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We are not only constantly working on improving ScummVM's compatibility or implementing new games, but sometimes also on improving the project's general appearance.
Over the last couple of months, long-term ScummVM fan and new team member Mataniko worked hard on improving our website design which serves us well since over a decade. We are proud to say that the ScummVM website is now fully responsive and looks absolutely beautiful on your PC and your mobile devices.
If you have any issues with the updated website or the feeling that something is missing, please let us now on our Issue Tracker.
We are very happy to announce that our friends at Cyan, Inc. released their 25th Anniversary Collection of the Myst series today as digital download on GOG.com.
Myst — Masterpiece Edition and Riven — The Sequel to Myst are powered by ScummVM, while Myst III — Exile is driven by ResidualVM.
In the last couple of weeks, both the Cyan and the ScummVM teams have made great strides to improve game compatibility. Due to intense testing, we have already managed to fix most issues that were present in ScummVM and ResidualVM. However, due to the nature of software development, it's still possible that we missed something, so we need your help now.
While we can fix issues in the GOG.com versions of the games at a later date with a simple update, this won't be possible for the upcoming Collector's Edition on DVDs, so we need to make sure that we have fleshed out any bugs before the DVDs are manufactured.
So, please grab a copy from GOG.com or if you were a backer in the Kickstarter campaign, redeem your code. Visit Myst Island, roam through Age 233, have a nice stay in Releeshahn and report any issue you can find to our Bug Tracker.
And please... bring me the blue pages!
Today, we have some awesome news to share. As you might have heard, Cyan, Inc. — the makers of Myst and Riven — are re-releasing the entire Myst series to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the original Myst game. And ScummVM and ResidualVM take part in this celebration in a special way!
Myst — Masterpiece Edition and Riven — The Sequel to Myst are powered by ScummVM, while Myst III — Exile is driven by ResidualVM.
In order to achieve the best possible gaming experience and to make your journey through the Ages even more pleasant, Cyan and ScummVM are establishing a new partnership, with both teams working together as closely as possible in the future!
Perhaps the ending has not yet been written — more news will follow soon!
Battle to liberate the populace from the threat of the tyrant Lord Xeen, or his cruel master Alamar. Or dare to venture beyond the world of Xeen to the world of Havoc to test your mettle with a new challenge. We're pleased to announce support for the following games:
- Might and Magic IV - Clouds of Xeen
- Might and Magic V - Darkside of Xeen
- Might and Magic - World of Xeen
- Might and Magic - World of Xeen 2 CD Talkie
- Might and Magic - Swords of Xeen
Before you start testing any of the games, please be aware that given the large part combat plays in the game, any errors you encounter may be more difficult to replicate than in traditional adventure games. As such, it'll be a good idea to make a practice of regularly saving your game, just in case something goes wrong. If you do experience any crashes, or notice any functionality which seems incorrect, please let us know. Any problems found should be reported on our Issue Tracker.
Today Google announced the accepted projects for this year's Summer of Code. We are pleased and excited to say that ScummVM will be mentoring three students while ResidualVM will also have one student. All four of them will work on game engines:
- Andrii Prykhodko (a.k.a. whiterandrek) will be working on adding support for the Pink Panther: Passport to Peril and Pink Panther: Hokus Pokus Pink games to ScummVM.
- Joseph-Eugene Winzer (a.k.a. Joefish) will be working on adding support for The Immortal game to ScummVM.
- Matthew Stewart will be working on the engine used by Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and Star Trek: Judgment Rites. The focus for the GSoC period will be on the first game.
- Liu Zhaosong (a.k.a. Douglas_GSoC) will be working on improving the Stark engine, used for The Longest Journey video game, in ResidualVM.
Please welcome with us our four adventurous students for what we hope will be a productive and interesting summer! And you can follow their progress throughout the summer on the ScummVM Blogs.
A recent discussion about the most recent IDA Disassembler freeware 7.0 revealed that it no longer supports disassembling older DOS and Windows executables. This is obviously a problem for potential contributors, as well as potential GSoC students wanting to reverse engineer an old adventure game or RPG for their project. The obvious solution is to provide an earlier freeware version that still supports them.
Consulting with Hex-Rays, they're kindly consented for us to host one of the earlier IDA freeware versions, for those in the future who wish to use it. After reviewing the earlier versions, we've settled on IDA Freeware Version 5.0. IDA 5.0 was the first version of IDA that added the convenient graph view, and this freeware version has both it as well as the ability to disassemble DOS executables. It's also not time limited like the demo versions, it's the most convenient for enthusiasts to try their hand at reverse engineering old games.
Considering how many of our game engines have been created by reverse engineering the original games, hopefully we will continue to see people interested in re-implementing games in the future.
The more the merrier :)
Two days ago, Google announced the organizations that have been accepted for this year's Summer of Code, and we are very pleased to announce that ScummVM is one of them, together with our sister project ResidualVM. The Summer of Code is a yearly event organized by Google to encourage students to contribute to open source projects. Open source organizations provide mentors and projects to work on, while Google give some money to participating students. You can find more information on the official web site. We also have some information on our wiki, and in particular project rules that applicants will need to follow.
Are you a motivated student? Are you available between May 14 and August 6? Do you want to be a contributor to one of the largest game preservation projects? Then ScummVM and ResidualVM are waiting for you! Have a look at our ideas page or bring your own idea! Students have until March 27 to write and submit proposals for the project they want to work on. The accepted proposals will be announced on April 23, and there will be a few weeks for community bonding before the start of the 12 week coding period on May 14.
In any case, don't hesitate to chat with us on IRC! One place: Freenode. Two channels: #scummvm and #residualvm
Just in time for the holidays, the final release of ScummVM 2.0 is here! This version adds support for 23 brand new old games, including almost all of the 32-bit Sierra adventures:
- Cranston Manor
- Full Pipe
- Gabriel Knight
- Gabriel Knight 2
- King's Quest VII
- King's Questions
- Leisure Suit Larry 6 (hi-res)
- Leisure Suit Larry 7
- Lighthouse
- Mixed-Up Mother Goose Deluxe
- Phantasmagoria
- Phantasmagoria 2
- Plumbers Don't Wear Ties
- Police Quest 4
- Riven: The Sequel to Myst
- Shivers
- Space Quest 6
- Starship Titanic
- The Dark Crystal
- Time Zone
- Torin's Passage
- Ulysses and the Golden Fleece
There's more than just new engines, too! Many existing games have been improved, a lot of work has been done to improve the overall audio and video systems, and some players will also enjoy improved joystick support and various small enhancements suggested by other users. A more complete list of changes in this release can be found in the ScummVM 2.0 release notes.
And now, a big round of thanks and congratulations to everyone who made this release happen.
Our super cool code contributors, who wrote all the things which went into this release: Aaryaman Vasishta, Alexander (Tkachov), Alexander Reim, Alexandre Detiste, Alyssa Milburn, angstsmurf, Arnaud Boutonné, Bastien Bouclet, Ben Castricum, Bendegúz Nagy, Cameron Cawley, Colin Snover, cpasjuste, D G Turner, Daniel Plakhotich, Dario Scarpa, David Fioramonti, Donovan Watteau, Einar Johan Trøan Sømåen, Eugene Sandulenko, Fedor (fedor4ever), Ferdinand Thiessen, Filippos Karapetis, Frank Richter, Hein-Pieter van Braam, Hubert Maier, iskrich, Ivan Avdeev, Joseph-Eugene Winzer, Kirben, kmar, Lothar Serra Mari, Lyubomyr Lisen, Marcus Comstedt, Martin Kiewitz, Michael Drüing, Nick Renieris, Omer Mor, Ori Avtalion, ottogin, Pala, Patrik Dahlstrom, Paul Gilbert, Peter Kohaut, Retro-Junk, Robert Crossfield, Robert Göffringmann, rsn8887, Ruud Klaver, Ryper_Zsolt, Schrijvers Luc, Simei Yin, stevenhoefel, Sven Hesse, Sven Kochmann, Tarek Soliman, Thierry Crozat, Thomas Fach-Pedersen, Tobia Tesan, Torbjörn Andersson, upthorn, vanfanel, VelocityRa, Vincent Bénony, Vincent Pelletier, Walter van Niftrik, Willem Jan Palenstijn, and Zbyněk Schwarz!
Our extra awesome community members and testers, who kindly banged on ScummVM and reported issues which were fixed during this cycle: ADeadTrousers, albadross, AlessioR, Alien-Grey, AndyILC, Arjak89, badungu, Bakhtosh, Bastien Bouclet, Ben Castricum, Benjamin Hodgetts, Bill Niakas, bramvandijk, carquinyoli, Colin Snover, counting_pine, ctoroman, cyberskull, d3p4z, dafioram, Daniel Wolf, danieljaeger, David Dew, david_corrales, dch216, dego93, Derek Warren, dominus, DustyShinigami, elaseela, Eliot Lash, enclume, EricOakford, esziarko, exmensa, Farmboy0, Filippos Karapetis, forge017, g5ppc, garethbp, gatesbillou, GeekZolda, George Kormendi, GermanTribun, greencis, Gualtiero, Hein-Pieter van Braam, henke37_2, hkzlab, Hubert Maier, Ignaz Forster, ilya13, Indy4-Fan, IntEmu, Ivan Lukyanov, Jan Sperling, Jarosław Jaworski, JCaesar13, jcmanciot, joachimeberhard, jomalin1, kervala, Kurufinwe21, Laylia27, legluondunet, legoking831, Lothar Serra Mari, Lyubomyr Lisen, macca8, maplesyrup, Markus Mahlstedt, Matan Bareket, Max Tabachenko, mcknallski, mthreepwood, MusicallyInspired, oddfff, Omer Mor, Ori Avtalion, Paul Gilbert, pegasusepsilon, PetrCejpek, Petter Sjölund, pliesenfeld, Quietust, r-alf-the-alf, Robert Megone, rsn8887, SeanW1975, Sergey, sluicebox, softwarespecial, Stefan Seeland, Stephane Lapie, Sven Hesse, Tarek Soliman, telanus, tgfmfc, Thierry Crozat, tobiatesan, Tomasz Grzegurzko, Torbjörn Andersson, Uukrull, vonmagnum, vorph999, Walter van Niftrik, Willem Jan Palenstijn, Windle Poons, zaurak, and zorbid.
Our exceedingly fantastic translators, who have helped bring ScummVM 2.0 to the users of 24 different Earth languages: Alex Jakovleff, Alexandre Folle de Menezes, Arius, Ben Castricum, Carlos, edward, Einar Johan Trøan Sømåen, Erik Zubiria, Ettore Atalan, Eugene Sandulenko, Fernando Sarmento, Filippos Karapetis, George Kormendi, Gilles, Hampus Flink, Ivan Lukyanov, JanShing, Jennifer McMurray, jepael, jeroen klop, John Doe, Jordi Vilalta Prat, Jose Roses, Joseph-Eugene Winzer, lorz, Lothar Serra Mari, Luis, Lyubomyr Lisen, Manuel, Martin Schoenmakers, Max von Werner, Michael D., Milo Casagrande, mézes gergely, pablobecerra, Paolo Bossi, Pavel Kungurtsev, Pere Orga, Peter Johansson, Petter Sjölund, poulsen93, Purple T, rafaelmessias, Rafał Będźkowski, Rafał Rzepecki, Rodrigo Vegas Sánchez-Ferrero, Rossano, Rouven Bauer, Santiago G. Sanz, Santiago Sanchez, selmiak, Sergio Carmona, Simon Sawatzki, Steffen Nyeland, Thierry Crozat, Timo Mikkolainen, Timofonic, Tobia Tesan, TomasM, Vitor Santos, Víctor Martínez Pajares, Walter Agazzi, wreednumero2, and Zbyněk Schwarz.
Our extremely good looking porters and packagers, for turning ScummVM into something you can actually run: Bastien Bouclet, Cameron Cawley, Colin Snover, Joost Peters, Keith Scroggins, Luc Schrijvers, Manuel Alfayate, Marcus Comstedt, Tarek Soliman, Thierry Crozat, and Willem Jan Palenstijn.
Our very wonderful technology sponsors, easyname, who provide us with servers and bandwidth so we can actually manage and send these releases to you.
And, finally, thank you to you, exceptional user, for using ScummVM, and (with deep apologies) to everyone else whose names I could not dig out of a database. Your support means a lot. You rock!
(And remember—shameless plug—if you want to see your name here, all it takes is one contribution to improve ScummVM!)
With no further ado, download ScummVM 2.0, our gift from us to you this holiday season.
Release team, signing off until next time!
The day has finally arrived to wrap up the current ScummVM release cycle! ScummVM 2.0 is one of our biggest new releases to date and adds support for 23 games:
- Cranston Manor
- Full Pipe
- Gabriel Knight
- Gabriel Knight 2
- King's Quest VII
- King's Questions
- Leisure Suit Larry 6 (hi-res)
- Leisure Suit Larry 7
- Lighthouse
- Mixed-Up Mother Goose Deluxe
- Phantasmagoria
- Phantasmagoria 2
- Plumbers Don't Wear Ties
- Police Quest 4
- Riven: The Sequel to Myst
- Shivers
- Space Quest 6
- Starship Titanic
- The Dark Crystal
- Time Zone
- Torin's Passage
- Ulysses and the Golden Fleece
This release also includes significant new enhancements and bug fixes across many engines, so go ahead and play through an old classic you've been missing even if it's not on this list!
Grab a daily build of ScummVM for testing, and make sure to follow our guidelines for release testing. Windows users, please use a Kirben daily build instead of a Buildbot daily build. Report any bugs you encounter to our bug tracker, and once you've finished a playthrough, fill out our test results form. You can track testing progress on the wiki as it happens.
Happy gaming!
Go to an alien world, go to an alien world on an alien spaceship, or gehe zu einem fremden Raumschiff (go to an alien spaceship)! There are three alien worlds to choose from in our newest batch of adventures, now ready for testing in the latest daily build of ScummVM:
The Datafiles page has been updated with instructions on how to install these games. If you don't own one, go to our where to get the games page to buy them!
Before you start your test run, for Lighthouse and RAMA, please read the instructions on our SCI testing page, and take some screenshots along the way. For Starship Titanic German, you'll need an extra required titanic.dat file, which should be put in the same folder you copy your game files to.
Please keep in mind for Starship Titanic German that we're not all German speakers, so bug reports will need to be in English. Also, if any bugs you find involve text that's entered in the conversation tab to one of the bots, it will make things easier if you can replicate the problem using words that don't include letters outside of the English alphabet.
Have fun!
Go on a cruise, sort out some mixed-up nursery rhymes, or spend some time in a mental ward! The second batch of 32-bit DOS/Windows Sierra adventures are now ready to be tested in the latest daily build of ScummVM:
The Datafiles page has been updated with instructions on how to install these games. If you don't own some, go to our where to get the games page to buy them!
Before you start your test run, please read the instructions on our SCI testing page, and take some screenshots along the way.
Have fun!
Right after the ending of Myst, you are promptly sent to another Age by Atrus, where his wife Catherine is stranded. Riven is the fifth Age written by Atrus' father, Gehn, which he rules as a cruel self-proclaimed god. Your dual mission is to rescue Catherine and imprison Gehn. To be successful you will have to carefully explore the five islands of Riven and solve the intricate puzzles they hide.
The ScummVM team is proud to announce that Riven: The Sequel to Myst is finally ready for its testing period. If you want to help with the tests, use the latest daily build of ScummVM to play the Windows or Mac version of the game. Please report the issues you encounter on our bug tracker. Be sure to follow our testing and bug reporting guidelines.
As a warm up before playing Riven, you may want to play Myst. If you do so, please use a daily build of ScummVM. Major changes were made to the game engine to remove situations where the game feels unresponsive. Some bugs may have escaped our attention. As with Riven, please report the issues you notice during your play-through.
Explore a broken-down luxury cruise liner, try to convince the Deskbot to give you an upgrade, and eventually track down and fix the ship's governing computer, Titania. Or you're never going to get home. We're pleased to announce the testing period for the late '90s game Starship Titanic. At this time, only the English version is ready for testing. So break out your copy, and grab the latest daily build of ScummVM. You'll also need an extra required titanic.dat file, which should be put in the same folder you copy your game files to.
Before you start your test run, please be aware there is one specific kind of Indeo encoded AVI video we haven't yet figured out how to decode transparency information for. In a few areas, such as the SGT Stateroom and Titania's closeup, amongst others, you'll see objects with jagged black areas around them. Please just ignore the problem for now. But all other graphics or gameplay issues should be reported on our Issue Tracker.
Last year, we added support for three of Sierra's Hi-Res Adventure games: Mystery House (#1), Mission: Asteroid (#0) and Wizard and the Princess (#2). We're proud to announce that three more Apple II games are now playable in ScummVM and ready for testing: Ulysses and the Golden Fleece (#4), Time Zone (#5) and The Dark Crystal (#6).
For Ulysses and the Golden Fleece, we currently support the Load 'N' Go budget release. For Time Zone and The Dark Crystal we support the disk images that can be found on some of the Sierra collection CDs. The Datafiles wiki page has been updated with the required filenames for the disk images.
If you own one of those classics, grab the latest daily build and try it out! If you encounter an issue, please post a bug report following our testing guidelines. And while you're at it, please take some screenshots!
You may be wondering what happened to Hi-Res Adventure #3: Cranston Manor. Unfortunately, we still have not been able to locate a copy of this game after looking for it for over a year. If you own it, we'd love to hear from you!
Today Google announced the accepted projects for this year's Summer of Code. We are pleased to say that ScummVM will be mentoring two wizard students who will have one mission: casting the Super Sludge Nova spell. Effects include adding support for two new engines, and the cooldown period is 12 weeks:
- Joseph-Eugene Winzer (a.k.a. Joefish) will be working on adding support for the Mission Supernova game.
- Simei Yin will work on porting the Sludge engine to ScummVM.
We extend a warm welcome to our students for what we hope will be a productive and interesting summer! You can follow their progress throughout the summer on the ScummVM Blogs.
Explore a haunted museum, hunt a serial killer, mop the floor, descend into madness, find your true love, find your "true love", travel to lands below, solve the Voodoo Murders, rediscover a lost opera—or do it all! The first batch of 32-bit DOS/Windows Sierra adventures are now ready to be tested in the latest daily build of ScummVM:
- Gabriel Knight
- Gabriel Knight 2
- King's Quest VII
- King's Questions
- Leisure Suit Larry 6 (hi-res)
- Phantasmagoria
- Police Quest 4
- Shivers
- Space Quest 6
- Torin's Passage
The Datafiles page has been updated with instructions on how to install these games. If you don't own some, go to our where to get the games page to buy them!
Before you start your test run, please read the instructions on our SCI testing page, and take some screenshots along the way.
(If you have been itching to play some of the earlier SCI games, please take this time to run through them again too, as changes to the engine may also affect some 16-bit SCI games!)
Have fun!
Update: we were unable to reserve the plumbervm.org domain and thus, with a heavy heart, we decided to abandon our rebranding effort and go back to our old name. Long live ScummVM!
The issue of the name of ScummVM has been raised many times since we started to
add engines for non-SCUMM games. Until now we decided to keep the original name.
However, the addition today of an engine for Plumbers Don't Wear Ties changes
everything. Due to its fame and reputation for being one of the best video game ever,
it naturaly becomes the flagship of what we stand for. Thus we have finally decided
to change our name. We are now PlumberVM!
We used the name ScummVM for over 15 years, and this is with sadness that we say
goodbye to it. It is a well known name and we do not underestimate the effort it will
take to get the same recognition for our new name. Thus we are calling on your help
to spread the news. In the short term this will inevitably lead to some disruption and
confusion. But in the long term we are convinced that this is the right decision. With
your support we will conquer the world! Starting from the sewers. With the change of name we have also decided to expand even more the scope of our
project. Last year we decided to accept engines for RPG games in addition to adventure
games. Now we are also accepting any games that feature a plumber. Work has already
started on the little known Super Mario Bros., and we have big plans for the
future. We will have a big announcement soon, so stay tuned. On a final note, it will take time for us to update all the places where our name
appears. We have started today with our main website and you will notice in the next
few days the change spreading to our social media accounts, wiki, forum and the pages
not yet updated on our web site. We are also working on releasing PlumberVM 2.0 with
the addition of two new supported games: Plumbers Don't Wear Ties and Full Pipe.
This will happen as soon as the last few bugs in our engines for Plumbers Don't Wear Ties
and Full Pipe have been squashed. Hopefully we won't find mutant turtles during testing.
Squashing those is a real pain!
We are very proud to announce that Retro-Junk has been working on ScummVM support for one of the most important games of Video Game History: Plumbers Don't Wear Ties!
Over the past few years, we've had a constant stream of requests asking us to investigate support for this genre-defining masterpiece. It changed the gaming industry forever, by introducing (among many other innovations) an awesome negative-filtered intro (with karting pandas), FMP as a genre game (Full Motion Pictures), and even to this day remains the only game which uses 42nd degree humour.
The engine reflects the astonishing complexity of the game, with 500 lines of code - at the time of writing, it would be one of the largest engine (62nd largest to be precise) in our tree. As you can imagine, it will take us some time to review and get it merged.
However, you can already grab the source code from this pull request on GitHub, build a copy and play it (only PC version supported currently). And remember, we are always interested in new screenshots!
We'd also like you to join us and give a very special thank you to two of our developers, uruk-hai and t0by. They've continued to relentlessly push for support of this game, keeping everyone motivated. This work may not have been possible without them!
Before you start your test run, we encourage you to read through our testing guidelines, and please take some screenshots along the way.
Now, go! Grab your copy of the game and the code, and enjoy this historical moment!
Update: If you thought it was an April Fool's Day joke, you have been trolled. The Pull Request on GitHub is genuine, and ScummVM will really support Plumbers Don't Wear Ties if it gets merged.
This year, Google announced the largest Summer of Code ever, with 201 accepted organizations. We are very pleased to announce we are participating this year again, together with our sister project ResidualVM.
Are you a motivated student? Do you want to participate in the largest Google Summer of Code ever? Do you want to be known as a contributor to one of the largest game preservation projects?
Then ScummVM and ResidualVM are waiting for you! Have a look at our ideas page or bring your own idea!
In any case, don't hesitate to chat with us on IRC! One place: Freenode. Two channels: #scummvm and #residualvm
The Dude... the Pipe... the Dark-Burrow-Dweller... and you.
After several years of development, the ScummVM Team is pleased to announce full support for the obscure, fancy, and engaging adventure game The Full Pipe (Полная Труба in Russian). Grab your Game CD (Android and iOS versions are not supported), the daily build, and help us test Dude's adventures in the world of Small Fries.
The game is not available in English, but doesn't have any text other than in the menus. Thus if you don't have the game already you can buy the German version published by Daedalic Entertainment.
Before you start your test run, we encourage you to read through our testing guidelines, and please take some screenshots along the way.
Now, go! The Dude just has fallen into the deep full pipe.
Until now, translating the ScummVM software was not straightforward. Contributors had to get the translations template file to their computer, update the translation using a dedicated application, and then propose the updated translation to the ScummVM team using a Pull Request or our bug tracker. The ScummVM team itself also had some manual tasks to perform, such as updating the translation templates from the source code when needed or rebuilding the binary translation file after receiving a translator's contribution.
All this belongs to the past. Now, thanks to our new translations website, powered by Weblate, updating the translations is easier and more comfortable than ever before. Translation templates are updated automatically when needed, and so is the binary translation data file. Translators now just have to translate. That's it. The website also helps translators by performing automated quality checks and suggesting (machine) translations.
Finally, the new site also adds a community aspect to translations, enabling users to vote for suggested translations and even make their own suggestions. Anybody can view the translations, but you will need to log in to make suggestions, comment, and vote. You can log in using your GitHub or Facebook account, or by creating an account on the website. You will still need to contact us if you want to contribute further (for example to start a new translation or help on an existing one), as we will need to grant you access to the Translators group. Unlike regular users, translators can accept or reject suggestions and modify translations directly. Contact us by visiting the #scummvm IRC channel on irc.freenode.net or by sending an email to firstname.lastname@example.com if you are interested in becoming an official translator. Otherwise, head over to https://translations.scummvm.org/ now, and help us make ScummVM accessible to everyone.
Our one month testing period is over. Thanks to a lot of help from you, our fellow users and testers, we are now ready to ship our next release.
As always, we have been busy adding more games and enhancing old ones. Now, after many years in production, we are proud to announce support for Myst and Myst: Masterpiece Edition.
Besides that, we now support U.F.O.s and the early Sierra Hi-Res adventures, namely Hi-Res Adventure #0: Mission Asteroid, Hi-Res Adventure #1: Mystery House and Hi-Res Adventure #2: The Wizard and the Princess, for a total of six newly supported games.
With this release we are switching to SDL 2, so please, report any bugs you encounter. Last time we introduced Sparkle-based updates for Mac, and now we're trying to launch it also for Windows. Hopefully, you will see it in action once we release our next version. Once again, we would like to mention that auto-updating is selected as an opt-in during your first start up. By default, if you enable it, it will check weekly for new releases. Screenshots of this in action can be seen at the WinSparkle website.
Notable bugfixes and enhancements include Hercules rendering and font for the AGI games, numerous bugfixes to SCI games, enhanced Sherlock games experience, and AmiUpdate on the Amiga port.
The full list of changes included in this release can be found in the release notes and the binaries are provided on our downloads page.
Wait no more, and start playing Myst or U.F.O.s right now!
"You are in the front yard of a large, abandoned Victorian house."
