ScummVM 0.13.0 Delivers New Adventure Games

KingofGnG writes "The classics, by definition, never go out of fashion, let alone if they are the graphic adventures of past decades. The preferred tool of true adventurers is ScummVM, software that works as an interpreter between data files of such adventures and modern operating systems. 6 months after the release of version 0.12.0, developers have now delivered a new main release of the virtual machine, which includes novelties both for the interface and supported games."

Comments

Ahhh, 7th Guest

[FlyveHest]

Man, first game I ever owned on CD, real video, amazing graphics.

What a great addition to a great piece of software, and, goodbye weekend :)

That's all good but...

[Ksempac]

Every time i see headlines like "ScummVM add new games" or something similar, i'm disappointed. It only adds support for theses games.
You still need to have an old working version of the game or find it in the grey realm of abandonware.
I wish companies would release theses old games for free (so that they can join "Flight of the Amazon Queen" or "Beneath a Steel Sky"), or sell them all as a single compilation.
But it doesn't seem to be going that way. Instead companies now offer each of their hit as overpriced DLC (1200 MS Points for R-Type 1&2 ?! WTF ??). The sad thing is that people seem to be stupid enough to buy them... :/

Re:That's all good but...

[vux984]

er... seriously? Your upset that companies have finally found a way to profitably re-release classic titles? Titles that would still comfortably be under copy right even if copyright terms were sane?

Re:That's all good but...

[Ksempac]

I was waiting for the argument saying that movie are still expensive 10 years later. The main difference is the evolution of the medium.
Video Game is a new industry, which is getting bigger every year. Moreover the technology behind it is booming. 10 years old games looks like crap by today's standards (even though they are still very good). 10 years old games were done by smallers teams (credits get longer and longer...i just saw the endless credits of Gears of war 2 last month).
On the other hand, movie still have a lot to tell but technology and budgets doesn't evolve as fast as the ones for video games (except maybe for the ones using a lot of special effects). So a 10 years old movie doesn't seem as old as a 10 years old video game (The "Tekken" series is a great example for that). But still, very old movies tends to have lower prices.
That's why i think the price of games should decrease faster than the price for movies.
Last thing that maybe wasn't clear from my earlier posts : I'm all in favor of copyrights law and i believe that companies should make money from their older games. But I still think their pricing scheme for retro-gaming are often (but not always, see above my mention of the Sega pack) ridiculous.

Thanks!

[bhunachchicken]

ScummVM is excellent, I have to say. I remember a number of years ago I was in a independent game store in London and, there on the shelf, I spotted a copy of The Dig... for £2. £2!! Wow.

It was a DOS game and being a Linux user, I felt a little bit dismayed that I wouldn't be able to play it, unless I booted into Windows or wrestled with DOS Box. My brother then pointed out that it was supported by ScummVM, so I thought, what the hell, it's only £2... So I bought it, give it a go and it worked like a charm. First try too. No issues at all.

So, thanks to the ScummVM team, who without I would not have been able to play The Dig, Beneath a Steel Sky, and Flight of the Amazon Queen. All legally too!

Re:Thanks!

[GMFTatsujin]

My SO has been tearing her way through my collection of adventure games recently. It took her about 5 days to complete The Longest Journey (oh, irony), so I introduced her to my LucasArts collection.

We found that ScummVM is awesome for playing those games in, even the ones that you can manage to run natively in XP. The launching interface is nice, you don't have to keep the CDs on the drive (so, back in the vault they go!), and the options to upgrade graphics for larger displays are very much appreciated.

ScummVM developers, we 3 you!

Re:SCI

[Hatta]

What I'd like to see are some tools to help people develop their own adventure games for ScummVM. As it is, most new adventure games are written with AGS, which is not free, and no up to date version is available on Linux.

Re:Could have a place in the office?

[TheRaven64]

Jeff Raskin had some thoughts on this. He likened a bad user interface to a computer game - an apt analogy that still has me cringe whenever I'm in an HCI seminar and the speaker proudly announces that 'it's just like a game'. Adventure games are the perfect example of how not to design a user interface. They intentionally make things difficult, requiring you to walk around a lot and solve puzzles. An adventure game with a good (business) user interface would tell you all of the story, only require input at key points that affected the narrative, and be over in about half an hour. The things that make adventure games fun are exactly the same things that make the terrible as a model for designing human-computer interaction.

By the way, I'd thoroughly recommend The Human Interface. Jef had some strange ideas and was far too focussed on text, but most of what he said makes a lot of sense.