ported a large number of the Lucas Arts adventure games. But what's amazing, is that Ron Gilbert of Grumpy Gamer, the creator of the majority of these games, actually supports it. He applauds their efforts, and seems to have no problems with the project. It's really refreshing to see a good attitude about these things. I think Gilbert realizes that this is a fan based effort to play his games on modern platforms. From the article: 'As the person that created SCUMM and along with Aric Wilmunder coded the original system, my hat is off the SCUMMVM team and contributers for this undertaking. I am in awe. Especially since I could never get anything to run from one version of the system to the next...'"
...that a lot more developers of these classic games feel this way, but just do not comment on it.
Most of the developers that I've met think that creating ports of older games or emulators for older systems is a testament to the quality of what they made.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
It's not like SCUMMVM helps you infringe on anyone's copyrights. It just makes the old games you already own playable on modern hardware. Apparently LucasArts isn't the only one confused by this project.
My friend one night told me that he was playing Beneath a Steel Sky, and it seemed like it might be interesting, so I gave it a try. Well, I ended up getting four hours of sleep that night because I was addicted, and kept playing the next day while working until I finally beat it. I do applaud the work that these guys have done and how it works cross platform, considering that I started that night on Mac OS X and moved the savefiles and images over to my laptop with FreeBSD and finished playing in that. It is good stuff.
It's an interpreter, allowing the data files to be run on new hardware, much like projects such as Frotz allow running Infocom's .z5 games ("interactive fiction") on almost every platform imaginable.
As such, this project has little to do with real or perceived copyright infringement, just platform shifting, so there's little reason not to "support" it, whatever that means.
Why is this amazing? Cool, 'yes', but not 'amazing'. Not everyone is a greedy, scum-sucking IP parasite.
Lots of authors of old games are totally fine with fans reviving their creations. Some of the original members of Binary Systems have worked as consultants for the fan-made Starflight III, for example (though the game may as well be called "Starflight Forever"). I've even received a personal email from one of the author's of the card game Rampage complimenting me on tribute to the game.
It seems to me that most game designers for old games are completely okay with this kind of thing. What would be amazing if you found some EA suit who was as supportive of a fan made version of a two year old game.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
After growing up losing countless hours of sleep playing SkyRoads, last fall a friend and myself decided to extract the level data from the game and port it to SDLRoads, a rather faithful recreation of the game.
We ended up running the game via dosxbox in gdb, dumping the entire memory region, and searching the heap for the levels. It didn't take all too long before we had the raw data converted to the SDLRoads native format.
We passed the levels off to the SDLRoads guys, and they got permission to use the original levels in their port. Thanks BlueMoon!
twitter.com/gravitronic
The genre is not quite dead.
The Adventure Company, a division of Dreamcatcher Interactive, still publishes new ones. I don't know how good they are in any objective sense, but I've enjoyed the ones I've played.
Ubisoft is still publishing new entries in the Myst series; Myst 4 came out quite recently, and Myst 5 is in production.
The genre no longer rules gaming as it once did, but it's by no means dead.