You can now experience adventure game history, and play Sierra's early Hi-Res Adventure #1: Mystery House in ScummVM. Dare you leap back to 1980 and take the steps up to the porch? Grab the game and a daily build, and join our testing by stepping back in time.
We're proud to announce that we now also have support for several other games using the same ADL system — which feature advanced technologies such as color graphics! Perhaps you'd rather save the planet (Hi-Res Adventure #0: Mission Asteroid), or save the princess ( Hi-Res Adventure #2: The Wizard and the Princess)?
We're working on the rest of the Hi-Res Adventure games, but in the meantime, we're releasing support for the Apple II versions of these three games for testing, and look forward to seeing any bug reports for problems you might find. We'd like to include these in our next release, so be sure to read through our testing guidelines, and don't forget to take some screenshots.
Mystery House was released into the public domain by Sierra On-Line in 1987, to celebrate their 7th anniversary. You can download it for free. For more details about the other games and where you might be able to buy a copy, take a peek at our wiki pages.
If you happen to have original floppies for any of the Hi-Res Adventure games (for any platform), we want to hear from you. In particular, if you have an Apple II version of Hi-Res Adventure #3: Cranston Manor, please get in touch. Many of these games are rare, and we cannot add support for all the different releases without your help!
Time flies quickly, and now it is time to start the release cycle for ScummVM 1.9.0.
Two new game engines became production quality, and we would like to ask you to test the following games:
- Myst
- Myst: Masterpiece Edition
- U.F.O.s
Also, our SCI engine team has been busy improving the ScummVM experience with Sierra games, particularly with fixing the original script bugs. Thus, we would like to ask you to test several of those games as well.
The complete list of the games that require testing for this release can be found on our wiki.
Please use a daily build of ScummVM for testing. In case you encounter any bugs, there is a place for them to be reported at our bug tracker. Please, also track your progress on the forum thread and we can cross it out on the wiki. Please make sure to follow our guidelines for release testing which can be found here.
Also we're still lacking some screenshots, so please don't forget to snap some during your gameplay.
Thanks to the hard work of wjp, we have moved away from SF.net to our own tracker at https://bugs.scummvm.org. This new service should be faster and more reliable than the old SF.net bug tracker.
All information has been migrated from the old bug tracker, including patches (though these days we encourage people to submit patches using a GitHub Pull Request instead).
For authentication, the new bug tracker uses GitHub accounts via OAuth2, which should make signing up safer and easier. We transferred all accounts from SF.net, but did not set up any e-mail addresses. Thus, after you log in for the first time, please make sure you specify your e-mail address in the preferences, otherwise we will not be able to get in contact with you.
While traveling through space in his spaceship, Gnap ran out of gas and crashed in the middle of a redneck farm. He's now lost on planet Earth and needs your help to fix his U.F.O. so he can continue his journey!
The ScummVM Team is proud to announce that U.F.O.s aka GNAP: Der Schurke aus dem All is now playable in ScummVM using the latest daily builds, and is ready for testing.
Please report any bugs as well as unknown versions you find in our bug tracker, following our bug submission guidelines. As usual, we'll also love to see the screenshots of your playthrough!
It has been a couple of months since ScummVM 1.8.0, which means it's time for a new point release! ScummVM 1.8.1 is now available with fixes for important bugs and support for even more platforms.
One of the most important "features" of this release is a major upgrade to the Android port. This upgrade also adds support for the OUYA console. We are currently working on bringing this new release straight to Google Play, but for the impatient among you, feel free to go ahead and install the APKs manually. The Android port now comes in two flavours, our "classic" OpenGL-based one, and a new variant based on SDL. The SDL port has better compatibility with some Android devices and also works better with some engines. Please give it a try and tell us on our forums or via the bug tracker about your experience.
We will also be adding Nintendo 3DS support! As of release time, the new binaries have not yet been built by our new porter, but they should be available soon. Keep your eyes peeled!
64-bit Mac binaries now include experimental automatic update checking using Sparkle. Auto-updating is selected as an opt-in during your first start up, and by default checks weekly for new releases. When version 1.9.0 is released, users of 1.8.1 will be presented with a nice dialog for updating. If you'd like to see a similar feature for Windows or other platforms, let us know! All the details on how the update process works can be found here.
No ScummVM release would be complete without game engine updates! ScummVM 1.8.1 includes fixes for Drascula, Legend of Kyrandia, Labyrinth of Time, localized versions of I Have No Mouth, Broken Sword 2.5 and improvements to the Windows, OS X and GCW0 ports.
The full list of changes included in this release can be found in the release notes and the binaries are provided on our downloads page.
Get ready, grab your beloved Android device, install ScummVM on it, and play!
Since the 1.8.0 release we've been very busy with fixing small and big bugs in the newly supported engines, and now we are almost ready to present you the result in a form of the ScummVM 1.8.1.
Please, help us to test a few games, especially those which were not touched for a long time, or those which have significant changes in their engine. We prepared a short list on our wiki.
Also from now on we encourage you to test any game which we support and report any bugs or your success on the forum so we can keep track of current state of affairs in the ScummVM Land.
For testing the pre-release you need to download a daily build of ScummVM. If you spot some glitches or bugs, please report them on our bug tracker. If everything went smoothly, please report your success on the forums, and we will instantly reflect it on the wiki (yes, you can be famous for your testing efforts!) You can find a guide on how to test a new release here.
A few games are still missing screenshots. Please help up complete our gallery.
On Friday Google announced the accepted projects for this year's Summer of Code. We are pleased to say that ScummVM will be mentoring four lucky students who will have to spend their summer in a dark room in front of their screen. We expect this will be an interesting Journey, passing through shadowy gates to visit scary dungeons under dark clouds. All while the mentors will be hunting three-headed monkeys on a tropical island, enjoying the sun, the beach and the grog.
- Borja Lorente Escobar (a.k.a. blorente) will be working on porting the MacVenture engine to ScummVM.
- Bendegúz Nagy (a.k.a. WinterGrascph) will work on adding support for Dungeon Master
- Dmitriy Iskrich (a.k.a. Iskrich) will be working on a Macromedia Director engine, with focus on The Journeyman Project
- Ткачёв Александр (a.k.a. Tkachov) will be adding cloud storage integration to ScummVM to allow sharing saves and game data between devices.
Welcome to our students for what we hope will be a productive and interesting summer! You can follow their progress throughout the summer on the ScummVM Blogs.
We are pleased to announce that John Carmack (yes, the John Carmack) will be joining the ScummVM and ResidualVM teams.
We first met John at GDC 2016 and hit it off immediately.
We had been feeling for a while now that we have to move beyond simply recreating old games and actively improving them, while staying true to their original spirit. We talked to John about our plan after a few tequilas and he was immediately on board.
John's experience will be invaluable in helping us achieve our goal.
Here is screenshot of John's early work with Monkey Island - notice the improved combat system and the subtle tweaks to Captain Smirk's sprite, you'll see why we are so excited.
So please join us in welcoming John!
UPDATE: No, not really. This was a joke.
You stumble upon an old handwritten book. It describes an island world named Myst. When you touch one of its last pages, you are transported to the island. As you explore Myst you learn about its inhabitants Atrus, Catherine and their sons Sirrus and Achenar. You quickly discover each son is trapped in a book. Will you solve the puzzles of the Myst ages and free them?
The ScummVM Team is proud to announce that Myst and Myst: Masterpiece Edition are now playable in ScummVM using the latest daily builds, and are ready for testing.
Reports of bugs and unknown versions are appreciated. They should go to our bug tracker, and must follow our bug submission guidelines. You can help us fill our screenshot gallery with captures from your playthrough.
In addition to the main game, the making-of video and the demo version are supported.
No, we do not want to make it a new rule to release ScummVM slower and slower! It has been many months since the last official release... but in that time, tons of work has been done, resulting in one of our biggest ScummVM releases to date!
ScummVM 1.8 adds support for ten new games using eight brand new game engines:
- Amazon: Guardians of Eden
- Beavis and Butthead in Virtual Stupidity
- Broken Sword 2.5: The Return of the Templars
- Labyrinth of Time
- Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender
- Sfinx
- The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Rose Tattoo
- The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel
- Zork: Grand Inquisitor
- Zork Nemesis: The Forbidden Lands
In addition to new game support, we've updated the MT-32 emulator to the latest upstream version of munt, and switched AdLib to Miles Audio for those games which originally supported it. This means games in ScummVM sound better than ever!
We've also overhauled the graphics subsystem in AGI, basically replacing it. As a result game compatibility with old Sierra titles is high as never before, and even includes platform-specific system dialogs, palette and font for Apple IIgs, Atari ST and Amiga versions of the games. Game speed for Apple IIgs is handled properly now. And it's even possible to switch to the looks of another platform.
New ports include GCW-Zero (yes, sev finally got one from the Kickstarter) and Raspberry Pi.
Also, along the way we have moved to a new server and added translation capabilities to our main website. If you'd like to help with translation, here is the link with the guide.
This list is far from complete. The more comprehensive version of it can be found in the release notes and the binaries for your platforms are available from our downloads page. The porters are still building their packages, so please be patient if you do not see the up to date download for your platform yet.
Don't get lost in the Labyrinth, and in the worst case call Mr. Holmes! (And we promise to release more often!)
Yesterday, Google announced the list of accepted mentoring organizations and we have the great pleasure to be one of those.
In previous years, we have primarily focused on adventure games. However, after discussing with our sister project ResidualVM, we are happy to announce that, this year, we will also be accepting RPG tasks.
ScummVM and ResidualVM are now waiting for motivated students, willing to work during this summer on reviving adventure and role-playing games.
Be part of it! Make History and join our best GSoC so far! Take a look at our ideas page or bring your own idea, then contact us: we are waiting for you on IRC impatiently!
One place: Freenode. Two channels: #scummvm and #residualvm
After a very long break, we are finally starting preparations for our next release, ScummVM 1.8.0.
The last one year and a half have been very busy, and we added 10 (ten, zehn, dieci, dix, diez, десять) new games:
- Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender
- Sfinx
- Zork Nemesis: The Forbidden Lands
- Zork: Grand Inquisitor
- The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel
- The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Rose Tattoo
- Beavis and Butthead in Virtual Stupidity
- Amazon: Guardians of Eden
- Broken Sword 2.5: The Return of the Templars
- Labyrinth of Time
Also, we had a major rewrite of the AGI engine, so all AGI games should work better, but could also have new, unexpected bugs.
Thus, we need your help with testing out these games, including AGI-based ones. For your convenience, we gathered together what requires testing on our wiki. There are also a few other old classics on that list that could use another run through.
You need to grab a daily build of ScummVM and you may start helping right away! If you happen to find any bugs, please report them on our bug tracker. After completing one of the games, please let us know on the forums so we can mark your progress on the wiki and other players can concentrate on untested games. Please be sure to follow our guidelines for release testing, which can be found here.
Also some of these games require screenshots, which you can make along your gameplay.
Happy adventuring (in a test mode)!
While aboard the subway, your train car is sucked into an alternate dimension, a labyrinth that spans the space-time continuum. Its creator, Daedalus, is forced to oversee its construction by the evil King Minos, who wants to use it to invade and conquer all times and places. Daedalus pleads for the player to find a way to destroy the labyrinth before Minos can complete his conquest.
The ScummVM Team is proud to announce that Labyrinth of Time is now playable in ScummVM using the latest daily builds, and is ready for testing.
Please report any bugs as well as unknown versions you find in our bug tracker, following our bug submission guidelines. Any screenshots of your playthrough are as usual welcome.
Many thanks to The Wyrmkeep Entertainment Co. for sharing the game's original source code with us!
We have been using SourceForge.net for many years. It was the very first home for our project, and it served us very well. However, we had to move on, and we were looking for a new home. Last year Florian Schicker, CEO of easyname GmbH approached us with the thrilling proposal to donate a server and host it in their Data Centre. And what makes it so special is that they are doing it "because they are veeeery big fans of the good old scumm games"! Go, look at company teampage in that fancy scumm-feeling! A really generous proposal and completely unexpected.
Thus, we are moving. First we moved our main website and downloads, and you probably already noticed the speed boost thanks to the new service. Also, we said goodbye to the advertisements during downloads, as they were provided by SourceForge.net. The only ads that will be associated with this project from now on are the ones we want to do by ourselves (and that, of course, includes easyname.com, look at their nice logo in the right pane). Eventually, we will move more services to the new server, and perhaps even extend it with something new.
So please join us in our joy of a new home!
The Templars are back in this fan-made game of the Broken Sword Series! George comes back to discover the origin of a mysterious letter he received about Nico's death, and uncover the whereabouts of the modern day Templars once again...
The ScummVM Team is proud to announce that the fan-made game Broken Sword 2.5: The Return of the Templars is now playable in ScummVM using the latest daily builds, and is ready for testing.
Please report any bugs as well as unknown versions you find in our bug tracker, following our bug submission guidelines. Any screenshots of your playthrough are as usual welcome.
Many thanks to the wonderful mindFactory team who created this great sequel, and shared the original source code with us! The game can be found for free here.
The year is 1957. You are Jason Roberts. You're preparing an expedition to help your missing brother in the land of Amazons and eventually look for a lost treasure.
The ScummVM Team is proud to announce that Amazon: Guardians of Eden is now playable in ScummVM using the latest daily builds, and is ready for testing.
Please report any bugs as well as unknown versions you find in our bug tracker, following our bug submission guidelines. Any screenshots of your playthrough are welcome.
You don't have this game but still want to help us? There's actually a way! We are missing screenshots for more than a dozen games! Take a look at the list of missing screenshots, grab your originals and immortalize your favorite scenes!
Twenty years after its original release, we are very proud to announce today the support of MTV's Beavis and Butthead in Virtual Stupidity. Accept the challenge of those anti-heroes of the 90's and help them find their way in an adventure full of puzzles and mini-games.
So, get the latest daily build of ScummVM and your version of the game and give BBVS a try! Please post any bugs and unrecognized versions you can find to our bug tracker, following the bug submission guidelines.
As usual, if you find interesting sights, we are interested in your screenshots.
Sherlock Holmes, greatest detective of all times, has a pair of puzzling cases to solve. Firstly, a gruesome murder outside a theatre. Police are clueless. Could it be the work of the notorious killer, Jack the Ripper? Then, in his second case, his brother Mycroft is nearly killed in an explosion. In this case, you'll play initially as Watson, who tries to snap Sherlock out of his despair, and then as Sherlock, as he tries to piece together why Mycroft was attacked, and why he called for him just prior to the explosion.
The ScummVM Team is proud to announce support for both games of the The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes.. The Case of the Serrated Scalpel, and The Rose Tattoo. Many thanks go to Electronic Arts, for allowing us access to the original sources. Both games are now playable in ScummVM using the latest daily builds and ready for testing. For Serrated Scalpel, currently only the PC version is supported.. the 3DO version is mostly playable, but still needs further work. As usual, all bugs should be reported to our bug tracker following our bug submission guidelines. While you play through the game, we would also love it if you could take some screenshots for us.
So, have a play, and see if you're up to the challenge of stepping into the shoes of the great Sherlock Holmes. The game is afoot. Or in this case, games :)
Rex Nebular, God's gift to the galaxy, has been stranded on a planet where he was attempting to locate to retrieve a valuable vase. To escape, he'll have to use the infamous Gender Bender to get in touch with his female side and successfully locate both the vase and a way to escape the planet.
The ScummVM Team is proud to announce support for Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender, the first MADS game written by Microprose. It is now playable in ScummVM using the latest daily builds and ready for testing. As usual, all bugs should be reported to our bug tracker following our bug submission guidelines. While you play through the game, we would also love it if you could take some screenshots for us.
So, dust off your copy and try it out. If you don't already own the game, it can be purchased online at GOG.com.
ScummVM takes you on an adventure in the world of Zork, with support for two new games! In Zork Nemesis: The Forbidden Lands, your task is to embark on a journey to solve the mystery of a spirit called Nemesis, and of the four alchemists it killed. On your second journey to Zork, in Zork: Grand Inquisitor, you must find three legendary objects that will restore all magic to the realm and bring about the fall of Grand Inquisitor Yannick, whose goal is to "shun magic, shun the appearance of magic, shun everything, and then shun shunning".
The ScummVM Team is proud to announce that both Zork Nemesis: The Forbidden Lands and Zork: Grand Inquisitor are now playable in ScummVM using the latest daily builds, and ready for testing. As usual, all bugs should be reported to our bug tracker following our bug submission guidelines. While you play through the two games, we would also love it if you could take some screenshots for us.
So, grab your game discs and help test! If you don't own the games already, they can be purchased online at GOG.com:
We recently added support for a new game, Sfinx, in ScummVM, and we can now proudly announce that it is ready to be tested. Thanks to the original developers, this game is now freeware and can be downloaded on our web site. And in addition to the original Polish version we are also proposing an English version! This version is not final, so we are looking for people who speak English and/or Polish and who are not afraid of spotting spelling and grammar mistakes in the texts of the game (English only), while also looking for different bugs, glitches and other evil things.
To sum up: We need testers!
Grab our daily build and the data files of the game, and go for it!
You can report bugs on our bug tracker following our bug submission guidelines. If you have the time for it, screenshots are also very welcome!
This year is the 20th anniversary of the release of the classic video game Inherit the Earth: Quest for the Orb. The Wyrmkeep Entertainment Co. has announced that it is developing a sequel entitled Inherit the Earth: Sand and Shadows.
This all-ages adventure game is set in a world of humanoid, anthropomorphic animal characters. The story follows Rif the Fox as he tries to confirm the rumors that an important relic of the legendary humans has survived and who is responsible for the relic's recovery. Unfortunately, there are sinister forces involved in the rumors — ones that endanger Rif, his friends, and his society.
"Inherit the Earth: Sand and Shadows will be enchanting and thrilling game for all to enjoy, with subtleties and hidden depths that can be appreciated by older players," said company president, Joe Pearce. "With the help of the backers to the funding drive, we expect to release a great game mid-2015."
A video demo has been released on the game's website at http://InheritTheEarth2.com. The video provides a preview of the art, animation and play experience that will appear in the product.
In conjunction with this announcement, the company has launched a funding drive on Kickstarter to help in completing development of the game. Information about this drive can be found at http://InheritTheEarth2.com/kickstarter.
A year has passed and ScummVM 1.7.0 is here.
With this release we have added support for 5 completely new games. These are:
- The Neverhood
- Mortville Manor
- Voyeur
- Return to Ringworld
- Chivalry is Not Dead
Also, we have updated the MT-32 emulator, added an OpenGL backend, improved many aspects of the GUI, enhanced the AGOS engine, made Urban Runner's videos less CPU-demanding, fixed tons of bugs in dozens of SCI games, improved sound in Loom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and improved platform portability for the Tony and Tinsel engines.
But this is not all. We have added experimental support for the OUYA console (we couldn't add GCW-Zero support simply because sev still awaits his console from Kickstarter), made major improvements to the PS2 port and merged the Bada with Tizen ports.
The full list with all changes mentioned can be found in our release notes and the release can be obtained as usual from our downloads page.
Everybody Way Oh!
The forthcoming 1.7.0 release of ScummVM is almost here! This time around, we have a total of five newly supported games:
- Chivalry Is Not Dead
- Mortville Manor
- Return to Ringworld
- The Neverhood
- Voyeur
But before we can release the latest and greatest version of ScummVM, we need help testing out all these new games. Besides the aforementioned new games for this release, the DOS floppy versions of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Loom, require testing running with our AdLib emulator. You can always check out which games still need testing on our wiki. There are also a few other old classics on that list that could use another run through.
A daily build is all that is required to get started. If you happen to find any bugs, please report them on the bug tracker. After completing one of the games, please let us know on the forums so we can post the results up on the wiki page. Be sure to follow our guidelines for release testing, which can be found on the wiki as well.
And while you play through these newly supported games, please submit some screenshots!
Or, the "Better late than never" announcement. It was pointed out to me today that although we merged Voyeur into the master branch some months ago, we never actually called for an official testing period. So this announcement seeks to remedy that.
Take on the role of a private investigator. A powerful CEO with aspirations for the presidency has invited his family to his home for the weekend. There are suspicions of corruption, and you've been hired to find out his secrets, and determine just what he's hiding.
The ScummVM Team is proud to announce that Voyeur is now playable in ScummVM using the latest daily builds, and ready for testing. As usual, all bugs should be reported to our bug tracker following our bug submission guidelines. While you play through the game, we would also love it if you could take some screenshots for us.
After more than two years since the original freeware release, the ScummVM Team is announcing an update for the Dreamweb packages.
Thanks to the work of Simon Sawatzki we have the game manuals as well as the Diary of a (Mad?) Man available in text and HTML format for the majority of our releases, so you can use your preferred text-to-speech program to read them as your bedtime story.
All releases now include these documents and are marked as version 1.1. Of course, the previously available high resolution scans will stay on the download page as well.
Additionally we have taken the opportunity to release the Italian version of the game.
All packages can be downloaded from our Games page.
The accepted Google Summer of Code proposals have been announced yesterday, and we are pleased to say that ScummVM will be mentoring two students, for projects with a Polish theme.
- Peter Bozsσ (a.k.a. uruk), who you may remember from last year, will work on an engine (and translation to English) of the Polish game Sfinx.
- Lukasz Watka (a.k.a. lukaslw) will work on an engine (and translation to English) of the Polish game The Prince and the Coward.
Additionally, ScummVM is acting as an umbrella organisation during GSoC for our sister project ResidualVM. They will be mentoring three students:
- Stefano Musumeci (a.k.a. subr3v) will be working on refactoring and optimizing the TinyGL software renderer.
- Joni Vδhδmδki (a.k.a. Akz) and Joseph Jezak (a.k.a. JoseJX) will both be working on improving the Escape from Monkey Island engine, tackling bugs and missing features from two different angles.
We expect it will be a productive and interesting summer!
Happy April Fools' Day! Unfortunately, we haven't really got a new developer... though pull requests are welcome!
We do not normally announce new developers here, but we have an unusual and talented developer recently join the team, Edward Snowden. When we first got the e-mail from a dot-ru address which we will not be disclosing, we were skeptical. However upon verifying his PGP key, we are convinced that this is not some kind of April Fools joke and are happy to welcome a talented software developer with enthusiasm to the team. He is apparently a big fan of point and click adventures, especially Beneath a Steel Sky,, Dreamweb, Woodruff and the Schnibble of Azimuth, and I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. His collection allowed him to pass a long stopover at an airport last year and he decided then, once he had sorted some personal issues to get around to contributing some code to ScummVM. As an avid fan of Larry Niven, he will be initially working on the TSaGE support for Return to Ringworld along with Strangerke, and will be using the nickname "crazyeddie" Please can we ask the other developers and users not to bother him about any issues outside of ScummVM and not to send any irrelevant e-mails to his ScummVM address at "firstname.lastname@example.com" Thanks!
Happy April Fools' Day! Much thanks to LordHoto for the mock achievement dialog code and for the Hand of Fate and Zak McKracken quotes. Thanks to ST, DrMcCoy, and Strangerke for all their input.
Due to high demand, ScummVM is extremely proud and thrilled to announce the introduction of achievements to various games. Games really have no replay value without achievements, so we hope that our loyal users will enjoy finally being able to play them again the way they've always meant to be played. They're finally ready for the 21st century! The ScummVM team managed to put together a huge list of achievements that we wanted to see in various games, including some not-yet-supported ones. From there, we just plugged in our simple dialog and achievement tracking code, and were able to add it to all engines easily. Soon integration with the forums will be complete and you will be able to share all your achievements there. LordHoto was really excited to work on this feature saying, "This is the coolest feature I've added to The Legend of Kyrandia." "First Steam's achievements came to Linux and now this? Linux gamers should be thrilled for all the achievements they can now earn!" added DrMcCoy. We've gathered up some screenshots of some of our favorite ones: The Legend of Kyrandia: The Hand of Fate Screenshot The Curse of Monkey Island Screenshot Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers Screenshot 1 Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers Screenshot 2 Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers Screenshot 3
We are very excited to announce that we are going to be doing things a little differently this year. In addition to our own participation in Google Summer of Code, ScummVM will also be acting as an umbrella organization for our sister project, ResidualVM.
Both projects will be working hand in hand with students and mentors over the coming months. The first obvious sign of this collaboration can be found in our merged GSoC ideas page.
So if you're interested in being a GSoC student this year, please take a look at the ideas page and come and talk to us. We love to welcome potential students on IRC and the ScummVM and ResidualVM mailing lists are also splendid places to start! We have a lot of exciting things to suit a range of skillsets and we also warmly welcome task proposals other than those on the list if you feel so inspired!
For the seventh year in a row, we have been accepted as a Google Summer of Code project.
Perhaps it is because both our project and the program have unusual letter casing? The world may never know, but we are thrilled to be accepted again and welcome fellow students to join our team and work on awesome 2D point-and-click adventures. If you are an eligible student for the GSoC and want to contribute to your favorite open-source project, take a look at our project ideas, but you always can offer your own.
But, please, no Digger support: it's not an adventure!
You are Jerome Lange, a Bogart clone private eye who's received an invitation from an old friend to join her at Mortville Manor to help with a desperate situation. With a name like Mortville you might suppose something is seriously wrong and, yes, you're right. Your old friend Julia has already departed to Deadsville.
So... Who did dunnit?
Based on the sources provided by DotEmu and by Lankhor founders and developers, the ScummVM Team is pleased to announce support for France's 1987 Game of the Year: Mortville Manor. Only the DOS versions are supported, and ScummVM is bringing to you the first DOS English translation. So, grab your disk and copy the files, then start playing using the latest daily build of ScummVM and help us testing it.
As usual, all bugs should be reported to our bug tracker following our bug submission guidelines. While you play through the game, we would also love it if you could take some screenshots for us.
Lord Horrible has sent you on a quest to kill the Queen of Everything, playing the role of the horribly disfigured Phlegmwad you will have the chance to choose how to (not?) fullfill this quest of epic proportions.
With great help from game developer Deirdra Kiai and Wintermute developer Jan Nedoma the ScummVM Team is pleased to announce support for our first Wintermute game: Chivalry is Not Dead. So, download a copy of the game and start playing in the latest daily build of ScummVM and help us with testing this open-ended game.
How many endings can YOU find?
As usual, all bugs should be reported to our bug tracker. You can find a list of data files in the data files page on our wiki. Of particular note is the need for a copy of arial.ttf (or a similar replacement, for instance FreeSans from GNU FreeFont.) For further information, check out the bug submission guidelines.
The Neverhood needs you! Klaymen, our hero, wakes up in a building in the strangely empty world of Neverhood. It's up to you to explore and find out what happened to Neverhood's wacky clay world.
The ScummVM Team is proud to announce that The Neverhood is now playable in ScummVM using the latest daily builds, and ready for testing. As usual, all bugs should be reported to our bug tracker following our bug submission guidelines. While you play through the game, we would also love it if you could take some screenshots for us.
"They said it would it would never be done. They were wrong." After a slight hiatus at the start of the year, work has finally finished on our next TsAGE game, Return to Ringworld. The only remaining work still in progress is a card game available on the in-game consoles, and is completely unrelated to the main story.
This is a direct sequel to the original Ringworld game.. after saving the puppeteer race from extermination and uncovering some powerful ancient technology on the first game, Quinn, Seeker of Vengeance and Miranda Rees find themselves searched for as fugitives by all three major species, so they plan to go to Ringworld to hide. But it turns that their ship has suffered problems. And fixing them and getting to Ringworld will only be the start of their problems..
The ScummVM Team is proud to announce that Return to Ringworld is now playable in ScummVM using the latest daily builds, and ready for testing. As usual, all bugs should be reported to our bug tracker following our bug submission guidelines. While you play through the game, we would also love it if you could take some screenshots for us.
The Wintermute engine has been in the works in ScummVM for a little over a year now, and it has gotten more and more mature, to the point that we feel it is getting close to being ready for release.
Since the amount of games involved is rather huge, we'd love to get some help with a round of testing before we check off on the engine being ready for our next release. Thus, we have semi-arbitrarily selected a set of Wintermute-games that would benefit from some testing, and hope that some of our wonderful users are willing to take them for a spin.
If you are interested, head on over to our WME Testing thread.
On the 9th of October 2001, the very first commit was made to a CVS repository and thus the ScummVM project was born...
As I write this post, it is now the 11th of October 2013 and we have over 58000 commits in the ScummVM Git repository... but still based on that initial commit over a decade ago!
Thus on the project's 12th anniversary, I believed ScummVM deserved a present... Thus myself, James Woodcock and the ScummVM PR Team present "ScummVM: THE MOVIE"! :)
This visualization is powered by Gource.If you want to play with this yourself or render a full length HD version, then you can find the scripts to do this here.
So get the popcorn and enjoy!
After 11 long months we are thrilled to announce the release of ScummVM 1.6.0.
It's not very often (if ever) that we add 4 new engines in a single release, but yes, these have been busy months for the team indeed.
Let's just list the new games 1.6.0 contains for you:
- 3 Skulls of the Toltecs
- Eye of the Beholder
- Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon
- Hopkins FBI
- Tony Tough and the Night of Roasted Moths
- The Journeyman Project: Pegasus Prime
Other significant features include support for the Macintosh version of Discworld 1 and the music in the Macintosh versions of LucasArts adventures, an update to the latest Roland MT-32 emulation code, a new cool grid chooser for your savegames, an extended FluidSynth configuration dialog, and major bugfixes to bike fights in Full Throttle. We have also added Belarusian, Finnish and Galician translations to our GUI.
Of course, there is much more; you can find the full list in our release notes and the release itself on our downloads page.
We announced 6 weeks ago that Google accepted ScummVM for the Google Summer of Code this year again.
This week Google revealed 4 students will work with us this summer!
In order to tease you a bit, here is a short introduction:
- RichieSams will work on integrating Marisa Chan's Z-Engine, which concerns Zork Nemesis and Zork Grand Inquisitor.
- Rundfunk will focus on GUI extensions and improvements, with particular care for touchscreen devices.
- Uruk will port the Avalanche engine from Pascal to C++. This is to support the game Lord Avalot d'Argent.
- T0by will work on our Wintermute engine to fix several issues and add a number of features not present in WME Light
We'd like you to join us and warmly welcome those four students and wish them all the best for the next 3 months.
We also are really grateful to Google for giving us the opportunity to mentor students this year and benefit from their passion.
Stay tuned!
Greetings, fellow adventure gamers! We have finally come to the point when ScummVM 1.6.0 testing starts.
This release adds support for a number of new games that need to be tested:
- 3 Skulls of the Toltecs
- Eye of the Beholder
- Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon
- Hopkins FBI
- Tony Tough and the Night of Roasted Moths
- The Journeyman Project: Pegasus Prime
In addition, if you have Macintosh version of Discworld, please give it a try as well.
A daily build should be used for testing these, and if something goes unexpectedly wrong, please report it to our bug tracker. The completed games need to be reported on our forums and we will update our release testing page. For a usable test report, we need you to provide the version, language, and platform of the game you're testing. And, of course, please stick to the testing guidelines.
This release also has another interesting aspect. Depending on how intensively games are tested, we will add support for one more game: Hopkins FBI. For support to happen, we need test results on several platforms using several variants of the game, which includes the BeOS, OS/2, Linux and Windows versions.
In conclusion, if you want Hopkins FBI in ScummVM 1.6.0, grab your originals and contribute to this new testing period! We are also in need of screenshots too! Please submit them to our patch tracker.
James Woodcock has today released his enhanced music for classic point & click adventure game Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer, as part of his 'ScummVM Music Enhancement Project'.
By adding the external digital music files provided for free by James and with our ScummVM software, users can enjoy the updated soundtrack within the actual title as it is played.
Using modern MIDI hardware, James edits the original MIDI information and records them as external digital music files. Developers of ScummVM then add code so the newly created files will work within the titles.
"ScummVM has always inspired my involvement and although I am not a programmer, I hope my ScummVM Music Enhancement Project adds a little extra enjoyment to users of this fine point and click adventure software." says James Woodcock, creator of the enhanced soundtrack.
James has previously released other enhanced soundtracks for titles including:
- Beneath A Steel Sky
- Discworld
- Inherit the Earth
- Simon the Sorcerer
- The 7th Guest
To download the enhanced soundtrack, click there.
ScummVM has been accepted for the Google Summer of Code 2013!
We're hoping to find another group of students who want to help out the ScummVM project and get paid for 12 weeks of coding work over the summer.
Maybe you'd like to help us improve support for games, or enhance our user interface? Perhaps you'd like to revamp our OpenGL support and accelerate the rendering of some engines? Or do you have even bigger ideas, like starting support for yet more games?
If any of this seems like a good way to spend your summer, take a look at our ideas list, or drop into our IRC channel (#scummvm on irc.freenode.net) and have a chat with us!
Beware: the application period is from April 22 to May 3, so be sure to talk to us in time! We know from previous years that it's really helpful to apply early, and to get involved with the ScummVM community so we can help to revise your application.
It's the year 2318; you're part of an agency created to protect the integrity of the timeline after time travel has been invented. After it is detected that someone has changed the past, it's up to you to repair the time stream!
The ScummVM Team is proud to announce support for the Macintosh version of The Journeyman Project: Pegasus Prime. So go grab the latest daily build of ScummVM and play through the game to assist us in testing!
If you find any bugs while playing, please report them to our bug tracker following our bug submission guidelines. For information on how to extract the data off the disc, follow instructions listed on our wiki.
After saving an old peddler from a band of bandits, Fenimore Fillmore finds out about three skulls that will unlock the lost treasure of the Toltecs! It's up to him to find the golden skulls and the treasure, before the bandits do!
The ScummVM Team is pleased to announce support for 3 Skulls of the Toltecs. So grab your copies of the DOS versions of the game and start playing in the latest daily build of ScummVM and help us with the testing, while enjoying this great cartoon western adventure game!
As usual all bugs should be reported to our bug tracker. You can find a list of data files in the data files page on our wiki. For further information, check out the bug submission guidelines.
Grim Fandango was created on the peak of LucasArts games popularity. The ever-inspirational Tim Schafer in a fury of artistry packed together the best atmosphere he could create and the game was born. For a while there was great and steady efforts on creating an engine which would run this masterpiece on the modern hardware. The project is called ResidualVM.
After more than 9 years of hard work, our "sister" project, ResidualVM has reached a stable state and is now announcing their first stable release.
We survived the apocalypse! Let's celebrate that: grab your original of Grim Fandango and visit their site!
The city of Waterdeep is in dire need of heroes to defend it from the evil below the city. Assemble a group of four heroes, heed the call of the Lords of Waterdeep and start your quest in the sewers below the city!
But beware, for this is not your only quest. Archmage Khelben needs you to investigate strange happenings near the Temple of Darkmoon. People around it are disappearing and human remains are found in shallow graves.
The ScummVM Team is pleased to announce support for Eye of the Beholder and Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon. So grab your copies of the DOS versions of the games and start playing in the latest daily build of ScummVM and help us with the testing, while enjoying these great games.
As usual all bugs should be reported to our bug tracker. However, please make sure you have got all the required data files before you report a bug. You can find a list of data files on our wiki, here are the links for Eye of the Beholder and Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon. For further information, check out the bug submission guidelines.
Happy dungeon crawling!
The ScummVM team, in close collaboration with Nayma soft (the legal rights owner) and DotEmu, is happy to announce support for Tony Tough in our development branch. The title is available for purchase from DotEmu.
However, the game was tested only on Windows and Linux, so we would like to announce our usual testing period. Please grab the game from your attic or purchase it from DotEmu, test it with a daily build and submit your bug reports to our bug tracker.
We would also like to take this opportunity to announce the affiliation program with DotEmu: By buying games through this link or by using the banner on the right side of the page, you will be supporting ScummVM.
Thanks to the generosity of Creative Reality and Neil Dodwell, the ScummVM team is happy to announce the freeware release of Dreamweb.
This game was originally released in 1994 and is set in a cyberpunk dystopian city where a bartender named Ryan has been having some disturbing dreams...
You can find the freeware release for English, French and Spanish on our downloads page.
The ScummVM team would like to make it clear that this game was given a (15) certification at release as it features a disturbing story and violence, and is thus not suitable for children.
If you happen to own an original version not yet available on our download page, please contact us so we can work on making it free too!
After the previous announcement, several of you asked for the Italian version of Flight of the Amazon Queen. We would like to thank Hkz for providing the original CD and John Passfield and Steve Stamatiadis for accepting our request to make this version freeware. The ScummVM project team is therefore proud to bring you the Italian version of the game, using English speech with Italian subtitles.
You can download it from the downloads page. Have fun!
Several years ago, we brought you the English, the German and the Hebrew versions of "Flight of the Amazon Queen". Today, thanks to John Passfield and Steve Stamatiadis over at Krome Studios in Australia and their previous discussions with James 'Ender' Brown, the ScummVM project team is proud to bring you the French talkie version of the game.
You can download it from the downloads page. Have fun!
This year, we had the great honor to have four students accepted by Google's Summer of Code to work on ScummVM:
- Danil Ishkov (Jakimushka).
- Eric Culp (Singron).
- Einar Johan Trøan Sømåen (Somaen).
- Jody Northup (Upthorn).
Jakimusha worked on a testing framework, Singron on improving our scalers by creating a plugin system, Somaen on the integration of the Wintermute engine in ScummVM, and Upthorn worked on improving our code for saving games.
The Wintermute engine has already been merged, and pull requests for the new testing framework and the new scaler plugin systems are currently being polished. While Upthorn's project didn't last the summer, we have a pull request which adds much-improved support for saving games to the composer engine.
The next and final step for this year of GSoC is the mentor summit, where ScummVM will be represented again by sev and Strangerke.
We'd like to thank once again Google for their organization, their support and for accepting us this year again. ScummVM made a great step forward thanks to them, once again!
We'd also like to warmly thank Jakimushka, Singron, Somaen and Upthorn for working this summer with us, with a special mention for Somaen who decided to keep working for ScummVM on Wintermute. We hope that some of the others might do so too!
As part of the ScummVM Music Enhancement Project,
James has released version 1.0 of his enhanced soundtrack for The 7th Guest.
The 7th Guest is James' 5th enhanced soundtrack released so far with another on the horizon. The project enables users of ScummVM who own the original game the ability to experience game MIDI music through high quality modern equipment without any of the cost, which has been in this case edited and recorded on James' Tyros4 keyboard, currently Yamaha's flagship model.
"The 7th Guest revolutionised the way in which we experience video games and the soundtrack originally created by The Fat Man added to the overall atmosphere and splendour" commented James Woodcock, creator of the ScummVM Music Enhancement Project. James continued "With the wonderful soundtrack originally in MIDI format, it was an obvious title to target for enhancement and I appreciated that Trilobyte Games gave their blessing".
James has already released enhanced soundtracks for Simon the Sorcerer, Discworld, Inherit the Earth and more recently Beneath A Steel Sky.
You can download the enhanced soundtrack that is compatible with ScummVM 1.5.0 and watch a video of it in action by visiting James' website below:
The 7th Guest Enhanced Soundtrack & Video
Little Red Riding Hood looking over at her grandmother's latest install of ScummVM, noting the update to version 1.5.0 and asked "My what a lot of games you now support". "All the better to entertain you with my dear!" responded the curiously grinning relative.
We all love to feast on the most sumptuous of gaming titles and our latest release will fulfil your craving for even more classic point and click adventures.
Version 1.5.0 adds support for Once Upon A Time: Little Red Riding Hood and the following titles:
- Backyard Baseball 2003
- Blue Force
- Darby the Dragon
- Dreamweb
- Geisha
- Gregory and the Hot Air Balloon
- Magic Tales: Liam Finds a Story
- Sleeping Cub's Test of Courage
- Soltys
- The Princess and the Crab
As always, there are many more new features; you can find the full list in our release notes and the release itself on our downloads page.
Enjoy and hopefully you won't find the big bad wolf who is sure to give you a byte!
Once again, it's time to start a new testing season to prepare the release of ScummVM v1.5.0. As usual, we have announced several new supported games:
- Backyard Baseball 2003
- Blue Force
- Darby the Dragon
- Dreamweb
- Geisha
- Gregory and the Hot Air Balloon
- Magic Tales: Liam Finds a Story
- Once Upon A Time: Little Red Riding Hood
- Sleeping Cub's Test of Courage
- Soltys
- The Princess and the Crab
So, go grab your favorite games, and play through them using a daily build. Soltys is also available as a freeware on our download page. If you find any bugs, report them on the bug tracker. Once you've completed a game, please report it on the forums so it can be added to the release testing wiki page. When reporting, make sure you provide the version, language, and platform of the game you're testing. Any other questions? Go see the Release Testing guidelines.
All the better to eat you with!
We are proud to announce that yet another Coktel Vision game is supported now. Once Upon A Time: Little Red Riding Hood is an interactive story following the well-known fairy tale and lets you play as either the titular Little Red Riding Hood or as the wolf.
So if you want to rescue and/or eat Grandmother, get the latest daily build of ScummVM and your copy of Once Upon A Time: Little Red Riding Hood; and report all bugs you find to our bug tracker. As always, we would like you to make screenshots along the way as well, and submit them to our patch tracker. See the bug submission guidelines and screenshot guidelines for more help on these topics.
Traveling to Tokyo, you begin your search. But time is running out, because the mad scientist is about to transform her into a cyborg-Geisha...
So, be quick and grab the latest daily build of ScummVM together with your copy of Geisha. Report all bugs to our bug tracker and submit screenshots of the game to our patch tracker, following the bug submission guidelines and screenshot guidelines.
Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink...
Euh... No, not this nightmare: you're Ryan, a bartender who can't sleep peacefully for months because of weird dreams and nightmares. During one of those, a monk suggests you become the deliverer who would keep the Dreamweb safe by killing its enemies.
The ScummVM Team is proud to announce that Dreamweb is now playable in ScummVM using the latest daily builds, and ready for testing.
Please post any bugs you find in the bugtracker, following our bug submission guidelines. Any screenshots of your playthrough is welcome.
Almost six weeks ago, we announced you that ScummVM has been accepted by Google for its Google Summer of Code 2012. Since then, we received many good applications and we asked a lot of efforts to the students to clarify and enhance theirs. We'd like to thank them all for all these efforts!
Yesterday, Google announced the list of accepted students and tasks per project and it's with great joy that we announce you that this year, 4 students will be working on ScummVM tasks:
- Jakimushka will work on a new testing framework based on an event recorder/player
- Singron will turn scalers into plugins and will add some new ones
- Somaen will integrate the Wintermute Lite engine and will add some currently missing functionalities
- Upthorn will work on a new save anywhere feature, per engine, particularly useful for mobile devices
We'd like to welcome them warmly and to wish them the best! And of course, last but not least, we'd like to thank Google for giving us the possibility, once more, to work with talented students during summer time.
Happy April Fools' Day! Thanks to ST for providing a screenshot of one of his Groovie C# tools.
No, we're not moving to a new website. I'm proud to announce the new ScummVM rewrite in C# for Windows Phone 7 and Xbox 360 ports. This does not include any of the previous "ScummVM-XNA" code and is all new code based on our current working tree. The Windows Phone 7 port has been the main target of our work as I'm more familiar with the touchscreen controls. It shouldn't be much more work for the Xbox 360 port since I'm going through the XNA Game Studio. Since going through each engine is very tedious work, I've only worked on the engine I'm most familiar with: Groovie. And, I think the results speak for themselves. I'll have the source code up on GitHub soon, but here's a brief snippet of some working converted C# code.
Happy April Fools' Day! Thanks to DrMcCoy, LordHoto, and Strangerke for their help.
Cedric is one of the most famous characters in Sierra history. However, he has divided the fanbase into those who find him slightly irksome and those that adore him. We have therefore come up with a modification for ScummVM that optionally removes Cedric from King's Quest V. In addition to being able to remove Cedric from King's Quest V, we have also worked on a mode for all other ScummVM games to insert Cedric into them. Cedric integrates directly into those games and can interact with the game as well as the player. A set of screenshots of this mode (and of King's Quest V) can be found at the end of this news post. Some of the other developers have also chimed in with their opinion on the subject. ScummVM PR officer Strangerke said, "ScummVM has always been about improving the quality of these games and now we finally have the opportunity to bring one of Sierra's most beloved characters to all the other games we support." "It really adds to these Coktel Vision games," stated ScummVM Gob developer DrMcCoy, "they're actually playable now." "I can't imagine playing these games any other way now; there's no going back," added clone2727. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis Screenshot
Freelance Journalist James Woodcock recently released a podcast, where he interviews three key developers from ScummVM including Eugene Sandulenko (_sev), Arnaud Boutonné (Strangerke) and Johannes Schickel (LordHoto).
The one hour long audio show discusses the origins of ScummVM, the challenges involved and the exciting future ahead. The podcast also includes several MIDI tracks from classic point and click adventure games, reminding us of the fantastic legacy of this genre.
The podcast can be streamed or downloaded from James' own website.
We are very proud to announce that ScummVM has been accepted for another year as a mentoring organization for the Google Summer of Code. So now it's your turn to show your motivation and your love of 2D adventure games: if you're an eligible student for the Google Summer of Code and want to contribute to your favorite open-source project, take a look at our idea page, or propose your own!
We are waiting for your questions and suggestions on our irc channel: #scummvm on irc.freenode.net
The ScummVM Team is pleased to announce ScummVM 1.4.1, a maintenance only release that fixes several bugs in 1.4.0.
The most notable changes in this release are:
- Support for the Beneath a Steel Sky Enhanced Soundtrack by James Woodcock
- Slight graphical improvement for the PlayStation version of Broken Sword 2
- Several bugfixes for Lands of Lore
- More logical sound settings for SCI games
- A fixed crash in the VGA version of Quest for Glory 1
The full list of changes can be found in the release notes and the release binaries for many platforms are located on our downloads page.
No, not that force, it's Blue Force. Jake Ryan has just graduated from the Policy Academy, and it's up to you to guide his actions as he starts his police career. He'll quickly become involved in solving a series of crimes which, unbeknownst to him, are inextricably entwined with the murder of his parents when he was a child.
The ScummVM Team is proud to announce that Blue Force is now playable in ScummVM using the latest daily builds, and ready for testing. As usual, all bugs should be reported to our bug tracker following our bug submission guidelines. While you play through the game, we would also love it if you could take some screenshots for us.
Take a little break and compose yourself. After tireless weeks of work, the ScummVM team is proud to announce support for two children's adventure games — Gregory and the Hot Air Balloon and Darby the Dragon — And on top of that, you can also play some interactive books from the Magic Tales series. So, if you can find your childhood spirit, dig out your copies and enjoy those adorable games.
To play these, you'll need a daily build of ScummVM. Any lurking bugs you find should be reported using our bug tracker, and along the way, please consider making few screenshots, following our guidelines.
We are also looking for additional information on localised versions and Magic Tales books. If you have one which is not recognized by the latest ScummVM daily build, please follow the guidelines here and report this to the team or as a bug.
Have fun!
Chief finally found a husband for his "beautiful" daughter, but before the end of the ceremony, Leon escaped. So now... where is Leon?
The ScummVM Team is proud to announce that Soltys is playable for the first time in English and Polish using ScummVM! Special thanks to L.K. Avalon and Mr Wiśniewski for providing the sources and to nutron for spending so much time on the translation!
You'll need a daily build to get started, then grab the game on our downloads page and test it! As usual, all bugs should be reported to our bug tracker following our bug submission guidelines. While you play through the game, we would love it if you could take some screenshots for us.
If you would like to contribute further, you could invest some of your free time in translating Soltys and Dragon History, which should be easy to translate to most European-based languages. If you are interested, please contact translation AT scummvm DOT org.
The developers of ScummVM are pleased to announce that as of today, the
classic game Beneath A Steel Sky has full support for
James Woodcock's Music
Enhancement Project within the latest daily build. The project started way
back in January 2006 as James Woodcock
committed himself to use the original MIDI files from various Point and Click
Adventure titles, creating enhanced versions using modern MIDI equipment. He has
already released the Simon the
Sorcerer, Discworld and
Inherit the Earth versions
and can now add Beneath A Steel
Sky to his completion list:
"I have tried very hard to remain faithful to the originals in respect to the excellent composers creations..." says James Woodcock, creator of the ScummVM Music Enhancement Project. He continues "...There has been a lot of support and interest from Beneath A Steel Sky fans, who have been monitoring its progress very carefully and it is with great pleasure I can finally play Beneath A Steel Sky using new versions of the original soundtrack with many thanks to the developers of ScummVM for all their hard work in making this feature possible".
James uses the Yamaha Tyros4 keyboard hooked up to his computer via USB and after going through various tweaking, recording and editing, a finalised music track is born.
You can download the enhanced soundtrack from James' Beneath A Steel Sky page, where instructions are also included. You can follow and show your support for James on both Twitter and Facebook.
It has been over 10 years. We are here thanks to the work of 131 developers. 49,124 commits were made just to the ScummVM tree and those turned into a massive 1,085,714 lines of code (excluding comments) and of course over 7.6 million downloads from the main site alone. I would say those were a great ten years.
The outcome is ScummVM 1.4.0 which we are releasing today, 11/11/11 11:11:11.11.
More games are supported: Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos (based on the same engine as Kyrandia), the kids' game Blue's Birthday Adventure, and the science fiction game Ringworld: Revenge of the Patriarch. On top of that, practically all supported Sierra SCI games now have their Amiga versions working. Our musically inclined users will notice PC speaker support in Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, CMS support in Loom, The Secret of Monkey Island and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, fixed MIDI in the DOS versions of the Elvira series, and even sound in Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood!
As always, there are many more new features; you can find the full list in our release notes and the release itself on our downloads page.
This year, two students were accepted for ScummVM:
- Jussi Pitkanen (Tiqpit)
- Engin Manap (Enginmanap).
Tiqpit worked on improving the AGI Engine. Sadly, he decided to quit before the end of his tasks, but his code was of such good quality that it is now merged into master, so ScummVM benefits from his work.
Enginmanap worked on objectifying the CruisE engine. He did a great job, and his work is currently being polished before a final merge into master.
We were also represented at the mentor summit by sev and Strangerke.
We are really grateful to Google for all of their support, and are already working on GSoC 2012 tasks.
Fasten your seatbelts because another ScummVM release is just around the corner!
However, we need your help first in testing out a few games before we can release. In addition to the two new games for this release, Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos and Ringworld: Revenge of the Patriarch, we have a few other games that need testing. Please take a look at our wiki page to see which games need a playthrough.
As with all release testing, you'll need a daily build to get started. If you happen to find any bugs, please report them on the bug tracker. Once you complete one of the games, please let us know on the forums so we can throw the results up on the wiki page. Further information can be found in the release testing guidelines.
And Strangerke would like to remind you to grab a couple of screenshots of Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos and Ringworld: Revenge of the Patriarch for us and submit them according to our guidelines.
No, it's not Tolkien's Ring, it's the Ringworld. Join Quinn, Miranda, and Seeker-of-Vengeance as they seek to unravel the mysteries of the Ringworld and find a way to stop the insane Kzinti Patriarch.
The ScummVM Team is pleased to announce support for Ringworld: Revenge of the Patriarch. So grab your copy of the DOS Floppy or CD (original CD release/First Wave re-release), start playing in the latest daily build of ScummVM, and help us with the testing while enjoying this classic science fiction adventure.
Of course, all bugs should be reported to our bug tracker. For further information, check out the bug submission guidelines.
Good luck finding the elusive stasis boxes.
We are proud to announce a maintenance release of the ScummVM 1.3.x series. This release has a number of fixes, mainly related to audio. Also, several games had slipped past testing for 1.3.0 and turned out to be no longer completable. They have now been fixed, so if you want to play Discworld, Inherit the Earth: Quest for the Orb, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, or play FM-TOWNS SCUMM games on mobile devices or consoles, we highly recommend that you upgrade.
The release can be found on our downloads page and full release notes are also available from our site.
These are amongst the last words of Timothy, one of your friends; But when the Dark Army is on the march, there is no time for mourning the dead. Time is essential in the race against the evil sorceress Scotia, so you had better continue your journey to save the realm of Gladstone.
The ScummVM Team is pleased to announce support for Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos. So grab your copy of the DOS Floppy, DOS CD or even the PC-98 version and start playing Lands of Lore in the latest daily build of ScummVM and help us with the testing, while enjoying this great game. A quick side note: Unlike other ScummVM supported adventure games, Lands of Lore is an RPG (Role Playing Game). We are supporting it as it uses the same engine (KYRA) as The Legend of Kyrandia series. Please do not ask us to support other RPGs!
Of course, all bugs should be reported to our bug tracker. However, please make sure you have got all the required datafiles before you report a bug. For further information, check out the bug submission guidelines.
Happy dungeon crawling!
It has been longer than usual since the last release. Nevertheless the team is happy to announce the release of ScummVM 1.3.0.
The release is truly feature-rich: in particular we are introducing support for a new platform, WebOS, and adding a set of new games: Urban Runner, Playtoons, Toonstruck, Hugo series, Living Books, Backyard Baseball. We have also continued to work hard on the SCI engine, so Amiga and some Macintosh versions of the games are supported now too. Many of our ports received improvements, and a number of bugs have been fixed in practically every engine. Thus your gameplay should be smoother and more enjoyable.
As usual, the release can be found on our downloads page and full release notes are also available.
The ScummVM team is announcing another round of release testing in preparation for our next release: 1.3.0!
Since our last release, we've been very busy working on adding support for more of your favorite games. Backyard Baseball. Backyard Baseball 2001, Hugo's House of Horrors, Hugo 2: Whodunit?, Hugo 3: Jungle of Doom, Playtoons: Bambou le Sauveur de la Jungle, Toonstruck, and Urban Runner are all ready for our loyal fans to play through to their hearts' content. Several Living Books games are also supported now: Aesop's Fables: The Tortoise and the Hare, Arthur's Birthday (v1), Arthur's Teacher Trouble, Dr. Seuss's ABC, Green Eggs and Ham, Harry and the Haunted House, Just Grandma and Me (v1), Little Monster at School, Ruff's Bone, Sheila Rae, the Brave, Stellaluna, The Berenstain Bears Get in a Fight, The Berenstain Bears in the Dark, The New Kid on the Block. You can see more info on the bugs we fixed and the features we added over here.
Like with our last release testing, not all games will be tested; only games that have had significant changes to their codebase since the last release are up for testing. As usual, the list of games to be tested is on the wiki.
Those games aren't going to test themselves! Download a daily build and report any bugs you find to the bug tracker. If you complete a game, please let us know on the forums so we can throw the results up on the wiki page. Be sure to provide the version, language, and platform of your game when reporting a completion. Any other questions? Go check out the release testing guidelines.
Continuing our incredible pace of one announcement per month, we're proud to be able to ask you to grab your copies of Hugo's trilogy (DOS or Windows version) and try them out in ScummVM using the latest daily build.
The games supported (Hugo's House of Horror, Hugo 2: Whodunit? and Hugo 3: Jungle of Doom) are still available for sale on the author's site. So buy them if you don't own them, copy the required data files and give them a try!
Don't hesitate to report any bugs you find in the bugtracker, following our bug submission guidelines. Screenshots are welcome too, as usual!
We are very excited to announce support for ScummVM on Linux using Kinect! Through the tireless efforts of a few coders, Strangerke, LordHoto, and Hkz, they have managed to come up with an amazing per-game gesture system. This new Kinect input system recognizes player input and translates it to mouse and keyboard presses which are then processed by the game engine. Unfortunately, this currently only works with the Kinect for Linux drivers. The code is still very much a work-in-progress, but we've put up some screenshots of various developers testing out their favorite games in ScummVM. Here's ST testing out Backyard Soccer, myself playing Full Throttle, Hkz playing Gabriel Knight, and DrMcCoy playing Urban Runner. Stay tuned for more info and a daily build should be expected within the next few days! :)
Happy April Fools' Day!
We're pleased to announce that the next release of ScummVM will have support for several "Living Books" games! It's time to relive your childhood memories (or memories of your children!) and dust off the old discs. The (sadly) now grown-up ScummVM team no longer has all of these games lying around, so we need your help in testing the games to weed out any remaining bugs.
The first batch of supported Living Books games consists of Just Grandma and Me (v1), Arthur's Teacher Trouble, Aesop's Fables: The Tortoise and the Hare, Ruff's Bone, The New Kid on the Block, Arthur's Birthday (v1), Little Monster at School, Harry and the Haunted House, The Berenstain Bears Get in a Fight, Dr. Seuss's ABC, Sheila Rae, the Brave, The Berenstain Bears in the Dark, Stellaluna, and most of Green Eggs and Ham. We hope to support the rest of the games in the future, but in the meantime, we hope that these are enough to keep our loyal users occupied.
Be sure to grab a daily build when testing. If you spot any bugs while enjoying these classic interactive stories or even just complete one, we'd really like to know over on the forums. Be sure to
drink your ovaltine post them to the bug tracker; and keep those bug submission guidelines in mind. And if anyone happens to take a few screenshots before nap time and wishes to submit them, we would be eternally grateful.
ScummVM is pleased to announce that it has been accepted for participation in Google's Summer of Code 2011 program.
This is our fifth year in the program and we would like to make it our best yet.
We are now welcoming applications to join the program, provided that you are:
- A current student (undergraduate, graduate, post-graduate ...)
- Like point and click adventures
- Know some C++ and have some coding skills
- Like the prospect of spending your summer with the ScummVM team, writing superb code for cool games full time for 12 weeks
- Wish to get involved with a leading open source project in its field and become an asset to its community
Should you apply and be selected you will be rewarded, both financially thanks to Google and with gratitude, encouragement and the legally mandated minimal amounts of abuse by the ScummVM Team upon completion of a successful project.
You never know, we may even share our secret Grog recipe!
Now run along and pick up some interesting ideas from our Open Tasks page or be creative and propose your own ideas and apply. Make sure you read our requirements on the Open Tasks page and review the rest of our Summer of Code notes on the wiki.
Having participated for several years we cannot stress how beneficial it can be to apply early, revise your application as you go and really get involved with the community. The final deadline for applications is April 8th at 19:00 UTC.
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to send an e-mail to the scummvm-devel mailing list, drop by our forum or pop into our IRC channel (#scummvm at freenode.net).
After having hosted our source code in Subversion for five years (to the day), we have today moved to the Git distributed version control system, hosted on GitHub.
The new repository page is at https://github.com/scummvm/scummvm.
For users nothing should have changed, but for developers it should now be much easier to contribute to ScummVM.
Did you ever want to experience the world of the Toons, like in the movies "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" or "Space Jam"? Enter Toonstruck, the zany newly supported game that casts Christopher Lloyd (Great Scott!) as Drew Blanc, a cartoon animator who lands in a place where anything is possible. With his sidekick Flux Wildly, help him to solve the tons of puzzles in order to get back home to the real world!
Take your Bottomless Bag, grab your two Toonstruck CDs, the latest daily build of ScummVM and start testing the game right away! You can find the required datafiles here.
Please post any bugs you find in the bugtracker, following our bug submission guidelines. Any screenshot of your playthrough is welcome.
New year, new supported games. And we are proud to announce two of such newly supported games right away!
The first one is the FMV-tastic detective mystery Urban Runner: You are the investigative reporter Max who's being hunted for a murder he didn't commit by both the police and the actual killers. Can you escape your hunters and solve the crime?
The second one is an obscure interactive storybook for children of the Playtoons series: Bambou le Sauveur de la Jungle. We have only managed to find the French version of the game; other language versions may or may not exist. Information on these would be very much appreciated.
So, grab your running shoes and/or jungle hat, the latest daily build of ScummVM, your game CDs and join us in the (bug)hunt! The needed datafiles can be found here and here. Bugs should be reported to our bug tracker, but please follow our bug submission guidelines. Screenshots of both games would be great too!
The last ScummVM release in this year just has been released. This is a maintenance release and is aimed to fix several important bugs since 1.2.0.
Particularly we added Hungarian and Brazilian translations of the GUI, and made bugfixes to the Cruise, Groovie and Lure engines.
It is available from our downloads page and full release notes could be found here.
CABAL (Coalesced 'Adventures beyond Architecture' League) finally came alive, and now for real. Yes, truly, it took us just 6.5 years, and today we are eagerly announcing that a universal adventure game interpreter, playing SCUMM, AGI, and SCI games has been released.
From now on, it is available on ScummVM's downloads page (Look for version 1.2.0). You may jump straight there, or stay a bit longer and see what cool new features are included.
As you have probably already realized, this release has support for SCI, and moreover, the list of compatible games goes beyond the original FreeSCI which was merged about 1.5 years ago. We support Conquests of Camelot/the Longbow, Castle/Island of Dr. Brain, Codename: ICEMAN, EcoQuest 1&2, all four Hoyle games, Freddy Pharkas, Jones in the Fast Lane, King's Quest I-VI, both Laura Bow games, Larry up to 6 (low-res 6 only), Police Quest 1-3, Quest for Glory I-III, Space Quest up to V and a few others. Incredible work by the FreeSCI team and our own SCI engine team!
Early SCI 16-color games can be optionally undithered by ScummVM, making them look much better. To see a comparison between undithered graphics and the original, watch this video produced by one of our SCI engine developers and see for yourself.
Besides SCI, we have added support for yet another Coktel Vision game called Fascination and we have a number of new ports: Android, Dingux, Caanoo and OpenPandora. Unfortunately we had to declare the PalmOS port officially dead.
As usual there are tons of engine-specific bug fixes. Take a look at the release notes if you want to know more. But wait! We would like to tell a little bit about another long-awaited feature new in this release. After all these years we are finally going international, and the ScummVM GUI can be translated into any language (well, almost any). Right now we have Catalan, English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish and Ukrainian localizations. Besides this there are a lot of smaller improvements like tooltips, radio buttons, improved usability and we support more games running from original media without the need to shuffle the game files.
Enough talking! Now it is time to download ScummVM and start playing!
Following up on the SCI game testing, a testing session for the next ScummVM release has arrived! It's time to point and click at several other ScummVM games that need testing before we can publish a new version.
This testing season we have two new games up for testing: Fascination and Maniac Mansion (C64 version).
Contrary to previous testing seasons, not all games will be tested. The number of games supported has grown significantly and testing all the games is too much. So for this testing season, and testing seasons onward, we've decided to only put games up for testing that have had significant changes to their codebase since the last release. As usual, the list of games to be tested is on the wiki. The page also lists games that are not required to be tested, but feel free to test them too if you don't have any of the other games that require testing.
Note that the SCI games are not on the testing page. The SCI testing went well and they do not need to be tested again.
So what are you waiting for? Go test some ScummVM games using a daily build and report any bugs you find to the bug tracker. After completing a playthrough of a game, please report it on the forums so it can be added to the release testing wiki page. Make sure you provide the version, language, and platform of your game when reporting a completion. Consult the testing guidelines should you have any other questions.
You're Doralice, the cutest airline captain of the Paris-Miami flight. During your last trip, a dying passenger asked you to deliver top secret vials. Will you succeed in your mission, avoiding deadly traps and solving every mystery?
Currently, the PC versions of Fascination are missing an AdLib player, but everything else is there. Please note that the CD version requires some manipulations and the ScummVM tools to extract the required files.
Get the latest daily build of ScummVM and your version of the game and give Fascination a try! Please post any bugs and unrecognized versions you can find to our bug tracker, following the bug submission guidelines.
And if you find interesting sights, be sure to submit your screenshots.
It's been only six years and a few months since CABAL was jokingly announced, and now the first round of Sierra's SCI games is going to be supported in ScummVM!
However, we need your help in testing the SCI games. That's right, you, the loyal ScummVM user. Go grab your DOS or Windows SCI game (that is on this list) and play through it with a ScummVM daily build. As you play through the game, try not to die too much, save often, and note down any bugs that you find so you can report them on the bug tracker. Please do not report bugs on non-PC versions of SCI games; they are not supported yet.
When you've finished going through a game, go report it on the forums. If you feel up to the challenge, move on to your next SCI game! And if you're really feeling the Sierra vibe, go test all your SCI games that are up for testing!
Even if you don't have any SCI games, you can still help out. There are many SCI demos (only choose those on the supported demo list) and fan games out there that are waiting for you to test them.
Only four weeks since our last release and already ScummVM 1.1.1 is available on our downloads page.
This release concentrates primarily on fixing bugs, bugs, and even more bugs. As such, we strongly recommend all and every ScummVM user to update to this latest and greatest version. In particular, just as promised we fixed the issues affecting Nippon Safes Inc and Pajama Sam 1 in 1.1.0.
Take a look at the release notes if you want to know a bit more.
And don't forget to visit our downloads page to get the best ScummVM ever!
Google recently announced the list of students for this year's
Summer of Code program.
For ScummVM, the accepted students and their respective projects can be found at our landing page of the GSoC 2010 site.
The ScummVM team and especially the mentors welcome our 4 students this year:
Neeraj, Tony, Michael and Alejandro who will be tackling a range of interesting projects.
Congratulations, the best of luck and enjoy coding this summer :-)
We would also like to take the time to thank everyone who applied for ScummVM GSoC places this year
but was unsuccessful.
We hope we can welcome many of you into our community.
Another 4 months passed, a lot of hard work done... and finally it is here: ScummVM 1.1.0 is available now on our downloads page.
There are some pretty exciting new features: We added support for 16bit graphics, which allowed us to add support for a whole bunch of newer Humongous Entertainment games for kids. We also added or improved support for the Amiga versions of Monkey Island, Legend of Kyrandia and Future Wars. Plus there are two completely new engines for the games Dragon History (available for free from here) and TeenAgent (available for free from GOG.com). And finally there is now a port for the Nintendo 64 game console!
Take a look at the release notes if you want to know a bit more.
There is one grain of salt, though: If you want to play Nippon Safes Inc, we recommend that you stick with your current ScummVM version for now, as there are some nasty regressions in there which may even make it impossible to complete the game. Also the background music in Pajama Sam 1 isn't working correctly in the Kitchen and Mine areas anymore.
We are not happy about that, but in the end decided that we should not let this hold up the other new cool stuff we added. Instead, we will follow up this release in about four weeks with a 1.1.1 release that should fix these issues. In fact, you can help us make 1.1.1 even better by reporting any bugs you might encounter in 1.1.0.
And now go and get it while it's still hot from our downloads page, grab a build for your favorite device and have fun :).
Today, we would like to announce support for Urban Runner! The game has finally reached a completable state in our subversion tree. Now you can play as Max as he runs from the cops for being accused of a crime he didn't commit. You might even fall in love along the way. We would really appreciate it if you would go and test this game for us. When you find bugs, go report them here. When you have questions about reporting bugs, go here. Also, if you need a daily build, be sure to check out this page. We have also collected a group of screenshots:
Happy April Fools' Day!
Yes! ScummVM has been accepted for the fourth time in a row to participate in GSoC, now in Google Summer of Code 2010!
This is a great privilege and honor for us, and we would like to share this with you, considering that you are:
- A student (undergraduate, graduate, post-graduate, ...)
- Like point and click adventures
- Know some C++
- Looking forward to spending your summer with ScummVM, writing superb code for cool games full time for 12 weeks
If you match all criteria, we would love to invite you to apply as a student. You will be rewarded, both financially by Google and with fame, gratitude, cherishing and adoration by the ScummVM Team upon completion of a successful project.
Now run, pick some interesting task from our Open Tasks page or be creative and propose your own ideas and apply. Make sure you read our requirements on the Open Tasks page.
If you have any doubts or questions, feel free to e-mail to scummvm-devel mailing list or come to #scummvm IRC channel at freenode.net.
It's time once again to go out and test all your favorite ScummVM games as we gear up for another release of our humble little software. We have several new games announced as supported:
- Blue's Art Time Activities
- Blue's Reading Time Activities
- Dragon History
- Freddi Fish 5: The Case of the Creature of Coral Cove
- Pajama Sam: Games to Play on Any Day
- Spy Fox 3: Operation Ozone
- TeenAgent
So, go grab your favorite games, and play through them using a daily build. If you find any bugs, report them on the bug tracker. Once you've completed a game, please report it on the forums so it can be added to the release testing wiki page. When reporting, make sure you provide the version, language, and platform of the game you're testing. Any other questions? Go see the Release Testing guidelines.
To coincide with the updated ScummVM logo, ScummVM t-shirts have also received a touch up. The shirts sport the verb list from Maniac Mansion on the chest, the updated logo on the upper back, and the scummvm.org url on the left sleeve. Shirts are now available in sizes small through 3XL. If you need a larger size, please contact sales[at]combobreaker[dot]com with a request.
Shipping to the USA and Canada is free, and shipping elsewhere is offered at a discounted rate. Head over to Combobreaker.com to pick them up!
Initial reports claim the gold held in the MEGA-BANK vault just began to vanish! MEGA-BANK Security were asked to review the CCTV footage, however they were unable to see anything.
Do you think you can solve this mystery? Are you willing to take the role of Mark Hopper? A teenager hired by the RGB to infiltrate the mansion of John Noty and discover why and how he is becoming so rich.
That's right ladies and gentlemen, TeenAgent is now ready for testing! Why not take this opportunity to join Good Old Games where you can download TeenAgent for free. You will also need a Subversion build of ScummVM. As usual any bugs should be reported to our bug tracker. For further information, check out the bug submission guidelines.
The year is 1995. The place is the Czech Republic. You find yourself surrounded by inventive minds producing the latest Czech point-and-click adventure, and historically the first Czech CD-ROM-based adventure game. You are Bert, a young dragon with a taste for adventure. After being corrupted by an evil magic wand named Eveline, you are desperate to remedy the mischiefs you created. You decide to set out to find your father who disappeared a while ago.
Grab your copy of the Dragon History game and a Subversion build of ScummVM, and get playing! The game is available in Czech, English, and Polish so you have no excuses!
All bugs should be reported to our bug tracker. For further information, check out the bug submission guidelines.
It was just 3.5 months ago when we started to prepare for this release, and now finally the day has come.
Ladies and gentlemen, please greet the one and only ScummVM 1.0.0 "Shiny Logo!" The long awaited, the most anticipated, the best... whatever.
We worked very hard on stability in this release, and in addition to all that goodness available since our 1.0.0rc1, we added a new set of ports for Motorola Linux-based phones (those on MotoEZX and MotoMAGX platforms) and fixed just a few hundred bugs.
The release is available from the usual place, and the full list of changes can be found right here in the NEWS file.
Now jump to the downloads page, grab a build for your favorite device and spread the word that ScummVM is 1.0.0!
As you may have already noticed, we are in the process of switching from our old trusty logo and icons to new, slightly revised versions. The main change is that the lowercase "s" has now become an uppercase "S" -- this is meant to help stop the confusion lots of people seem to have about our name: We are called "ScummVM", and not "scummvm" :-).
Besides that, the new logo was touched up by its original author, Jean-Marc, to produce higher quality versions (in PNG and SVG format) of both the logo and the icon. As a result, they look better and yummier than ever before.
We are not yet completely done converting everything to the new logo and icon (boy, they are really present in lots of places), but are actively working on it. The upcoming 1.0.0 release of ScummVM will be the first to feature the new art everywhere.
So, I hope you like the new art just as much as we do :-).
As all of you have probably heard, we are still in the testing phase for the 1.0.0 release. So far we have gotten many testings results, because of you, our fellow users. Thanks again to all the people who have already done testing for the next release. Sadly, we are missing some tests for certain games though. Here is the list of games for which we really need some testing results:
- The Manhole
- Rodney's Funscreen
- Elvira II - The Jaws of Cerberus
- Bargon Attack
- Goblins 3
- Bud Tucker in Double Trouble
- I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream
- Nippon Safes Inc.
If you own one of these games please grab a daily build of ScummVM and play through it. Submit any bugs you discover along the way to the bug tracker. When you complete a game, report it on the forums so we can add it to our release testing wiki page. Be sure to provide the version, language, and platform of the game you're testing (in addition to the name of course) as well as what platform you are testing on. You can find more details on testing over here.
As you can see on our release testing wiki page, almost all testing results are from our desktop ports. If you have ScummVM running on console or handheld ports we also ask you to test your games (not necessarily only the ones mentioned above) there as well, and report your results in the above mentioned way.
Did you hear about our plans for 1.0.0? This is going to be the best ScummVM release ever! And to make it even more remarkable, we have decided to put out a Release Candidate, which is awaiting you here.
It is a regular stable and supported release so don't let the name of 'Release Candidate' or 'RC1' throw you off. We have a release testing wiki page for the upcoming 1.0.0 release, which we would like to see turned into a mass of green indicating successful removal of any issues in the titles supported, and thus we need your help, our dear users of ScummVM. It would be really great to test as many games as possible on all varieties of platforms our project is ported to.
The list of changes which are prepared for you in this release is quite long. The highlights are:
- Added support for Discworld
- Added support for Discworld 2 - Missing Presumed ...!?
- Added support for Return to Zork
- Added support for Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2
- Added support for The Manhole
- Added support for Rodney's Funscreen
- Added support for Cruise for a Corpse
- Improved GUI vastly: added quick search, introduced per-game options, improved mass-add dialog
- Broken Sword 1 & 2 now run with original cutscenes
- Increased The 7th Guest microscope puzzle difficulty to match original
- Major improvements to PSP, PS2 and WinCE ports
- New port for GP2X Wiz handheld game console.
The full list of changes can be found in the NEWS file.
'Nuff said, so download ScummVM and be one step closer to 1.0.0.
James Woodcock, creator of the ScummVM Music Enhancement Project has recently released updated versions of previously available soundtracks reaching version 2.0, which include Simon the Sorcerer and Discworld. Discworld can now be played with the latest SVN versions of ScummVM implementing James Woodcock's enhanced music. Inherit the Earth, which comes under his 'Fan Creation Soundtrack' is a homage to the title and is now also downloadable from his personal website.
Available in High and Low bitrate versions, all three soundtracks are free to download and inspired by the original games and the ScummVM software.
"For many years, I have enjoyed the wonders of the ScummVM application allowing me to play many of my all time favourite point and click adventures. The ScummVM Music Enhancement Project gives me the chance to inject a little part of my passion for this gaming genre, while giving the community the option of alternative music". James Woodcock continues... "A big thank you to all who have contacted me via email, Twitter and IRC regarding my work and also of course to the original composers, developers and publishers of the titles I have covered and the ScummVM team, without who this would not have been possible!"
A preview of all three games running on ScummVM with James's music is demonstrated on this YouTube Playlist.
Change Log:
- Simon the Sorcerer v2.0
All tracks have been individually tweaked through a new master compressor to increase overall quality of the music.
- Discworld v2.0
Introduction music updated to emphasise the piano tracks, 7 previously missing tracks have now been added completing the soundtrack and the music is fully compatible with the latest ScummVM SVN builds for use within the title.
To find out more, make sure you visit his website or follow him on Twitter for new developments.
A few days ago, a member of the project was interviewed on the FLOSS Weekly podcast. The recorded show is now up, and you're all invited to listen.
Earlier today, ScummVM won the SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards 2009 award for 'Best Project for Gamers'.
The main Sourceforge.net: Community Hub hasn't yet been updated, but if you go to the Choice Awards 2009 Live Party website, you can see the results in the 'The Winners' box. It's certainly a nice way to celebrate ScummVM moving to its long awaited version 1.0 with this award as well.
It's time for everyone's favorite semiannual event! ScummVM Release Testing Season (TM)! However, this season we will be testing for 1.0.0! That's right, 1.0.0!
For this release, we have added support for a bunch of new games: Cruise for a Corpse, Discworld, Discworld 2 - Missing Presumed ...!?, Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2, The Manhole, Return to Zork, and Rodney's Funscreen.
As usual, go grab a daily build of ScummVM, play through the games and submit any bugs you see along the way to the bug tracker. When you complete a game, report it on the forums so we can add it to our release testing wiki page. Be sure to provide the version, language, and platform of the game you're testing (in addition to the name of course). You can find more details on testing over here.
There'll be few of you that don't know that the daily build of ScummVM has supported the first two Discworld games for some time now. Despite the stability of the engine, we held off announcing official support, since we were hoping to be able to simultaneously announce the freewaring of the game titles.
Since it seems unlikely the two games will be freewared in time for the next major release, it's been decided to go ahead and officially announce support for the games. The PC versions of the first two games are fully supported, and the PSX version of the Discworld 1 game is completable (but without music currently).
Those of you who haven't already played them can do so with the daily build of ScummVM, report all encountered bugs to our bug tracker and submit some nice screenshots.
Inspector Raoul Dusentier has been invited on a cruise by the mysterious businessman Niklos Karaboudjan, and the cruise has barely begun when Raoul stumbles on the man's dead body, and is knocked unconscious.
Help the inspector solve this baffling murder in 'Cruise for a Corpse'. Those that have the classic game for the PC are encouraged to try out the latest daily build, report all encountered bugs to our bug tracker and submit some nice screenshots.
Please note that currently only the PC version of the game is fully supported.. the Amiga and Atari ST versions are not.
Snowberry Connection, Société Pollene and ScummVM issued a joint press release, which announces that the first three Gobliiins games are available as bonus downloads for those who purchased Gobliiins 4 via GamersGate or Impulse. The games are also available on the DVD in at least the Russian and Hungarian releases of the game.
We are really happy that these art pieces of classic adventure gaming are available as a relatively easy purchase now, and that ScummVM helped Snowberry to make them run on modern systems with minimal effort.
Thanks, Snowberry!
If you want to be the envy of everyone in your neighborhood, be sure to be seen around in your beautiful new ScummVM T-shirt. Designed with the cooperation of the ScummVM team, this understated and elegant item will truly show off your adventure game leanings to the initiated. Plus, combobreaker.com are donating to the ScummVM project for each one sold!
While we're on the subject of helping ScummVM, please vote for your favorite point-and-click adventure game engine interpreter in the Sourceforge Community Choice Awards. Thanks to all the people that nominated us, we've made it through to the final round. If you click the link, ScummVM will be pre-selected in the Best Project for Gamers category, and you can go on and choose your favorite open-source projects in the other categories.
There are certain speculations about the case, some of them are really wild. Unfortunately, no one approached any of us and there are only a few real facts in those blog posts.
Thus, in an attempt to stop these potentially misleading messages, I made a blog post on my personal blog. I hope that I provided enough information there. If not, ask me for more details.
Consider the following an official "press release", and note that the exact wording is dictated to cyx and fingolfin by the settlement terms.
In December 2008, members of the ScummVM team discovered that three games for the Nintendo Wii console ("Freddi Fish: The Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds", published in Germany under the name "Fritzi Fisch und der verschwundene Schatz"; "Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside", published in Germany under the name "Pyjama Pit: Keine Angst im Dunkeln"; and "Spy Fox: Dry Cereal", published in Germany under the name "Spy Fox in: Das Milchkartell") made use of ScummVM, without complying with the terms of the GPL license. They sent a warning letter to the German distributor of these games, Atari Deutschland GmbH, who was not aware that ScummVM was used in the creation of the games. Atari Deutschland GmbH established contact with Mistic Software Inc., the developers of the games.
Mistic Software Inc. responded by denying that members of the ScummVM team hold any rights to the particular code they used. The dispute was ultimately settled in May 2009 by Mistic Software Inc. paying all legal fees and making a donation to the Free Software Foundation as a sign of good will, without acknowledging copyright infringement.
The 3rd free/open source software developers conference (EL/LAK) is taking place in Athens, Greece on June 19 and 20. Among the various open source software and related talks, this year ScummVM will also be participating with a presentation on June 20th.
The presentation intially aims to cover basic principles on how ScummVM works, its internal architecture and developer team layout. But we can also talk about adventure games in general, Google Summer of Code, open source gaming subjects or what ever else comes up!
So if you're around and interested, go forth and register for the conference and come by for a meet & greet. See you there!
Perhaps you haven't noticed, but now ScummVM's website runs new flashy code. Fredrik Wendel aka [vEX] has been working on it for several months now, and under the hood it is a complete rewrite with keeping the old design intact... Well, almost.
Now browsing screenshots has a new sleek design, navigation links are more logical (with keeping the backwards compatibility, so don't worry about your old links), SCUMM MD5 tables have better design, and the FAQ lost its magic numbers in the links.
Also we are proud to announce that Fredrik has been appointed official webmaster for the project, so now you can put all your complaints into his capable hands. :P
Since ScummVM 0.10.0 there has been unannounced support for subtitles in the Broken Sword 1 cutscenes.
Now we finally managed to provide a package with subtitles for the following languages: English, Brazilian, German, Spanish, French, Italian and Russian. Also, subtitles for the English demo are provided.
You can grab the package from the downloads page.
At the moment we still lack Czech subtitles, thus if you're willing to help us with providing them, please contact sev.
The SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards 2009 have started.
We invite you to support our little project by casting your vote.
The natural category for ScummVM would be Best Project for Gamers,
though if you feel that we could be Best Project, we wouldn't
mind much; a project can be nominated for more than one category
this year.
The Scary Robot is the mascot of these Awards, and in order to vote for ScummVM, click the mascot or this link.
We hope to see you in the finals!
P.S. For the live photosession of the Scary Robot see Fingolfin's blog.
It was not that long since our previous release, and now here is a new bugfix release hot off the press!
The list of fixed bugs is quite long, and you could read all of it in the release notes, but here is a summary for those of you who are too lazy to follow the links and eager to play the games better.
SAGA: Inherit the Earth is completable again; AGOS, Groovie, Sword2: fixed many sound-related issues; Parallaction: fixed a bug in one of the puzzles; squashed a number of bugs in the GUI. Also iPhone, Symbian, WinCE ports are much improved and NDS and PS2 ports are back again since 0.11.0.
We won't bother you anymore with the details. Go, download ScummVM and enjoy your play!
The Residual project now has a new home. Please visit here.
Google has announced the list of students for this year's Summer of Code. For ScummVM, the accepted students and their respective projects can be found in our landing page of the GSoC '09 site.
The ScummVM team and especially the mentors welcome our students this year: Denis, Michal, Norbert, Joakim and Jody. Welcome guys, good luck and enjoy coding this summer :-)
Yes, you're right: Summer! (In the northern hemisphere, at least ;))
And what did we do the last two years during the summertime?
Yeah, right again: Participate in the Google Summer of Code!
And do you know what we've just learned?
Correct again: We've learned that we're accepted this year as well!
So, if you're a student, want to have a great time helping our little project and even earn some money along the way ($4500 US actually), then join the Google Summer of Code!
Have you always wanted to work on a big Open Source project, applying your skills (or acquiring new skills) whilst improving that project, but were always intimidated due to its apparent monumental size? Did you ever wish there would be small, pre-cut manageable chunks of work where you could really show the world what you're made of? Well, wish no more, because the Google Summer of Code provides exactly these chunks that don't require you to spend years understanding the whole of the project, and even offers a monetary reward for your accomplishments.
If you're considering choosing to work on ScummVM (and we would certainly love to have you), our manageable chunks can be seen at our Open Tasks page. Of course, if you have a different interesting idea in your mind, we want to hear that as well! Please also mind our project rules.
For official information from Google, visit the Google Summer of Code website; and read the FAQ and the application guide.
Now, you better be quick, the deadline is on April 3!
As you open the mailbox behind the white house, a wizard tells you that you're the lucky sweepstakes winner, who can now play several great game titles by Activision under ScummVM!
We welcome the addition of the MADE engine by Activision. Four shiny new games are now supported: The infamous Return to Zork, Leather Goddesses of Phobos 2, The Manhole and Rodney's Funscreen
All you need to have is a copy of one of the aforementioned Activision games, and a new daily build of ScummVM.
If you find any bugs, you're welcome to report them to our bug tracker. Screenshots are also needed, which you can submit following our Screenshot submission guidelines.
As we turned to a 6 months release cycle, here is our newest and best ScummVM version for you!
A couple of new engines were added, and besides 2 Humongous Entertainment titles, we now support The 7th Guest and Bud Tucker in Double Trouble.
Among other notable things there is a completely new vector-based GUI, which is a merged work of our last year GSoC student Vicent Marti, as well as a General Main Menu which adds a common save/load interface to most of our engines, adding the much awaited Return to Launcher feature along the way. It was the work of another successful student, Chris Page.
A complete list of new games and features can be found in the release notes, and the latest ScummVM version itself (available for a large number of platforms as usual) is located at the downloads page.
Let's play!
Well, it is true. FreeSCI code now lives under engines/sci.
Most attentive users who watch our development list perhaps noticed that there exists yet another SCI1 engine implementation made from scratch. But for the benefit of everyone it was decided that the joint effort is much better.
Of course, don't expect any magic from it. First, the engine is not announced as supported yet. It is in early stages of integration. Then, you should keep in mind that after the merge will settle down, only SCI0, SCI01 and SCI1 games will be supported. However, due to the fact that some of ScummVM developers are interested in SCI development for some time now, we look forward to speeding up the work on the engine.
In the meantime, please, help us some more with 0.13.0 version playtesting.
You always wondered where to get games supported by ScummVM? Perhaps you were also asking, how I can help the project?
You could find the supported games either on our downloads page, or on our Where to buy games page on our Wiki. For helping the project we have had a PayPal button for some time.
But now you can reach both goals at the same time!
We are pleased to announce the start of an affiliate program with the excellent Good Old Games service, also known as GOG.com. Just click on their button on the sidebar and you will be brought to the site. Register there and buy some games. You will get your game, cheap, fast and legally, and the ScummVM project will get a share of the proceeds.
The main reason behind this is that GOG.com uses ScummVM for several of their offered titles. Currently they offer Broken Sword 2, Simon the Sorcerer 1, Simon the Sorcerer 2, Feeble Files, Waxworks, as well as some of the free games which we offer too. Each release is nicely pre-packaged with ScummVM, is DRM-free, goes for just $5.99, and the most important thing, is completely legal, as those folks chase the original rights holders.
Thus, watch their site, buy the games, and help our project.
PS: We will get the money only if you click on the provided button and register within a short period of time.
It is time to announce start of our pre-release testing. Next version of ScummVM is bringing you several new supported games as usual.
The games which were added are: Blue's 123 Time Activities, Blue's ABC Time Activities, Bud Tucker in Double Trouble and The 7th Guest. The procedure haven't changed, same as usual you need daily build of ScummVM, run through the games and submit any bugs you see along the way to the bug tracker. Once you complete the game, report on the forum post so the wiki page could be updated accordingly. We will need the version of the game, language, and platform.
The developers of ScummVM are pleased to announce that as of today, the classic game Discworld has full support for James Woodcock's Music Enhancement Project within the developers build. The project started way back in January 2006 as James Woodcock committed himself to use the original MIDI files from various Point and Click Adventure titles, creating enhanced versions using modern MIDI equipment. He has already released the Simon the Sorcerer version and can now add Discworld to his completion list:
"I have tried very hard to remain faithful to the originals in respect to the excellent composers creations..." says James Woodcock, creator of the ScummVM Music Enhancement Project. He continues "...There has been a lot of support and interest from Discworld fans, who have been monitoring its progress very carefully and it is with great pleasure I can finally play Discworld using new versions of the original soundtrack with many thanks to the developers of ScummVM for all their hard work in making this feature possible".
James uses the Yamaha Tyros2 keyboard hooked up to his computer via USB and after going through various tweaking, recording and editing, a finalised music track is born.
With permission from legendary author Terry Pratchett himself, the Discworld enhanced soundtrack (version 2.0) will be released in full and compatible with ScummVM in the future when hopefully we expect the freeware version of the game will be made available to the public to enjoy all over again.
Help Blue compete in the backyard fair in 123 Time Activies, and find words in ABC Time Acitivies, through various activities in these games
We recently added support for Blue's 123 Time Activities and Blue's ABC Time Activities and as usual you're encouraged to play through the games with a daily build, report all encountered bugs to our bug tracker and submit some nice screenshots.
Henry Stauf cordially invites you to come and sample the delights of his house in the newest game to be supported by ScummVM, The 7th Guest. A delightful evening is guaranteed to be had by you and the other guests.
You will need a copy of the game (DOS and Windows versions only, for now), and a newly-downloaded daily build of ScummVM. And, of course, your wits about you.
Please report any unwanted annoyances (i.e. bugs) to the ScummVM bug tracker. If you find any particularly beautiful sights while you're there, be sure to submit them as screenshots.
P.S. There are some slight complications involved in copying the game to the hard drive, due to there being audio tracks on both CDs. The information on how to get round this is on the 7th Guest wiki page, as well as a few known issues, so be sure to read it fully.
You're a pizza delivery boy and you're in trouble. Now it is your goal to stop Dick Tate, before the whole world is filled with his evil clones!
Now you can follow this funny story with ScummVM. We recently added support for Bud Tucker in Double Trouble and as usual you're encouraged to playtest it with a daily build, report all encountered bugs to our bug tracker and submit some nice screenshots.
As of today, James "Ender" Brown has left the lead team of ScummVM.
Ender joined the ScummVM team back in February 2002 and became project co-lead already one month later. The original founders of ScummVM, yazoo and strigeus, were still active, but soon after left ScummVM for other ventures. Ender remained as the sole project leader until March 2003, when Max "Fingolfin" Horn joined him at the steering wheel. The long time leading triumvirate of ScummVM was completed in April 2006 with the addition of Eugene "sev" Sandulenko. Together, we went through many good and bad times.
Ender worked especially hard on the PR side of things, including tons of posts in the news section of this site (we really should post news updates more frequently again!), and many behind-the-scenes negotiations with companies regarding source code releases and other things. Not to mention repeatedly crossing swords with the legal department of LucasArts.
Recently, due to personal issues, Ender has had less and less time to work on ScummVM and related things. Not wanting to harm the project by being unable to devote enough time to take care of important tasks, Ender has graciously agreed to resign his post.
The remaining project leaders, Fingolfin and Sev, would like to thank Ender for his many years of faithful leadership, and wish him all the best in his future endeavors.
Observant users have noticed that there is an updated version of Flight of the Amazon Queen on SourceForge but not, until now, on the ScummVM downloads page.
Apart from some minor typographical changes to the license to keep the legal beagles happy, the only difference compared to the old version is that it has been compressed using the latest version of the ScummVM tools. This should fix problems with clicks at the beginning of some speech, and speech being played a bit too slow. (ScummVM 0.12.0 already has a workaround for the latter problem, so you may not even notice the difference.)
Many thanks to Alcachofa Soft for releasing as freeware their previously commercial game: Drascula: The Vampire Strikes Back.
It was quite a lengthy process which started in November of 2005. We were contacted by someone who offered us a direct lead to Emilio de Paz from Alcachofa Soft, S.L., the software house that created this game in 1996. Finally in July '07 we received the sources and a few months later they finally freewared it and gave us an official permission distribute the game.
The original version of the game is in Spanish with full voice overs and subtitles. Then there exists an English version with full voice overs and subtitles, and finally there are subtitles in German, French and Italian. Of course, there is also a full musical score which came as a set of audio tracks on the CD (the game was CD-only). We improved the English and Italian translations, and made all that was mentioned here ready for download.
In order to play the game you will need at least the English pack. Then you may optionally download the music pack, and the international pack which contains all those additional languages, Spanish included.
We hope that this will really extend the lifetime of the game and wish the best to Alcachofa Soft.
We can call it a tremendous development. Half a year since 0.11.1 passed pretty quickly, and we are pleased to announce the release of 0.12.0!
This new version of ScummVM adds support for 5 completely new games. The games that now run smoothly on many more platforms than was initially intended are: The Legend of Kyrandia: Book Two: Hand of Fate, The Legend of Kyrandia: Book Three: Malcolm's Revenge, Lost in Time, The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble and Drascula: The Vampire Strikes Back.
The number of supported platforms grew as well. The PS2 port has been revived, and the GameCube and Wii are now supported too. Take your Wiimote and make your beloved adventure game protagonist run around the screen :).
No need to go any further into details here, those who want to know the gory details can always refer to the release notes, and all of you are invited to go to our downloads page.
P.S. Soon, pretty soon, look out for more news from us.
It's that event that occurs about twice a year in which we ask you, our loyal users, to go out and replay all your favorite games supported by ScummVM. In addition to all the games supported from 0.11.1, we have several new ones for you. The Bizarre Adventure of Woodruff and the Schnibble, Lost in Time, The Legend of Kyrandia: Book Two: Hand of Fate, The Legend of Kyrandia: Book Three: Malcolm's Revenge, and Drascula: The Vampire Strikes Back have support added since then. Furthermore, the DOS version of Waxworks and the Macintosh version of I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream are now supported.
So, what are you waiting for? Go out and start testing! Grab a daily build of ScummVM and run through the games and note any bugs you see on the way (which you should post on the bug tracker). Once done, post that you've completed the game on the forum post so it can be posted on the wiki page. Be sure to list the version of the game, language, and platform.
Good luck, and remember: have fun!
The finalists for the SourceForge.net 2008 Community Choice Awards have been announced. ScummVM is proud to be nominated once again for best project in the "Best Project for Gamers" category (also in another one which we don't care that much if we win ;-) ).
Thanks to all our users who voted for us in the preliminaries. You have to vote for your favorite project one more time (hint: starts with "S", ends with "VM") to select the best of the best in SourceForge.net. So head on to the voting place and vote with your SourceForge.net username.
You know there's something wrong when Count Drascula stops watching TV and starts conspiring with his faithful sidekick, Igor, to take over the world. And he wants to do that before tonight's football match starts! You are John Hacker and your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to rescue your girlfriend Billy Jean from Count Drascula's nefarious clutches and thwart his plans of world domination!
You will need your Drascula CD, a daily build of ScummVM and drascula.dat.
If you find a bug then please report it to our bug tracker. Please ensure that it follows the bug submission guidelines. You may also submit screenshots according to the screenshot guidelines.
Even if we won SourceForge's Community Choice Awards 2007 in the game section, ScummVM is not basking in the shadows of yesterday's triumphs.
New games are continuously being worked on, and compatibility for supported ones is being constantly improved. In short, our team is going to sweat its way through the upcoming summer.
We know you think we deserve to win without a fight, but let's do things by the book. So please, help now with the nomination phase and cast your vote for 'Best Project for Gamers' (requires registration at SourceForge).
And kidnapped his father to boot. So please help Woodruff with getting revenge, rescuing his father, freeing the oppressed Boozooks and finding out about the Schnibble of Azimuth.
Still the same old procedure: Get your copy of The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble and a daily build of ScummVM. Report all bugs to our bug tracker and submit screenshots you've made along the way to our patch tracker, following the bug submission guidelines and screenshot guidelines.
... is on Malcolm's mind after being freed from his stony statue. Sadly he is unable to plan his revenge on his own, so give him a helping hand in The Legend of Kyrandia: Book Three: Malcolm's Revenge. It will be damn fun for you and him!
Procedure for playing is as always: Grab your copy of The Legend of Kyrandia: Book Three: Malcolm's Revenge and a daily build of ScummVM. Also we ask you, our fellow users, to report any bugs you run across to our bug tracker. Make sure you got all required datafiles before you report a bug though. For further information, check out the bug submission guidelines. We also ask for screenshots, which should be reported to our patch tracker. For further information about this, check out the screenshot guidelines.
...and the finger points to you! Or to be precise to Zanthia, youngest of the Kyrandian Mystics. But since she is the one you play in ScummVM's newest supported adventure The Legend of Kyrandia: Book Two: Hand of Fate that is not a big difference. So grab your copy of The Legend of Kyrandia: Book Two: Hand of Fate and a daily build of ScummVM to help her save Kyrandia.
Since we are not finished with supporting every feature, there are still some missing: Currently we support only the DOS CD-ROM version. Another thing missing is support for the in-game GUI, so saving is possible only via hotkeys. Check out the hotkey section of our README on how to do it. And last but not least we do not support MIDI output, so make sure you use AdLib as "Music Driver".
Of course all bugs should be reported to our bug tracker. Make sure you got all required datafiles before you report a bug though. For further information, check out the bug submission guidelines.
UPDATE: The GSoC deadline was extend to April, 7th! The GSoC timeline should be updated soon to reflect this.
Do you enjoy the fabulousness of ScummVM? You still have a chance to add to it by participating in its development.
Prerequisities: ScummVM, students, and their free time and desire to take part in the development of one of the most successful open source projects. Whereas we don't have a problem with first item, the latter two aren't in a desired quantity this year.
So, it is your last chance to help us make ScummVM even better and get paid for it! The deadline of the Google Summer of Code (we reported it earlier) for student applications is drawing closer. Officially it is today, March 31st (although a deadline extension seems likely).
We added several new existing tasks to Open Tasks list, and we revised some of the old ones. Take a look now and apply.
Note that your first application draft doesn't have to be perfect. You have time till April 10th to improve upon it (see the GSoC timeline).
See you in the applications list!
Do you know what a fabulous time we had last year participating in the Google Summer of Code? OK, you don't have to answer that, it's a rhetorical question. Fact is, it was fabulous! So fabulous we thought we'd apply again. And Google is so fabulous that they've elected ScummVM to take part again. Fabulous. (overuse of some words purely intentional).
So, where are you going to spend this summer*? Again some exotic beach? Perhaps this year on Monkey IslandTM?
Well if you are a student and want to make a buck this summer (more accurately $4500 US of them), Google is organizing the absolute Open Source recruitment drive, also known as the Google Summer of Code! The program is designed to create an incentive for students to participate in Open Source projects, by providing guidance and economic support. What's more, your favorite project ScummVM is proud to be participating!
Think about it. Have you ever thought about contributing to a large Open Source project like ScummVM but were intimidated to do so? With the Summer of Code opportunity, you can put your skills at work under close cooperation with our mentors. They'll help you ease in the team, plan the task ahead of time with you and guide you all along.
To get things started, you have to pitch us your idea. Take a look at our Open Tasks page for some suggestions. Then visit the Google Summer of Code website, read up on the FAQ and check out the application guide.
Now, hurry up! You've got until March 31, so get cracking!
*: Summer in the northern hemisphere definition :-)
...on a moving ship and you've got no recollections on how you got there. Can you find your way around when you're Lost in Time?
Same procedure as last time: Get your copy of Lost in Time and a daily build of ScummVM, then report all bugs to our bug tracker and submit screenshots to our patch tracker. For further information, check out the bug submission guidelines and screenshot guidelines, respectively.
Have fun, and good luck (you'll need it ;P).
ScummVM continues to leap forward in a leap year, and we are pleased to announce the next shiny bugfix release of the project.
As usual, it holds a number of improvements, it's more stable, and it should bring you even more fun than 0.11.0.
We fixed the digital iMUSE system (better COMI experience), King's Quest 4 bugs were squashed, and support for fanmade AGI games has been improved; Lure of the Temptress, Inherit the Earth and I Have no Mouth all work better since we fixed several crashes, lock-ups and all such buzzwords.
As a special bonus we are glad to announce the return of the BeOS port and the deeply missed Playstation 2 port.
For a more comprehensive list of improvements you are welcome to visit the release notes, but for those demanding to play, the latest and greatest version of ScummVM waits for you right on our downloads page!
ScummVM. Do you hear it? Do you smell a new version? It's now here. And as usual and regularly, it is packed with tons of new features. Hold on, and take a look at the list:
- Support for the FREEWARE adventure Lure of the Temptress (available for download here)
- Seven other new supported games: I Have no Mouth, and I Must Scream, Elvira 1 and 2, Waxworks (Amiga version only) and 3 Sierra pre-AGI games for children
- Two newly available ports: iPhone and Maemo
- Support for the Mac version of The Legend of Kyrandia and the Amiga version of Nippon Safes
- Better support for Sierra AGI games
- Improved support for modern 64-bit systems
- Support for FLAC encoded music in Broken Sword 1 for the purists among you
- Better support for non-English versions of games, including eastern languages
- Sound compression for SAGA games
- Much much more. See the release notes for the full list
Unfortunately, PlayStation 2 and GP32 ports will not be released with this version, since we don't have any maintainers for these ports currently.
Enough reading, go and grab it at our downloads page!
0110b = 6
The ScummVM team is currently looking for help with the PlayStation 2 port of ScummVM. We are in need of a second experienced PS2 porter, as the current one is rather busy with other stuff. The port is currently a bit in disrepair, several things need to be brought up to speed. However, the team would help any interested developer to figure out what has to be fixed and how. Contact us via the usual means (if in doubt, just contact Fingolfin).
We are currently gearing up for releasing 0.11.0, and it would be great if the PS2 port could be included with that release. But we realize that the time might be too short to do that effectively, so it's only a bonus, not mandatory.
Reward would be eternal fame and the everlasting gratitude of the PS2 userbase of ScummVM :-).
It is time to announce our next Big Testing SeasonTM. This means that pretty soon you, our fellow users, will see the new and shiny ScummVM version.
We have extended the set of our supported games by 8 new (or old :) ) games. The list includes: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Lure of the Temptress, Elvira - Mistress of the Dark, Elvira II - The Jaws of Cerberus, Waxworks (Amiga version only), and early Sierra preAGI games Mickey's Space Adventure, Troll's Tale, and Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood.
There are detailed instructions on how to perform testing in a helpful way. You will find them on our Wiki page. Please stick to those and report on our mailing list, in #scummvm or on our forums. The current list of tested games can be found here.
We are pleased to announce another series of games from Horrorsoft is supported, which uses the AGOS engine:Elvira - Mistress of the Dark
Elvira II - The Jaws of Cerberus
Waxworks (Amiga version only)
Help rescue Elvira in Elvira 1/2, and resolve a family curse in Waxworks.
Get the latest daily build of ScummVM and your version of the game and fight the evil! We ask you, our fellow users, to report any bugs you find in our bug tracker, following the bug submission guidelines. Any unrecognized versions should be reported to the tracker as well. Screenshots are also needed, which can be submitted using the appropriate guidelines for screenshot submission.
We hope you enjoy yet another great adventure game series under ScummVM!
ScummVM now adds another freeware title to its list of games: Lure of the Temptress, which was the first game to use Revolution Software's Virtual Theatre engine. Players must help Diermot escape imprisonment, unravel the mysteries surrounding the Skorl occupation of the town, and eventually defeat the evil enchantress that controls them.
Get the latest daily build of ScummVM and the required support data file. Since the game is freeware, you can freely download it in any of the available languages: English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. You can also pick up several versions of the game directly from the Revolution website.
Please post any bugs you can find to our bug tracker, following the bug submission guidelines. Screenshots are also needed, which can be submitted using the appropriate guidelines for screenshot submission.
We are also currently looking for anyone who may have knowledge of a Dutch release of the game and can provide us with a copy.
You have probably noticed that ScummVM was recently ported to the iPhone. In fact, since yesterday the blog community picked up this news and started talking.
That is basically why we are going against our settled procedures this time and will announce this port even though it is not supposed to be official yet, but is in its early beta stages.
The port mentioned above was created by Oystein Eftevaag aka Vinterstum. Through continuous efforts of the ScummVM Team in the last six years it was not that difficult to make, and the basic port was created in less than a week.
As we've mentioned, it is not yet official, so you will not find it in its usual place on our downloads page, but you should visit this Wiki page which has full download and usage directions.
Remember, that we in no way support piracy of any kind, and discussing it will get you quickly banned on our forums and official IRC channel.
We have prepared a list of online shops where you can buy many of the supported games. And of course, there are Beneath a Steel Sky and Flight of the Amazon Queen on our downloads page which were freewared thanks to our project.
Well, somehow it slipped by us this year, but the ScummVM project was technically six years old on the 5th of October (based on our founding date on SourceForge. But don't worry! Due to popular demand, we have rescheduled our Birthday to Jan 15th, to coincide with the release of ScummVM 0.1.0!
Over the years, ScummVM has grown from a project ludde started to run Monkey Island ('to see if he could'), to a series of interpreters capable of playing a wide-range of games on a huge number of operating systems, platforms and devices. We would like to thank all of those who have helped us grow over the years from our developers, contributors and users. Some companies and groups deserve special mention (but all of you are great, so don't feel left out...):
- SourceForge - For hosting us over the years, and giving us the chance to come runner up in the 2006 Community Choice Awards (Gaming Category) and WIN (Best Project for Gamers) this year
- Revolution Software - Tony Warriner and Charles Cecil for their ongoing support - And providing code, assisting our efforts in Beneath a Steel Sky/Broken Sword and freewaring some of these games!
- John Passfield/Steve Stamatiadis - For providing the source code for Flight of the Amazon Queen, supporting our efforts, and also allowing us to re-release this wonderful game as freeware!
- Wyrmkeep Entertainment - And Joe Pearce, for his great assistance in providing source code, adding Inherit the Earth and early SAGA support
- Adventure Soft - Alan Bridgman and Simon Woodroffe, formerly of AdventureSoft - For sharing the AGOS source for Feeble Files, and their support with Simon/AGOS support
- Sold Out Software - Now Mastertronic, for not being afraid to use ScummVM on their commercial budget re-issues of Broken Sword 1/2
- Google, for allowing us to participate in the Summer of Code this year (and to all students who participated)
- David Fox, Ron Gilbert, Aaron Giles, Michael Land, Vince Lee, Jim Leiterman, Tim Schafer, Aric Wilmunder and everyone else involved in creating the classic LucasFilm/LucasArts titles that inspired this project!
Stay tuned for the REAL party, early next year...
We are glad to announce another supported title: I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, which uses the SAGA engine.
Help Gorrister, Ellen, Benny, Nimdok and Ted to overcome their fatal flaws and fight the crazed super computer AM.
Get the latest daily build of ScummVM and your English, German, French, Spanish or Russian version of the game and fight the evil super computer! We ask you, our fellow users, to report any bugs you find in our bug tracker, following the bug submission guidelines. Any unrecognized versions should be reported to the tracker as well. Screenshots are also needed, which can be submitted using the appropriate guidelines for screenshot submission.
We hope you enjoy yet another great adventure game under ScummVM!
The newest version of the Nintendo DS port of ScummVM is now available. This release brings ScummVM DS port in line with the other ports of ScummVM. Games new to the DS version this time round include the later entries in the Goblins series, Future Wars, and Sierra AGI games. There are also plenty of speed improvements which should make your ScummVM DS port experience a lot smoother.
Download it from the main ScummVM download page as usual.
Results are in folks for the 2007 Community Choice Awards and ScummVM has won in the Best Project for Gamers category!
In true award-ceremony spirit, we'd like to thank first and foremost you, our users. Over the years, you've helped us grow as a project, pointed out bugs and contributed code.
Second, we'd like to thank our project hoster, SourceForge.net. These guys maintain and develop the platform we depend on to collaborate and communicate our code.
Once again, a great big thanks to the community for supporting ScummVM. It really is an honor for us to be picked as a top project within 150.000+ potential contestants.
So if you haven't done so, go forth and download the latest, Award Winning (TM) ScummVM version and enjoy some classic adventure games on your favorite platform!
The votes for SourceForge.net's second annual Community Choice Awards are in. Check back for the results on July 30th.
We made the cut to the final ballot of SourceForge.net's second annual Community Choice Awards!
Thanks a bunch to everybody who voted for us. Now the final ballot is waiting for your votes. ScummVM is in the running for best project for gamers and best project!!! Just go to the Community Choice Awards and cast your vote.
Finally, here it is! Our long awaited, best-ever new release, ScummVM 0.X.0 (or 0.10.0, for those roman numeral challenged amongst you), code named "Tic-tac-toe edition", has arrived today. Now available in stores, err, on download servers worldwide!
"What's new? What's in it? Can I open it up yet?" - Hah, I can already see you shifting impatiently on your seats. But before you run, let me shed some light on the details of this latest installment of the successful ScummVM series:
- Several new engines and thus new games supported:
- Sierra AGI engine: Space Quest I & II, King's Quest I-III and many more, including a vast number of fan-made games,
- Cinematique evo 1 engine: Future Wars,
- GOB engine: Bargon Attack, Gobliins 2, Goblins 3, Ween: The Prophecy,
- AGOS engine: Simon the Sorcerer's Puzzle Pack,
- Parallaction engine: Nippon Safes Inc.,
- Touche: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer engine.
- DXA movies (higher quality than MPEG2) can be compressed better now and can be used for the Broken Sword cutscenes.
- Added 'Mass Add' feature to the Launcher, which allows you to scan for all games in all subdirectories of a given directory (to use it, press shift then click on "Add Game").
- Many nice improvements to our ports.
- And as usual a gazillion small fixes, tweaks and improvements.
So, what are you waiting for? Go and grab your free copy of the best-ever ScummVM while it's still hot!
P.S.: The SourceForge.net download mirrors are a bit slow when it comes to syncing, hence it can happen that your download fails or is corrupt after the first try. Don't give up, just try to download from another mirror!
Once again, SourceForge is holding a vote to see which projects are most loved by the community.
Last year, ScummVM nearly won in the gaming category, losing the first place to the Xbox Media Center project (which, we may add, does not allow you to play classic adventure games on your Xbox).
Everyone should quickly login to their SourceForge account (or create one if they haven't got one yet) and go to the voting page to vote for ScummVM!
After you're done clicking, choose the "Best Project for Gamers" category. Feel free to do the same in the "Best Project" category. Note that this is only the first round of the election. The projects which get most votes now in each category will be selected for a second and final election round.
Happy voting!
Nippon Safes, Inc., the first exciting instalment of the Parallaction engine, is now supported in current SVN builds (which can be found under "SVN Builds" on the downloads page) and open for testing and bug reporting via the ScummVM bug tracker.
Are you smarter than an experienced safe cracker?
Are you sexier than an explosive lap dancing bombshell?
Are you dumber than a punch-drunk Italian former boxer?
No matter how you answer, you are bound to end up in jail in the first 5 minutes. Don't worry, though. You might be paroled or somebody might help you and provide the bail, but not for free*.
Help Dough, Donna and Dino in paying their - real or imaginary - debt, but be warned: accepting a job from a hideous misfit in a trench may lead to unexpected results.
Don't miss the playable demo you can find here, and don't forget to submit some sexy screenshots.
*You might think you owe something even if you were parolled, but that's restricted to the slight case you really are a punch-drunk boxer.
Hello there ScummVM users! It's that time of year again where we ask you to test your games while we gear up for a new release, and this time it's for 0.10.0. While the official Big Testing Season(TM) begins on May 23, we ask that you begin testing games now, except for AGOS games (Simon the Sorcerer series, Feeble Files) and Nippon Safes.
There are several new games for 0.10.0 including Touche: The Adventure of the Fifth Musketeer and Future Wars. In addition, DrMcCoy has been extra busy and dealt us Gobliins 2, Goblins 3, Ween: The Prophecy and Bargon Attack. Also, Nippon Safes will be included in this release. This release will also feature the AGI games from the merge with Sarien.
There are detailed instructions on how to perform testing in a helpful way. You will find them at our Wiki page. Please, stick to those and report on our mailing list, on #scummvm or in our forums. The current list of tested games can be found here.
The blazingly fast addition of Goblins 3 was gracefully performed thanks to the not-so-big differences from Gobliins 2.
For you, an average peasa... adventurer, that means that YOU can reach an agreement between King Bodd and Queen Xina.
Will you succeed? Find out by grabbing your old copy of Goblins 3 from your dusty shelves, combining it with a shiny new ScummVM 0.10.0svn (check the build date, it has to be after April 21, 2007, yes, 2007).
Read our bug submissions guidelines and enter any bugs into the bug tracker.
P.S.: Please make a couple of screenshots along the way. The screenshots submission guidelines are here.
Google has announced the final allocations of students to the projects participating in the Summer of Code program this year. So far, it has been a tremendous success, with over 6200 applications being submitted and over 900 students being accepted.
ScummVM received 37 applications and was finally awarded 7 slots for students who will work on a variety of tasks, under close and relentless supervision by _sev, Fingolfin, LordHoto and Jubanka. So Kari, David, Timothy, Sean, Andreas, Serhiy and Zbigniew welcome aboard! Competition was fierce, we had to drop several good applications, so for those of you who did not make it, don't despair. If you still believe your proposed task was cool, it should be done but just didn't make the final cut, and if you feel up to it, you can coordinate with us and go ahead with it anyway. ScummVM always welcomes code contributions! After all, that's the whole point of SoC: Getting people involved in open source :-)
You think RTS and ScummVM don't fit together? Of course they do! As you know, we have support for The Legend of Kyrandia for some time now. Now, after some work, we have parts of Dune 2 working with extensions to our Kyrandia code. However, there are only a few things working correctly. At least the introduction sequence works like a charm by now (check the screenshots).
Also the mentat is basically working, although it misses some animation sequences. Last but not least, the only in-game support we have so far is map loading, but there are some other things that you can't see on screenshots now. So stay tuned and wait for the first RTS supported by ScummVM!
As the code is still a work in progress, it has not been committed yet. But, look for it within the next couple of days when LordHoto has a bit more working.
Ok, so we all know this is an April Fool's joke. But, truthfully, Dune 2 does share several of the resources of the Kyrandia games. Furthermore, parts of the screenshots seen here were extracted using a Kyrandia tool (as LordHoto says). This still doesn't mean support will be added though.
Deadline for applications extended to March 26th!
So, where are you going to spend the summer*? Some exotic beach? Perhaps Mêlée IslandTM?
Well if you are a student and want to make a buck this summer (more accurately $4500 US of them), Google is organizing the absolute Open Source recruitment drive, also known as the Google Summer of Code! The program is designed to create an incentive for students to participate in Open Source projects, by providing guidance and economic support. What's more, your favorite project ScummVM is proud to be participating!
Think about it. Have you ever thought about contributing to a large Open Source project like ScummVM but were intimidated to do so? With the Summer of Code opportunity, you can put your skills at work under close cooperation with our mentors. They'll help you ease in the team, plan the task ahead of time with you and guide you all along.
To get things started, you have to pitch us your idea. Take a look at our Open Tasks page for some suggestions. Then visit the Google Summer of Code website, read up on the FAQ and check out the application guide.
Now, hurry up! You've got until March 26, so get cracking!
*: Summer in the northern hemisphere definition :-)
Bargon Attack, which like Ween: The Prophecy shares most of the code with Gobliins 2, is now completable and supported. Hence, we ask you to catch up with the Bargonians and hunt for bugs along the way.
The procedure is the same as the last few times: take your copy of Bargon Attack and a daily build of ScummVM. Be sure you read the bug submission guidelines and enter any bugs into our bug tracker.
Some screenshots would be nice, too.
Oh, and check out Ender's speech at LCA2007 here.
The ScummVM Music Enhancement Project, created and developed by James Woodcock, recently announced that it has been granted permission by Simon Woodroffe to release the full enhanced soundtrack for Simon the Sorcerer within ScummVM. He has also made available a preview video, that presents how the new music works with this title.
The project also covers other titles, such as Beneath A Steel Sky, Discworld, Flight of the Amazon Queen, Inherit the Earth and another title yet to be announced!
As soon as the ScummVM software has been tested with the new soundtrack provided, James has promised to release the full selection of music from Simon the Sorcerer on his own website free of charge. There are already sample downloads for many of his projects, so make sure you pop over to the ScummVM Music Enhancement Project homepage.
As some of you may already be aware of, the engines of Gobliins 2 and Ween: The Prophecy share a lot of code. The differences have now been taken care of and we therefore add it to the list of our supported games. As always, we'd like you, our users, to report any still existing bugs.
You know the procedure: Grab your copy of Ween: The Prophecy and a daily build of ScummVM, read the bug submission guidelines, find the bugs and place them in the REVUSS (our bug tracker).
...and thus will the bugs be wiped out...
Way back in May of last year, Sarien merged with ScummVM. Not only does this give you the great opportunity to relive those long lost childhood memories of defeating the evil Sariens in Space Quest alongside thwarting LeChuck's evil doings in Monkey Island, but it also gives you the chance to create some new memories, such as searching for the ingredients for a magic recipe in the fan made game, Voodoo Girl: Queen of the Darned. There are over 180 AGI fan games that have been made using something like WinAGI or AGI Studio that can be played in ScummVM. Luckily for us, sev has made a compilation of them that can be found here (thanks to clemmy for hosting it).
"Why are you telling me this?" you might ask. Well, the gauntlet has been thrown down. We need you, the ScummVM users, to go write a description for the wiki for the fan games, using the syntax written in this forum post. Then, post it there as well. This way, the wiki editors can post it on the wiki.
In addition, we ask that you test both Sierra's AGI games and fan made games using ScummVM. As usual, you will need a daily build. However, we ask that you check if a bug in an AGI fan game is present in the original interpreter as well. If you find any bugs, please report them to the bug tracker.
Good luck!
We have had an amazing response to our fundraiser, managing to reach our target of $950 in just over 24 hours! The response was simply amazing, and thanks to these donations several key team members will soon be the proud owners of some shiny new copies of the latest release of IDA - The Interactive Disassembler.
This will be a great help in adding new game support, and fixing some of the odder bugs in our current game engines, so once again we thank all users that have donated. Everyone on the team is amazed at the support you've shown, and we're planning a few surprises down the line to help thank everybody. Please check our Donor List to see how many donations we received, and to read everybody's comments. (Note that only donors who supplied a comment are listed).
However, although the fundraiser is closed, (and especially if you didn't donate in this round), please consider donating in the future if you enjoy ScummVM. We can always use donations to help purchase game software and rare versions to increase our support and compatibility — every dollar or euro is appreciated!
Some time ago PayPal approached us and told us that we could no longer use their system to accept donations. It was a precedent, which was even highlighted on Slashdot. But as you may imagine, it could potentially put many projects into a very unpleasant situation.
Fortunately, thanks to the very good folks at SourceForge we now have this issue resolved. They were able to help negotiate an exception with PayPal, allowing us to continue to accept PayPal donations via SourceForge.
This all means that now we are able to accept donations again via the SourceForge donation system which uses PayPal.
We also would like to use this opportunity to announce a fundraiser. As you may know, we are widely using Interactive Disassembler from DataRescue. So far most of us have been using the freeware version, but it has many serious limitations (which obviously makes it free). We conducted negotiations with DataRescue and received a very generous discount. We would really like to buy 5 IDA Pro licenses for several key team developers who will be able to use it at full extent. So if you would really like to see the project going steady and support for even more games added, consider to donating a couple of dollars or euros.
Our target is $950 US dollars and whilst this no small goal, taking into account more that 2,5 millions downloads, 15,000+ web visitors per day and almost 5,400 registered forum users we feel that it is very achievable. Please, use the SourceForge donation system to make your donations.
...for newly supported games, it would seem: Gobliins 2 joins Touché and Future Wars as recent bug-hunting targets. So be vewy, vewy quiet, gwab your copy of Gobliins 2 and find those wascally bugs!
Equipment: A daily build of ScummVM
Instructions: The bug submission guidelines
Important location: Our bug tracker, report the bugs (and unrecognized versions) there
For bonus points, submit a few screenshots.
Have fun and happy hunting!
Every now and then somebody will raise the subject of finding a 'better' name for ScummVM, one that fits better with it's modern scope (which extends well beyond SCUMM games). So at this page we present you with some nice alternatives. Choose whichever suits you best -- but we will stay ScummVM.
It was a complete surprise to all of us, but our old-timer Gregory Montoir aka cyx several weeks ago submitted a practically finished engine. It is used by the game Touché: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer. Some more work has been performed, and now we are announcing full support for this title.
For you, our fellow users, this means that we are starting a great bug-hunting session. Grab your English, French, German or Italian, or even just the game demo and start testing. Stick Geoffroi Le Brun's nose in every hole in the game and report if it unexpectedly gets broken.
As usual, to play the game you will need a daily build of ScummVM. Bugs and graphical glitches should be submitted to our bug tracker, and please, follow the bug submission guidelines. Also, if you encounter some yet unrecognized version, report it to the same tracker.
Screenshots are required as well. Besides, we are still waiting for Future Wars screenshots as nobody submitted any yet.
We are sure that you will enjoy this yet another gem stone now supported by ScummVM.
As you may know, some time ago we adopted the cinematique evo.1 engine, which was maintained by Yaz0r. The engine is used by two games: Future Wars and Operation Stealth. Now, after several months of work, we are pleased to announce support for Future Wars in daily SVN builds of ScummVM.
Currently only the DOS version is supported, but in a variety of languages.
We would like to ask you, our fellow users, to perform testing for us. However, it does not mean that the next major release is near, but that we are ready for bug reports. So, grab your copy of the game (if you own it) and test every bit of it. You will need a daily build of ScummVM and your protection booklet handy in order to run the game. Then, if a bug, glitch, or even if a console message pops up, please report it. Instructions on reporting bugs can be found here.
Also, we need several good looking in-game screenshots. See the screenshot submission guidelines.
As some of you may have noticed, the Mac OS X version of ScummVM 0.9.1 had some issues when running on PowerPC machines, particularly when playing MP3 encoded sound. A new build (0.9.1a) is now up on the downloads page, for anyone affected (All versions beyond the Mac OS X version remain the same).
We are pleased to announce the 0.9.1 ScummVM bugfix release.
There were lots of important bugfixes and small improvements. We are also glad that three additional platforms are now officially supported: Nintendo DS, GP2X and GP32. You can already download official DS and GP2X binaries, and the GP32 port will be available soon.
Some of the most significant bugfixes are:
- Many fixes for Humongous Entertainment games and better support for international versions of the games
- Improved detection of the FM-TOWNS version of Indy3
- Several fixes for The Feeble Files and more non-English versions are supported now
- Some parts of the Kyrandia engine were rewritten so the game needs less CPU power now, and thus works better on lower-end devices
- The PSP, PS2 and WinCE ports were greatly improved
- The PalmOS port is again up-to-date and features separate build for Tapwave Zodiac
- The WinCE port supports 2002 devices again
For the complete list read the release notes.
As usual, the builds are located on our downloads page.
As regular ScummVM web-viewers may have noticed already, we have removed the Paypal button from our site and no donations are currently being accepted.
Paypal has informed as that all software capable of playing a game on a system 'it was not sold for' is in violation of their AUP. Please feel free to e-mail email@example.com and express your disappointment at their policies... Which make absolutely no sense for a project like ScummVM, which is often actively assisted by the original game developers and studios, even to the point of being shipped by Sold Out in their Broken Sword 1/2 compilation.
We are investigating alternatives for a donation system, if any of our users would like to put forward a suggestion of a safe, open-source friendly system please let us know in the "Paypal Sucks" forum thread.
As many users of the Windows CE port have noticed, the 0.9.0 release has some sound and music related issues which usually ended with a crash. The obscure bugs were hunted down and corrected. We urge all PocketPC and Smartphone users to download the updated 0.9.0a build from our downloads page or our SourceForge files section. It may be a while until all mirrors pick up the file, so be patient.
It has been almost 8 months since we started to work on the 0.9.x code branch and today we're pleased to announce the release of ScummVM 0.9.0 "The OmniBrain loves you".
Many things are waiting for you, one of the most noticeable is the new and improved GUI. We also added support for 2 completely new games — The Legend of Kyrandia and The Feeble Files.
Other important changes include:
- Reworked detection code for SCUMM games. Now all your fan translations will work out of the box
- Added subtitle configuration controls to the options dialog
- New official Atari/MiNT port
- Much improved WinCE port
- Numerous bugfixes in the SCUMM, SAGA, Simon, Broken Sword 2 and BASS engines
For the complete list read the release notes.
Unfortunately not all ports are built yet and also you may experience some problems with downloads as not all SourceForge mirrors picked up the files. So, please, try different mirrors and be patient.
Don't wait any longer, go and fetch a build for your platform on our downloads page.
Greetings, citizens. The OmiBrain facility ScummVM Team needs you to do game testing.
As usual, we prepared many new features for you and killed zillions of bugs. That means that every supported game needs retesting.
There are 2 completely new games which we introduce in 0.9.0. The Legend of Kyrandia and The Feeble Files. Also there are few Humongous Entertainment games where compatibility bumped significantly, Pajama Sam 3 is among them. So, please, find your old game media or buy some more and enjoy the gameplay of these classics.
There are detailed instructions on how to perform testing in a helpful way. You will find them at our Wiki page. Note, that the guidelines have changed a bit since last Big Testing Season(TM) which you performed for 0.8.0. Please, stick to those and report on our mailing list, on #scummvm or in our forums.
Have a nice cycle, and remember: The OmniBrain loves you!
Hi folks!
As you may have noticed, we are now including the AGI engine in our development source tree aka SVN. This engine allows you to play early versions of games such as Larry 1, Space Quest 1&2, King's Quest 1-4, Police Quest 1, and numerous fanmade games. It is based on the Sarien code, with its authors expressed permission.
We would also like to clarify that we don't have any plans to add support for SCI games in the foreseeable future. Furthermore, AGI is an in-development engine, so it will not be included in the upcoming 0.9.0 release.
PS. This is not part of the CABAL project :-)
Many of you have been waiting for this for a while, but we're proud to present our new-look ScummVM Forums!
We would like to personally thank Clem for designing and implementing the new theme, and Raina for creating the buttons and icons. After much work and effort, the results speak for themselves.
If you have any feedback or suggestions on the new design, please post in the feedback thread.
We're proud to announce that ScummVM support for The Legend of Kyrandia is now complete!
This means that we now need you, our users, to give us a helping hand. In order to root out any remaining bugs, extensive testing is sorely needed. So, please dig upyour (legal!) copies of Kyrandia 1, download a SVN snapshot of ScummVM and the required Kyra data file from the Downloads page, and post any bugs you find to our Bug tracker :). Any other issues can be discussed in the forum.
Currently both CD and floppy editions are supported in their own language. English, French, German and Spanish versions are fully supported, but any other PC (and hopefully Mac) version should work as well (albeit with some text in English, and some interface graphics missing). If you have an unsupported version, we'd love to hear from you! Note that Amiga versions are unfortunately not supported at all at this time.
Today we are very happy to announce that Eugene "sev" Sandulenko has been elevated to the rank of project leader, meaning we now have a trio at the steering wheel of ScummVM.
Eugene contributed in major ways to ScummVM, going beyond what could reasonably be expected from a regular team member. He worked on several new engines in ScummVM, the new GUI code, managed several of our releases, played a central role in our recent switch to Subversion, motivates other people to do useful work, and many other things.
Congratulations, Eugene, and we hope to see a lot more of your great work in the future. :-)
In other news, the final results of the SourceForge.net 2006 Community Choice Awards are now public, and ScummVM made an honorable second place in the Games category, only beaten by Xbox Media Center (some people are debating how game-like this is, but then, ScummVM itself isn't a game either, so let's not complain :-). Thanks again to everybody who voted for us.
Good news: We made the cut to the final ballot of SourceForge.net's first annual Community Choice Awards!
Thanks a bunch to everybody who voted for us. But you can do better: Since the final ballot is up and running now, you can vote again for us, and all your other favorite projects. Just go to the Community Choice Awards and cast your vote. You can do so until March 23, so don't be tardy or it'll be too late :-).
Dear ScummVM users! We just discovered that SourceForge.net is currently doing a nomination round for their first annual Community Choice Awards. The good thing: ScummVM has been chosen to be one of the pre-selected candidates. The catch: The nomination round is already closing tomorrow!
So, if you would like to support us, go to the Community Choice Awards Nominations page, enter the "Games" subsection and nominate ScummVM. And of course, you can and should do the same in all the other categories for those projects you think deserve it.
After the nomination round, voting on the top five nominees begins March 17th. Details are not yet known, but chances are that this will be public once again. So keep out an eye on this, and just in case a certain project with a green slimy "S" in its logo makes the cut... you know what you should do ;-).
Thanks to SourceForge.net, we got the opportunity to move to a more powerful and advanced versioning system than CVS: We are now using Subversion, also known as SVN. In case you wonder, a versioning system is a tool for collaborative software development. As you probably know, the ScummVM Team consists of more than 30 active core developers, and many more are on our list of past and present contributors. Working on a project on this scale just would not be possible without the help of such a system.
From the very beginning, Ludvig Strigeus committed his initial ScummVM version to CVS, the versioning system we used until recently. Vincent Hamm joined him shortly thereafter. Since then, a lot has changed, many things have happened. We have more than 20,000 revisions of ScummVM and its various components in our CVS repository.
We now moved to a new system, Subversion. Compared to CVS, it adds many useful new features, that allow us to work more efficiently on ScummVM, something we are sure all our users will appreciate. Among other things, there will be no more lag between anonymous and developers version of the source code -- you get everything we do instantly!
If you used a CVS checkout so far, scrap it, install a Subversion client and checkout
If you are using the command line subversion client, that means you simply have to type the following command:
svn co https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/scummvm/scummvm/trunk/ scummvm
You will notice that the source tree of ScummVM already changed significantly and yet more is to come. Stay tuned!
Due to a bug discovered in 0.8.1, which rendered Broken Sword 2 unplayable, we're forced to release ScummVM 0.8.2 "Broken Broken Sword 2". Also, we used this opportunity to fix the WinCE builds, as well as the MacOS X bundle.
As usual, you can get builds for all supported platforms on our downloads page
Rejoice, ScummVM 0.8.1 "Codename: missing" has just been released. You can now experience the latest official flavour of ScummVM. The main reason for this release is fixing several bugs that slipped into 0.8.0, some of these fixes are:
- Much improved support for Humongous Entertainment games
- Support the German version of Maniac Mansion NES (thanks to Joachim Eberhard for contributing the cartridge)
- Fixed overflow when using control panel for the robot in the Dig
- Fixed disappearing cursor when level password is typed in Gobliiins
- Implemented more precise MD5-based game detection for Simon the Sorcerer
- First non-beta PS2 port release
For a complete list of changes see the release notes.
You can grab a build for your system on our downloads page
As you may have noticed, there is a big discussion about the BASS score on our forums. James Woodcock, one of the participants, has posted on his blog a couple of remastered tracks from the original MIDI.
Although ScummVM does not yet support this in it's full glory, we are looking at implementing this in the near future, so keep watching. In the mean time we recommend you to go and feel the future of what ScummVM hopes to provide.
You may find out more about the enhancements, by visiting James's site:
James Woodcock's ScummVM Music Enhancement Project
At long last, ScummVM CVS now has basic support for The Legend of Kyrandia by Westwood Studios. The game is fully completable, but lacks music, sound effects and a menu system (for now). Please refer to section 3.8 of the README for more information, and to the Downloads section for the necessary datafile. All bugs should be reported to our bug tracker, please see section 4.10 of the FAQ for instructions.
We're pleased to announce the availability of the long-awaited build of ScummVM version 0.8.0 for PocketPC 2002, thanks to Kostas Nakos. You can get it from our download page. It may happen that some mirrors haven't picked up the file yet, in which case try a different mirror.
Some interesting news for you. Wyrmkeep Entertainment Co. has released the ITE Soundtrack on CD. You may listen to a preview and buy it from here. ScummVM supports this game as of 0.8.0, thanks to our tight collaboration with Wyrmkeep and the fact that they kindly provided us with all source code and the rights to reimplement it. Support this great company by purchasing the game soundtrack and, of course, the game itself, which you can play using ScummVM.
As you can read here, we (joostp and lavosspawn) have the ambition to create an audibly improved version of BASS by using the high quality studio source material, which is stored on DATs (Digital Audio Tape).
At this point we have these DATs in our possession and are looking for help in getting the audio off them. Since we're not in the position to send the tapes anywhere, we're looking for someone to lend us a DAT player/recorder for about 2 weeks to complete this first step. The DAT player would need to be shipped to the Netherlands, and will be returned upon completion of the task.
If you think you can help out, please get in touch! For more information, see the forum thread.
Hi. Just over a year after our design contest ended we're proud to finally announce the launch of the new web design. Thanks to Draven for the design and Yaroslav Fedevych for most of the HTML/CSS code. For curious souls the old website is still available here.
The first binary release of the PlayStation 2 Port has now been posted to our forums in this thread. It was not added to the download pages as it still needs some testing. If you've got a PlayStation 2 with a modchip, grab it and tell us about your results.
In light of the 0.8.0 release, which requires the additional SKY.CPT file to run Beneath a Steel Sky, we've updated the archive of the freeware CD version to include this file, and while we were at it, updated the data files to the last-known released version of BASS, which should fix some text issues that appear when playing the game in non-english languages.
You can download it from the downloads page (whenever the SourceForge mirrors pick it up), or download the SKY.CPT file separately here.
We are pleased to announce a long-awaited ScummVM 0.8.0 release. We, the ScummVM Team, have prepared a big pack of new features for you. Most outstanding amongst these are:
- New improved launcher and in-game GUI
- Support for Inherit the Earth and Gobliiins
- Playstation Portable, Playstation 2 and EPOC/SymbianOS ports
- CGA and Hercules rendering modes for some games
- Preliminary support for NES and C64 LucasArts games
- Much improved support for Humongous Entertainment children games (Freddi Fish, Pajama Sam, Putt-Putt, Spy Fox, Fatty Bear, Backyard Sports and Buzzy)
You may find a more detailed list of changes as well as files to download at our downloads page. We encourage you to update to this latest and best ScummVM version as soon as possible.
Along with this release, we are also pleased to announce the launch of our new forums. Located at the easy to remember address of http://forums.scummvm.org/, the new forums feature individual sub-forums for Ports, and many new functions for both the users and moderators alike.
Please note that the SourceForge.net forums will be closed and archived within the next 48 hours. These archives will be available from the bottom of the forums' Main Index page.
Hello, fellow users. Now it's time to help the ScummVM team bring out a new release of err... ScummVM. Ta-da!
We have a large amount of changes, new features and bugfixes. Almost every aspect of the program was touched, tuned, altered. So we once again need to ask for testers of every game we support.
We'd like to mention two completely new titles we support now. They are Inherit the Earth and Gobliiins (first one in the series). Please, pay attention to those too.
Instructions on how to do the testing are located at our Wiki page. Please, stick to those and report on our mailing list, on #scummvm or in our forums.
The last bastion of the screenshots camp has fallen. We have just received Zak v1 shots and that means that all is done. Thanks a lot to you, our fellow users, who took part in this saga. There are too many of you to mention, but you know who you are.
We also need to test another couple of newly supported games. These are Maniac Mansion NES version and Zak McKracken Commodore 64. See sections 3.8 and 3.9 in our README on how to run these. We need to know whether these games are completable or not.
If you like screenshots as much as we do, you can play an integral role in demonstrating the capabilities of ScummVM with merely single still-frame image.
Basically, we need you to submit screenshots for our screenshots gallery. We have an explanation of the proper way to do so here in our wiki.
So, if you've got a few minutes, an interesting save in the middle of a game, and you want to help, please feel free to take and submit a screenshot of it. As the wiki states, ScummVM should be in HQ2x mode with aspect ratio correction ON.
Due to a local space/time vortex which will in the future be located near Earth, the meaning of 'regularly' may be in flux. Stay tuned for further updates.
And now, to current news:
We're happy to report that Ron Gilbert, co-creator of Maniac Mansion and SCUMM, made a nice reference to ScummVM on his website (Grumpy Gamer. Or so we hear from Slashdot, which seems to have brought his site to its knees :)
Please note, however, that the Nintendo DS port mentioned is not yet an official or supported port. So please don't contact us about it, because we can't help :)
The contents of Rons latest post has been quoted in this blogspot post. For the record, we've given Ron the nod in our readme.txt since Wed Apr 17 17:31:05 2002 (UTC).
We're also calling for testers to report problems with 'Inherit the Earth' (details and purchase information behind the link!). Please use the bug tracker, and set the correct game under Group. Please only test with the latest CVS version. Thanks!
On the downside, we really need to post news more regularly. On the upside, we have accumulated a lot to tell you about:New Ports
- Ports are important for us -- that much we have in common with the good ol' pirates from Monkey Island. Of course in our case it's not the wet kind (with ships and stuff), but rather ports of ScummVM to different architectures. On that front, we have some pretty nice things coming up for the next ScummVM release, including an official PlayStation 2 port, as well as the AmigaOS port now being official, too. And with some luck maybe even the often requested EPOC/Symbian port will finally be a regular part of ScummVM (take a look at the relevant patch tracker item if you are curious).
- We added a new game engine, this time for Coktel's Gobliiins series. So far, Gobliiins 1 is completable. Work on the other parts (Gobliins 2, Goblins 3, and "The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble") has not yet begun, but at least Gobliins 2 seems to be similar to part 1, so we hope to have that in the foreseeable future, too. Regarding the other parts, we'll see...
- Thanks to the hard work of some dedicated people we also finally support the (in)famous NES version of Maniac Mansion. Wow, that should be about the last LucasArts SCUMM game we were not supporting ... ;-)
Support for Humongous Entertainment's
kids games is progressing well, the following titles can be
completed with the current development version of ScummVM:
- Freddi Fish 1 - 4
- Pajama Sam 1 & 2
- Putt-Putt (several titles)
- Spy Fox 1 & 2
- Several arcade titles
- No, I didn't undergo plastic surgery (although another pair of thumbs sounds tempting...). Rather, we added support for thumbnails in SCUMM savegames. Pretty cool stuff, click here for a screenshot.
Not too shabby, we think. And we actually have more really cool stuff in the works, stay tuned.
Apart from previous hints, more information is now available about the ScummVM project Dragon.
Please note that Dragon is still very much an unreleased Work In Progress, but things have just started working and we're expecting to announce more about this project over the coming week.
Although it will not be part of the official ScummVM program, some of our team members have been working on a little easter surprise for you all. Unfortunately, we're running a bit late.
Expect something very sweet (especially for Linux and Mac people) soon...
We are pleased to announce the release of ScummVM 0.7.1. This update concentrates on fixing bugs from 0.7.0, especially in the Windows Mobile port (PocketPC / Smartphone). For more information check out the release notes.
As usual, you can download it from our downloads page.
On an unrelated side note, we received even more boot params from you, our dear users, in the past two weeks. Many thanks to those who contributed!
We now have an extensive list of boot params for Fate of Atlantis on our boot params page. Many thanks to Laura Abbott who spent a lot of time to compose this list and then generously donated it to us. I am sure this will help us working on FOA issues in the future.
In other news, Robert Kelsen has volunteered to work as a SlackWare packager, and has started by providing a SlackWare binary of 0.7.0. Way to go, Rob!
So, apparently, some people actually read our news section... I am astonished ;-). Thanks to all of you out there who contribute to ScummVM by providing us with useful feedback, and the occasional praise -- both really help keeping up interest in working on ScummVM!
I guess it's time for the usual, regular, monthly sign of life, "Yes, we are alive.
No, we still won't merge with FreeSCI. Yes, you can donate your Ferrari to me, I might
reconsider then."
As usual, lots of small and big things happened, we might post some info in the not too distant future. In the meantime, I'd like to set a spotlight on a small but nifty detail, maybe it'll be of interest/use to some of you...:
Some time ago, we added a list of boot params to our documentation section. Maybe you have already noticed it, if not, check it out.
In case you don't know what a boot param is (shame on you!), I actually tried to explain it on that page, so, have a look anyway ;-). If you think the explanation is not clear enough, drop me a line and tell me how to improve it.
And if you really want to feel cool, you can even contribute a bit here and help us out by filling in some of the gaps in our boot param tables. Once again, see the boot param page for more information.
First off: once more a Happy New Year to all of you out there!
We just wanted to let you know that since the release of ScummVM 0.7.0 a week ago, a few more binaries have arrived at your download page. We now offer binaries for the following systems:
- Windows
- Mac OS X
- Linux: Fedora Core
- Solaris 8
- PalmOS
- PocketPC (WinCE)
- Dreamcast
- BeOS
... and hopefully the Debian package will be ready soon.
That's already quite nice, but more never hurts. For example, it would be nice to have packages for Mandrake, Slackware, Solaris x86, or your favorite toaster. So if you are interested in joining us as a packager, please contact us.
And now for something completely different: Taking a look at our project statistics page, you might notice that we have now more than 10,000,000 page views (accumulated over the total life time of ScummVM as a SourceForge.net project), and have served more than 1.1 million downloads since our conception. Not too shabby, we think :-)
We are proud to announce the release of ScummVM 0.7.0, right in time for Christmas Eve!
While not quite as ground breaking as some of our previous major releases, this version sports some notable improvements and additions, amongst them:
- Added preliminary support for 26 Humongous Entertainment titles
- Added support for FLAC (lossless) encoded audio files
- Added native support for Macintosh versions of some SCUMM games -- this means the 'rescumm' tool is now mostly obsolete, and you can now play those games directly from the original CD
- Added smooth horizontal scrolling for The Dig, Full Throttle and COMI (matching the original engine)
- Added support for compressed speech and music in Broken Sword 1 and 2
- And as usual, we fixed lots and lots of bugs
A link to the release notes and a more detailed list of changes can be found over on the downloads page, along with the download links. Updating to this latest and greatest version is strongly recommended to all our users.
It's been almost two months since we started our website design contest, and I know some of you have been eagerly awaiting the outcome. Since the team couldn't quite decide on who should be winner, we let you, our dear users, have a word in the outcome of this epic battle. And finally, we are happy to let it be known that after about 1400 votes we do have a clear winner! And it is... draven, with a strong majority of 55% of all votes! Congratulations, draven!
So what now? We'll be settling the issue of the prize(s) for the winning entry in the next few days, and start working on implementing the new design. We consider doing some further tweaks to it (like, some people suggested to actually use the logo of jeanm's submission; and we have some other ideas up our sleeves). This may take some time, partially because it's a holiday time for a lot of us. So I am afraid you'll have to be a bit more patient.
Good things need time :-).
We are pleased to reopen our website poll. We found a free poll service, but unfortunately it is ad-driven. Please bear with this.
P.S.: If you have already given your vote with the old poll, you will have to re-vote using the new poll.
Since so many people decided to screw the results of the poll, it is temporarily closed while we make a more cheat-proof script. We'll let you know when voting is back online.
Yo folks,
you are probably all wondering
Whatever happened to that website design contest?
It's been closed over a month ago and there is still no winner!.
Well, good question :-)
First off, let me tell you that some of the submitted designs are really awesome, and I would hereby like to thank all the people who submitted their work. Sorry for letting you wait so long on the outcome.
Now, to determine the winner, we conducted an internal poll with the team. This took some time until all team members were able to submit their filled out forms. That process didn't produce a clear winner, though. So then, some of us wanted to conduct a poll amongst you, dear users, to pick the winner out of the three finalists. For various reasons, that just didn't happen... until now!
Go to our poll page to see the finalists, and to be able to poll on them! We'll let this polling go for about 14 days, at which point we'll finally decide on the winner.
On another matter, we have now started work on the next major release of ScummVM. 0.7.0 is (rather aggressively) scheduled for Christmas 2004! We hope to be able to deliver a nice christmas present to you this way. But for this to work out, we need your help: We need people who actively test the latest CVS so that we can iron out and fix all remaining issues with it, to ensure a high quality release.
If you want to help, check out the release status page for a list of games which need testing.
That's it for today, hopefully the next time around we can announce something more substantial (like a new release or a new website). Until then: happy play testing to all of you!
P.S.: Maybe you also have been wondering
Gee, will these guys ever reach 1.0?
As a matter of fact, we are now working towards this goal. There is basically a
single major piece missing for that: a good user manual. If you are a skilled manual
writer, have some spare time, and want to help, drop us a mail on
the scummvm-devel mailing list.
Well, we left it open a bit longer for those who ran late... but the entries for the ScummVM Revamp contest are now closed. Judges will be looking at the pages over the last few days, and unless there is an out-right winner the finalists will be voted on by YOU - our dearest users :)
Further information will be posted soon. The winner will receive some Random Stuff(tm), with the main prize being some Sam and Max swag (most likely) signed by the creator of Sam and Max, Steve Purcell. Further information will be posted soon!
Anybody wishing to enter the Website Revamp contest better get their entries in, only two days left!
So far we have only five entries. Thats not too bad, but I was hoping for at least another five more. So if your still sitting on an entry, SEND IT IN!
Please send all contest entries to email@example.com. Further information on this contest is available a couple of posts down.
Greetings fellow adventurers!
Just a reminder that the submission deadline for the Website Revamp contest is here in just ten days! The very first submission was just received, so if you have yet to even start, time is running out.
The prizes will be announced as soon as somebody gets back to me since certain sites news posts suggest he hasn't forgotten :)
Hello, humble Website Watchers. We have gathered you all here today for a contest of most epic proportions.
Well, not really.
We're holding a contest to redesign the ScummVM website. If you have talent, and want to contribute
something to ScummVM, here is your chance.
- Designs should be submitted in Photoshop (.PSD) or GIMP (.XCF) format. Layers should be used, and consideration taken that the majority of the design is feasibly done in HTML with minimal use of large graphical elements.
- The completed design must be designed for optimal use at 1024x768, but the page should be designed to be renderable in lower resolutions and in text-only browsers.
- The main focus should be on an easy, noticeable and uncrowded navigation system.
- Sites submitted with a completed HTML template will be considered for extra points if they
obey the following extra rules. Otherwise they will be graded on design merits only.
- Completed sites should be submitted as a one-page HTML template. All original graphics should be included (layered if applicable) in Photoshop .PSD or GIMP .XCF format.
- Sites must have readable HTML/CSS code, and should be quick-loading and as 'light' as possible.
- Sites should be W3C HTML4.01 verified, and have no particular browser dependencies.
Submissions close on the 21st of October, and public voting will occur after the team has selected the final candidates. There will be a prize or two of some sort for the winner, which will be announced at a later date. Please e-mail all submissions to firstname.lastname@example.com in a .zip, .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 archive.
Well, this is just to let you know we are not dead. There has been some amazing work happening in the last few weeks - with ScummVMs support for the HE SCUMM games improving in rapid bursts thanks to the combined talent of cyx, Kirben and Sev. And of course, there has been more development than just this.
And now we would like to bring up the point that our side-projects Residual and ScummEX both need developers and contributors. We welcome patches from other programmers very much. With the help of ScummVM developers joostp and aquadran, salty-horse (a regular #scummvm'er) today submitted a patch for lipsync animations in Residual. Please see our 'subprojects' page and the 'Coding Guidelines' in our Documentation section. If you are interested in persuing a particular problem, please e-mail the "-devel" mailing list or pop on IRC if you need advice or help.
ScummVM version 0.6.1b was released today, fixing some very annoying regressions we discovered in its predecessor, 0.6.1. Everybody is strongly recommended to update to this version
And now... have some fun, folks!
Well, one of those "Small Yet Important" coding mistakes has cropped up in ScummVM 0.6.1. A copy-and-paste error in the 'Edit Game' screen may result in people not being able to save a game.
The mistake involves the new 'Paths' tab, which allows for easier editing of game paths. Unfortunately, the 'Extra Path' field on this screen is accidentally saved as directory to use for saved games, instead of correct field below it. This was noticed and fixed in the experimental CVS version, but the fix was mistakenly left out of the ScummVM 0.6.1 release.
If you encounter this glitch, the recommended work around is to set the Extra Path to the saved game directory. ScummVM 0.6.1b will be released soon to correct this issue.
ScummVM 0.6.1 is out, and can now be grabbed from our download page!
Among the usual changes, ScummVM should now run natively on 64-bit machines -- something we actually forgot to mention in the NEWS file.
And you know what they say: "To save the world, you have to push a few old ladies down the stairs." So we made a mother-load of fixes in this release. Some of the wonderful things you will no LONGER see in ScummVM include:
- Glitches using an Ogg Vorbis talkie file in some games
- Crashes on 64-bit machines
- Crashes when saving to an invalid directory in Broken Sword 1
- Lots of sound glitches in Curse of Monkey Island, Full Throttle and The Dig
- Crashes in some international versions of Simon the Sorcerer
- ... and lots of other annoying bugs!
So don't delay, download today. Downloads are not yet available for all supported ports, such as non-ARM PocketPCs and the HandheldPC binaries. These should become available within the next week.
This is just a quick update to let everybody know we're still alive. Work on ScummVM is progressing as per usual, and we intend to release ScummVM 0.6.1 shortly.
ScummVM 0.6.1 will contain several bugfixes for various games, as well as several sound and music enhancements for later SCUMM games (Full Throttle, The Dig, Curse of Monkey Island).
Also, followers of CVS may have noticed that support for Another World was recently added. This provoked quite a bit of argument within the ScummVM team as to whether this is considered an adventure and within ScummVMs goals.
After much debate, the engine author (cyx) decided that it would be more convenient to continue the project seperate from ScummVM. It has now been removed, and future information and development will occur as part of the RAW project. To prevent any doomsday predictions, I should also point out that he remains a member of the ScummVM team.
CABAL team splits over fundamental design issues
After yesterdays ground-breaking announcement, we are sad to announce the immediate disbandment of the CABAL team. Over the last several days there has been heated debate regarding several important design issues, and current tension in the team has risen to an insurmountable level.
"It's really unfortunate", Max Horn, senior developer on ScummVM and Exult, was quoted as saying,
"but [former FreeSCI maintainer] Christoph [Reichenbach]'s ideas of aligning curly braces with the left-hand
side of function declarations while appending them to the end of the line for 'while' and 'for' loops did not make
any sense at all."
The latter replied by pointing out that "using anything but tabs for indentation is calling for trouble."
Claudio Matsuoka, of the Sarien project, pointed out his disappointment and noted that he didn't see much of a
point in trying to co-operate with people entirely incapable of reaching agreements on such trivial issues. "I
mean, we haven't even resolved the entire EMACS vs. vi dispute, and they're already at each other's throats
James Brown, another senior developer on the ScummVM project, sadly announced that he was laughed out of the project meer hours before a decision to split was made. "They just said I didn't belong, since I prefer nano as a editor..." he admitted.
April 1st, THE INTERNET: The FreeSCI, Sarien and ScummVM teams today announced the formation of CABAL (Coalesced 'Adventures beyond Architecture' League), a universal adventure game interpreter. This new project will unite the strengths and capabilities of the projects involved, creating what the project members believe will be a revolution for adventure game fans around the globe.
When asked about the relevance of CABAL for the worldwide adventure gaming market, ScummVM project lead Max Horn commented that "[with] the market for adventure titles waning, we believe that the formation of a project with the explicit goal of running every adventure game ever released will infuse it with new life." FreeSCI maintainer Lars Skovlund added that "this will certainly cause an upheaval in the gaming world. Adventure game fans around the world, rejoice!".
In addition to supporting LucasArts' SCUMM games (including famous titles such as "Monkey Island", "Indiana Jones" and "Sam and Max"), Sierra's SCI and AGI lines ("King's Quest", "Leisure Suit Larry", "Space Quest"...), and other games already supported by the retrospective engines, the newly united team plans to continue to add further titles to their already impressive list.Some of the juicy new modules include:
- An Infocom module (based on the Frotz Z-machine interpreter), so you can now play your favorite text adventures anywhere you go!
- Exult is being merged in as a plugin, allowing Ultima 7 fans around the world to play their favorite game on the many platforms already supported by the CABAL component engines - including Palm/PocketPC PDAs and the Dreamcast.
- Revolution software has offered the source-code for Broken Sword 3, which will be added to the titles supported by the upcoming CABAL3D project - alongside with Grim Fandango and, possibly, Ultima IX (negotiations are ongoing).
- Support for the SNES games Final Fantasy IV through VI (Japanese numbering, i.e. FF2/FF3 according to US releases) is planned for sometime this Fall. Whilst these are not strictly adventure games, the storyline and plots in this series are more imaginative than any 'action adventure' title published in recent years.
Offers by various companies, including Microsoft and Amiga International, to buy out the team have been gently but firmly declined by the leads of the joint project. "We know that we could earn a lot of money from this, but we are idealists and at this time we have the goal to reform the worlds adventure market. Once that is achieved, we can reconsider about making some money out of this."
A few people have asked for further details on the TechTV segment featuring ScummVM. Well, you can read the online article intended to compliment the segment on the TechTV Website.
ScummVM will be shown as 'Free File of the Day' on the 'Call for Help' program at 3PM EST on Friday the 19th of March, and again at 9AM Eastern on Monday the 22nd of March.
Don't know how to watch TechTV? I'm told those of you in America can tune into DirecTV channel 354, Dish Network channel #191, or locate the cable channel by following the instructions on tv.yahoo
Or, if you just happen to have a C-band dish in the general vicinity of GE Americom Satcom C4 at the time of the show, it's on transponder 12 at 135 degrees west, 40 degrees elevation.
Those lucky Australians subscribed to Foxtel Digital can also watch the program. I have to try and find somebody with FTD so I can watch it myself.
The ScummVM project is pleased to announce the immediate release of ScummVM 0.6.0. ScummVM is a graphic adventure game interpreter designed to allow users to play many classic adventure game titles on various computer systems; (Linux, Windows 2000/XP, *BSD, Mac OS X, PocketPC/Handheld PC, Palm, Dreamcast and more)
Version 0.6.0 brings with it a new milestone in ScummVM history, with all LucasArts/LucasFilm SCUMM adventure titles now being supported. We are also proud to announce in conjunction with ScummVM 0.6.0 the release of the classic adventure game 'Flight of the Amazon Queen' (originally available for the Amiga and DOS) as freeware. The ScummVM team would like to thank the authors Steve Stamatiadis and John Passfield for providing the team with the source code to this classic game, and allowing us to release it.
So, what's new?
ScummVM 0.6.0 includes, as usual, many bugfixes in all supported game engines. There have also been dramatic fixes and improvements in the area of sound and music, as well as a greatly improved game management/options screen and two new graphics modes (HQ2x and HQ3x). Most importantly, we have also added new support for the following games:
- The classic V1 versions of the original LucasArts SCUMM games Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken and the LucasArts SCUMM game 'Full Throttle'
- Broken Sword 1 and Broken Sword 2. Many thanks to Revolution for providing us with the source-code to these games.
- Support for Flight of the Amazon Queen. Thanks to Steve and John for providing us with the source code to this game, and permitting its release as freeware.
ScummVM 0.6.0, the two freeware games Flight of the Amazon Queen and Beneath a Steel Sky, as well as converted cutscenes required for playing Broken Sword 1 and Broken Sword 2 may be downloaded from the Download Page
ScummVM 0.6.0 will be released in the next 48 hours, along with our super special yet not really all that secret surprise!
Keep your eyes on this page!
What? We promised more frequent news updates? You lie! Prove it!... News archives you say? Pfffah. Um. We were hacked!
We are nearing the final release of ScummVM 0.6.0, and there are just a few last minute bugs to fix. We're also waiting for a reply to an e-mail from two people whom have recently gone on an international jaunt, under the guise of 'work'. We have heard rumors they have been seen in San Francisco running around naked screaming "I'm working, I'm working". If spotted, approach with extreme caution, as they may be holidaying and dangerous.
On a related, but more serious note, since the above pair are reasonably incommunicardo, we may be releasing ScummVM 0.6.0 without the previously promised freeware game, which will instead be released at a later stage.
We will leave you now with the promised blatently stolen quote. There is no subliminal message enclosed. Honest.
Anyway, to answer your question, to get into the games industry, break into the Sony party at E3, walk around saying "Online multiplayer is the future," and if nobody has hired you by 11:00 pm, sleep with the first person you hear speaking either Japanese or French. Worked for me!
- Tim Schafer, as seen on DoubleFine, replying to a nutty fans e-mail.
Finally, Ender, your humble (yet lazy) news poster and co-project leader would like to let any Sony employees who happen to read this site know that he believes Online multiplayer is the future. We're not even going to touch the Sam and Max 2 thing. (Boo! Hiss!)
Stay tuned for more zany and space-filling content-less news posts in the future!
We have recently branched ScummVM 0.6.0, and are now entering the final testing phase. As such, we would be most happy if people could test the latest daily builds (or CVS build from tag 'branch-0-6-0' and report their results.
We have already conducted preliminary testing of several games, but the following still have not been tested and should take priority:
- V1 Maniac Mansion
- V2 Maniac Mansion
- V1 Zak McKracken
- V2 Zak McKracken
- EGA Indiana Jones 3
- VGA Indiana Jones 3
- EGA Monkey Island 1
- Monkey Island 2
- The Dig
- Curse of Monkey Island (Monkey 3)
Please report bugs in our bug tracker and successful completions of games on our General Forum. Thanks in advance for helping to shape up the next release of ScummVM!
On another note, continuing the current rash of computer problems, all scummvm.org e-mail addresses are currently broken. We hope to fix this within the next few days, and no messages should be lost. If however you want to discuss something important with us, we really suggest talking to us in real-time on our IRC channel (#scummvm, on irc.freenode.net).
Currently we are gearing up for our 0.6.0 release - this release will mark a major milestone in ScummVM history. As of ScummVM 0.6.0, ScummVM should finally support (at least the PC versions) of all LucasArts SCUMM adventures!
However, we need some help. As part of our next release we are also adding support for the Revolution games Broken Sword 1 and 2 which will require specially reencoded versions of the in-game cutscenes, as well as releasing another classic adventure game as freeware.
However, we are not yet sure whether SourceForge will be able or willing to host these files. So if anybody reading this news article happens to run, for example, a large bandwidth-plenty archive (http or ftp) that preferably doesn't require annoying registration methods (ala Fileplanet) and is willing to help... then please e-mail Ender (@ scummvm.org) and offer your assistance.
Stay tuned for more information on our next release, as it happens.
Everybody here at ScummVM Central, well, everybody still conscious, hopes that everybody is having (or has had) a good Christmas!
As a vague attempt to start our new years resolution (of posting news more frequently) a bit early, here is a mostly pointless news post. First, a request. If anybody notices any article in the media about ScummVM (or indeed is from the media), please e-mail press [at] scummvm.org so we can add it to our press page.
The release schedule for 0.6.0 has been pushed back a little due to various problems (such as reencoding Broken Sword cutscenes) and heavy development on certain features (like Full Throttles INSANE subsystem).
In an effort to reduce the length of our pre-release testing phase, I would ask that anybody here who does use a daily or CVS build please report any bugs they find in every-day use. This includes (despite what we usually say) our 'new' games: Full Throttle, Flight of the Amazon Queen, Broken Sword 1 and 2.
As we are calling for testers before we 'freeze' development for a new release, please ensure you test with the latest available CVS before reporting any bugs.
Whilst we know that the end of the year is approaching, it saddens us to announce that the ScummVM project is closing due to personal reasons on behalf of most of the developers. Visitors to our forum, such as timofonic, have suspected this may be the case for some time and unfortunately I have been urged by einheitlix to tell the truth.
It's been a great ride, and we had some really wonderful things in store for you, such as a new game we were planning to freeware for our next release, and the announcement that the oft-requested completion of support for Full Throttle was underway - although it would probably be in 0.7.0 not 0.6.0... but it's moot now.
I was planning on holding back this news until after the festivities, but as it's just a hoax to see how many people actually read our news page and pay attention, I've decided to announce it now.
In summary, in case people just skimmed that last paragraph: we are NOT really dead. We're very much alive and kicking, and will be bringing you lots-o-cool-stuff early next year!
(not so hidden link... see whats in store for the next version!)
Welcome to yet another quasi-regular reminder that, yes, your favorite project is far from dead. So what's going on in the world of ScummVM?
ScummVM 0.6.0, although not due out for a few months at least, is going to knock your socks off. Or at least, make them a nice shade of purple. Among the usual massive structural changes, bugfixes galore, and maybe even a new platform or two... we have recently (almost) finished support for the original V1 versions of Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken. This leaves the ever difficult Full Throttle as the only LucasArts game we do not support in it's mainstream form.
Also, thanks once more to the gracious support of Revolution, the next version of ScummVM will include support for yet another of their wonderful innovative games - Broken Sword 2!
These are both already present, in some form, in our developmental CVS and daily builds - however please remember they are experimental and still being heavily worked on. Please do NOT file bugs or pester anyone regarding them. And maybe, just maybe, we might have some more surprises in store before the next major release makes it to a SourceForge mirror near you!
ScummVM version 0.5.1 was released today, fixing several issues uncovered since ScummVM 0.5.0.
The following changes are included in this release:
- Beneath a Steel Sky savegame code completely rewritten, eliminating several situations where ScummVM 0.5.0 would produce unusable 'frozen' saved games
- Several other Beneath a Steel Sky bugs have been fixed
- Some Curse of Monkey Island actor graphical issues have been fixed
- Some issues when running ScummVM fullscreen under MacOS X have been resolved
- MorphOS port has undergone several critical bugfixes
- Dreamcast port now supports Simon the Sorcerer 1 and 2
We recommend all users upgrade to this release. Please note that whilst BASS saves from 0.5.0 are compatible with this release, we recommend restarting your game using the 0.5.1 save system if you continue to experience problems.
Although ScummVM 0.5.0 is our most tested version yet, a few problems always slip through the cracks. Among some other minor issues, it has come to our attention that Beneath a Steel Sky may occasionally produce unusable save games. Although this is a timing issue, and very rare on most systems, a small group of people may discover this happening fairly often.
A ScummVM 0.5.1 point release is planned in the near-future to fix this, and several other smaller issues which have came to our attention. Also, the manual for Beneath a Steel sky and possibly a scan of the included comic will be available for download later in the week.
Thanks for everybody's support, and assistance in making our project even better!
Version 0.5.0 of ScummVM, the classic adventure game interpreter, has just been released. This is our most tested version yet, thanks to everybody who answered our call for testing. Thanks!
So what's new? Well, besides the usual bugfixes and improvements are:
- Extensive overhaul of the music subsystem, more games now support music
- Support for the Enhanced (V2) versions of Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken
- Support for Beneath a Steel Sky, made possible thanks to Revolution Software supplying us with the original assembly source code!
- Aspect Ratio correction added, by popular request
A link to the release notes and a more detailed list of changes can be found over on the downloads page, along with the downloads... and our special (worst kept secret :) surprise!
As an extra SPECIAL bonus, the really really wonderful people at Revolution Software Ltd. have decided to allow us to make Beneath a Steel Sky *freeware!* You can download either the CD version (70M, includes speech) or the smaller Floppy version (8M), along with ScummVM 0.5.0, from the downloads page.
Enjoy! Oh, and there is that little donate button down there on the left. We need to buy our Dreamcast porter a copy of Simon the Sorcerer :)
ScummVM has just entered a CVS freeze and testing, to prepare for an eventual 0.5.0 stable release (hopefully at the end of July). But we need YOUR help!
Please click that little 'Documentation' option over there, and look at the 0.5.0 release checklist. If there is a game that is listed as needing testing, and you happen to feel like playing it through with the latest development version of ScummVM, please do so and let us know the results. Further information is on the checklist page.
Besides many fixes that will be in the upcoming 0.5.0, especially in the area of music, comes support for three new games:
- Enhanced Maniac Mansion
- Enhanced Zak McKracken
- Beneath a Steel Sky, thanks to the support of Revolution
In other news, Anonymous CVS is (and has been for some time) lagging
behind the official development tree. If you want the bleeding-edge CVS
(for testing, as an example), please use the 'Source Snapshot' on the
Download page over Anonymous CVS. And of course,
Be Vigilant
ScummVM 0.4.1, a stability-focused point release, is now available for download. Changes since 0.4.0 include:
- Several crashes/bugs have been fixed in Curse of Monkey Island.
- Several iMUSE and music-related bugs have been fixed.
- AdvMame3X is new, giving a 3x scaled and AdvMame-smoothed game.
- Fixed airport doors in Zak McKracken
- Fixed crash in SDL backend
The source code, as well as binaries for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris and PalmOS are already available at our download page. As always, other binaries (for PocketPC, MorphOS, Dreamcast and others) will follow shortly.
Five months after our last release, 0.3.0b, and over 2500 CVS commits/adds later, the ScummVM team proudly presents ScummVM 0.4.0.
The following is an overview of what's new in 0.4.0:
- Curse of Monkey Island (comi) support (experimental)
- Added support for the EGA versions of Loom, Monkey Island and Indy3
- Improved music support in Indy3 and the floppy versions of Monkey Island
- Many Simon the Sorcerer 1 & 2 improvements and fixes
- Very pre-alpha Beneath a Steel Sky code. Don't expect it to do anything (in fact it is disabled in the 0.4.0 release, but you can get it by compiling ScummVM yourself).
- Even more pre-alpha support for enhanced versions of V2 SCUMM games (Maniac Mansion and Zak)
- Preliminary support for early Humongous Entertainment titles (very experimental)
- New debug console and several GUI/Launcher enhancements
- New Save/Load code (easier to expand while retaining compatibility)
- Dreamcast port now works with new games added for 0.3.0b
- New official PalmOS port
- Various minor and not so minor SCUMM game fixes
- Large memory leak fixed for The Dig/COMI
- SMUSH code optimised, frame dropping added for slower machines
- Code cleanups
The source code, as well as binaries for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, PocketPC, Solaris and PalmOS are already available at our download page. Other binaries for MorphOS, Dreamcast and others, will follow shortly.
We hope you will enjoy the best ScummVM ever!
We've received a number of e-mails lately asking if any work is happening on ScummVM. We would like to reassure people that do -not- follow CVS that yes, a lot of work is happening.
We are currently gearing up for the release of 0.4.0, which should be happening within a few weeks. I'd like to ask people who feel like living dangerously to try out CVS and Daily Builds, and let us know of any problems we should be aware of. In the 'Documentation' section on the left, you will see a 'ScummVM 0.4.0 Checklist'. Games that have been tested without any problems are marked there - please test the games that are not marked tested and let us know your results on the Forum (Update: That's the General forum). Remember to include the date you downloaded the build you completed the game with.
At the moment we are focusing on earlier EGA games (Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken, LoomEGA, Indy3EGA), although Beneath a Steel Sky support is progressing at a slow but steady pace. Somebody also recently donated a Playstation 2 modchip to the team, so expect a native PS2 port as soon as Ender has it installed (ScummVM already runs fine under Playstation2 Linux).
A reminder to those that are interested in our latest progress, you can always sign up to the cvs-logs mailing list. Click the 'Project Home' link on the left, and browse to the 'Lists' page. This list will receive an e-mail every time there is a new change to the source-code, so be warned it can be rather technical and high-traffic. As an alternative you can just play with CVS Checkouts or Daily Builds and discover anything new yourself :)
Last Friday, March 14th, our fellow ScummVM developer and friend, Felix Jakschitsch (known to many under his nickname yot), committed suicide at the young age of 19.
We are completely shocked by this, and do not know or understand what drove him into this. It is a sorrowful world in which a cheerful, intelligent and helpful man is put in a situation in which he sees no other way to escape than taking his own life. We are sad to lose our valued friend. He contributed important work to ScummVM, including much of the Zak256 support. His loss is felt deeply by all of us, and we extend our condolence to his family and close friends, whose grief we share.
If you want to leave a message to his friends and family, there is a guestbook available. Also here is a news paper article telling more details (use babelfish if you don't speak german).
Felix, we miss you and will never forget you.
In other news, there has been a surge in interest of a Playstation 2 port again. I (Ender) am quite willing to do one if people donate at least US$75 (see that little button under the menu) to purchase a modchip. It shouldn't take long, and one of you - our loyal users - has already volunteered to install it for me if I do manage to obtain one. If we find there is enough interest (which will obviously depend on the donation status :), we will start an official port ASAP.
In other news, Curse of Monkey Island support is stabilizing. While there are still a number of small graphical glitches, currently we are down to two known gameplay-critical bugs and a number of other 'inconveniences' and cases of incorrect behavior. We hope to be able to announce Curse of Monkey Island completable very soon.
A lot of people have been asking where we are going from here. Here is a brief (very subject to change!) guide to our next few targets:
- February 2003: Curse of Monkey Island completable
- Feb - Mar 2003: Regression testing/bugfixes for other supported games
- Feb - Mar 2003: Completion of the Launcher functionality (tabbed option dialogs, etc)
- Early March 03: CVS Freeze, Regression testing, 0.4.0 release
- March onwards: V1/V2 game support (Maniac Mansion, non-FmTowns Zak, EGA Loom, etc.)
As usual, this is but a rough guideline depending on both progress and free time for our developers. If you want to help, and know how to use CVS and a compiler... either fix bugs, or regression test! We are very much looking for people to test CVS with games other than ComI and look for critical bugs that were not present in 0.3.0b, then attempt to try different versions of CVS and locate at least the day when the bug started occurring. This allows us to more easily determine what changes have caused problems, without spending weeks blindly guessing.
Needless to say, if you find a critical bug that IS also present in 0.3.0b, check for a bug report. If one isn't present, please submit one!
I (Ender) am interested in finding out if any ScummVM users will be present at Linux.conf.au '03 here in Perth... if you'll be there, drop a post in the forum. If there are a few people going we might get together for Pizza or something afterwards, or maybe chuck together a last minute spontaneous Classic Gaming BOF (if somebody else wants to organise it, I'm a terrible person for that kind of stuff :)
A quick update on CMI (COMI/Monkey3) support. Within just several weeks, remarkable progress has been made on support for this game, but work will likely be slowed for the next week as various developers are otherwise occupied. Currently, except for some bugs that make the Cannon scene rather difficult and unstable, it is possible to play some way into Part II of the game.
The current main issues remaining include a bug with flObject allocation (causes a crash in some dialog sequences), some script termination issues (causes various game-crippling crashes in the cannon scene and several Part II puzzles) and the various problems with the opening cannon puzzle.
As usual, please remember this work is still experimental, and please do not file any bug reports regarding it. Patches, however, are very welcome! :)
Sorry for this open message being so harsh guys, but do you not realise that by associating and bundling ScummVM with pirated copies ("Abandonware" or otherwise) of LucasArts games, you're basically giving them even more excuse to take legal action against us (and bring possible financial ruin on the developers of this program :)... I'm especially disappointed in chrilith who has almost certainly guaranteed that, unless we feel very forgiving, there will never be an official Palm port of ScummVM integrated into CVS.
If you appreciate what we are doing, and have done, then do not abuse it. Otherwise you are damaging the reputation, and possible legal status of both ScummVM and its developers. I've seen some VERY ridiculous comments on the Clie Source forums to the effect that LucasArts do not sell these games anymore. With the exception of some versions (specifically Zak256 and LoomCD), this is stupid. Most LucasArts games can be ordered in collection packs from Amazon or the LucasArts store (if you live in America.). Heck, I saw a bunch of LucasArts classic adventures in Electronic Boutique when I was Christmas Shopping.
In other news, Curse of Monkey Island support is progressing nicely! Be sure to try out the latest Daily Builds if you like living on the wild side (but of course do not file bug reports on CMI support).
First we would like to mention that LucasArts has put out a pack, at least in the UK, featuring updated versions of Sam and Max and Full Throttle, designed to work with Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2K/XP. This pack (entitled, imaginatively, "The Entertainment Pack") also comes with The Dig and Grim Fandango... these versions have not been updated, and are the original Windows versions (yes, these games DID come with native Windows ports in some of the earlier LucasArts Adventure Packs).
The updated Sam and Max and Full Throttle engines were not ported in-house by LucasArts, likely because of a lack of time AND because most people who worked on SPUTM/SCUMM have left anyway, but by Aaron Giles - the original Mac Porter (and renown MAME developer :). There are no modifications except for a DirectX wrapper around the graphics code and a really really bad graphics scaler.
Our take? Call us biased, but unless you need perfect compatibility, want to play Full Throttle now, or are missing more than two of these games - it will probably be far cheaper to buy these games second-hand or individually. The included updated binaries are inferior feature-wise to ScummVM, as you miss out on our enhanced features, such as support for platforms -other- than Windows (such as Macintosh, Unix and PocketPC), our graphics scalers, etc. Of course, if you do purchase the pack, the game datafiles are unchanged and of course compatible with ScummVM anyway. It is nice to see LucasArts releasing something like this, and doing something positive to try and revive their classic games - or at least drum up marketing hype for the sequel :)
Final conclusion, buy it if you want it or are a collector - but it's not worth the money simply for Windows compatibility. However if you do purchase it, you ARE encouraging LucasArts to update more classics in the future - although hopefully ScummVM will make such a need obsolete shortly. We suggest LucasArts spend it's development costs on re-releasing it's lost and RARE classics, like the FmTowns 256 color version of Zak Mckracken. For those interested, the updated versions were compiled on October 2nd for Full Throttle, and October 24th for Sam and Max.
In development news, several ScummVM developers have actually been really boring people and coded this Christmas, coming up over just a few days with the basics for Curse of Monkey Island support. I'm sure our Macintosh users will be happy to hear they will, in maybe as little as a month, finally be able to play this game. Support is in the latest CVS and Daily Builds, but do NOT file bug reports as we know it doesn't really work or do anything at the moment. Full support will be available "When It's Done".. or the day after Duke Nukem Forever comes out. Whichever is first.
Ho Ho Ho!
Monkey in your pocket? Definitely.
If anybody else notices ScummVM in the media, we would appreciate it you dropped us a line at firstname.lastname@example.com. Remove the NOSPAM from the address, obviously. If possible, please also send us a scan of the page.
If you work for a magazine that wants to mention ScummVM, maybe in an article on retro-gaming (*hint hint*), then also feel free to drop us a line. We can probably arrange an interview, screenshots, help... and/or large bribe-like quantities of bananas.
That's right, since the many many months since LucasArts first issued us with a DMCA notice (and wisely decided after the subsequent slashdotting and fan backlash from you, our users, to negotiate a deal :), we have been waiting for a settlement with LucasArts before releasing a long awaited new version. The wait is over. No, we haven't reached a settlement, we just got tired of waiting to release this gem.
There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of bugfixes since our last 0.2.0 release... not to mention support for at least three new games (The VGA version of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and support for The Dig and Simon the Sorcerer 2)... and new features such as a vastly improved in-game gui and a built-in launcher to make it even easier for you to add, configure, and run your classic LucasArts (and AdventureSoft) games. Experimental support for Full Throttle is here, as well as many bugfixes for the games introduced in our last version... such as the FmTowns 256 color version of Zak McKracken, and the VGA floppy version of Monkey Island.
For a short summary of changes, check out the Release Notes, or even better... just head over and download the dang thing.
Hopefully we will be able to come at you with new releases more often from now on, hopefully at least monthly. Please enjoy this release as much as we've became frustrated making it, and remember - if you give all your money to LucreArts, maybe they'll let us live instead of abandoning us on... on.... Monkey Island! (Ugh, Bananas... I hate Bananas).
For those interested in the boring news, here's both a summary and an update on our legal situation, for those users who are just now discovering ScummVM.
We've been at a deadlock with LucasArts for some time now. LucasArts simply do not like our current license, the GPL (General Public License). While we do not think it necessary, we have agreed to change the license to something more LucasArts-'friendly'. However, LucasArts wish us to include distribution terms which are against section one of both the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) and the Open Source Definition. We cannot agree to this, nor the condition they wish to require (no commercial distribution)... because it conflicts with the DFSG and OSD, which we require, and it is something we legally cannot be sure of enforcing - several Linux and BSD distributions already include ScummVM packages, and we cannot be certain they will notice a license change. Oh, and we WANT distributions to be able to include our software :)
To date, LucasArts has not been able to give us any firm complaints regarding ScummVM, besides some vague claims that if they didn't enforce these conditions on us, it would effectively give up their rights to their own Intellectual Property. We do not believe this, there certainly have not been any documented cases of the GPL leading to such a challenge in the past, and far more important properties have been licensed under the GPL in the past, such as the Quake titles from id software. LucasArts isn't releasing any of their own code under the GPL, and we really do not believe that they should require us to change our license - all we want them to do is leave us alone to create our emulator. Sanction us, if it makes them feel safer legally. But if they are going to require such a major step on our part of changing our license, they at least have to capitulate on the point of OSD/DFSG compliance.
We here at the ScummVM team would like to thank the people at LucasArts who are supporting us, and attempting to help us come to an arrangement. But guys, we're your fans. All we are doing is updating the engine for games, in a form of an emulator... because you haven't - although we've asked you to for years. We've even made more money for you, as quite a number of us have went out and BOUGHT your classic bundle packs, just to play it with ScummVM.
SourceForge, our host, is moving hardware on the 14th and 17th of November. During this time, there will be a number of outages:
- 14th: ScummVM Downloads and Mailing Lists will be unavailable between approximatly 16:00 Pacific Time (GMT-8), till 19:00.
- 17th: The main ScummVM site, and CVS tree, will be unavailable from 10:00 Pacific. This may last up to 12 hours, but hopefully less!
Thank you, and please shop at Snuckeys again!
Firstly, ScummVM 0.3.0 will include support for:
- Zak McKracken (FmTowns 256 Color Version)
- Monkey Island (VGA Floppy and Enhanced CD)
- Monkey Island II
- Loom (CD Talkie version)
- Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
- Day of the Tentacle
- Sam and Max Hit the Road
- The Dig
- Simon The Sorcerer 1
The next major release, 0.4.0, will include support for:
- Simon The Sorcerer 2
- Full Throttle
- Indiana Jones and Last Crusade (256 color version)
So, what can you do to help? Well, we currently require people to test all of the supported games and let us know if there are any major bugs that mark them as uncompletable. For details on how to do this, please see ScummVM 0.3.0 Release Info.
Here's a link to the State of the SCUMM e-mail
The legal situation is still pending, as we are waiting on a response from LucasArts to our last e-mail.
Progress-wise, people following the daily build will have noticed the new in-game GUI we have implemented. It's still very much a work in progress, so expect odd things to happen.
Some of our wonderful developers are currently working on improving compatibility with The Dig and Full Throttle, as it seems we might even get one of these completable by the time the legal situation is resolved and we can get our next release out.
Meanwhile, the CVS tree and daily builds are somewhat in an experimental form.
On to other matters, we are seeking mercenaries to kidnap two people so we can torture them into revealing the two current 'problem areas' in ScummVM.
We need the person who primarily extended iMUSE for Sam and Max Hit The Road. Pretty much every remaining bug with ScummVMs support of that game is related to the iMUSE system, so if anybody can 'acquire' a person or any information on this subsystem, please contact Ender to arrange discrete delivery of the... package.
Secondly, we require Vince Lee for questioning over the INSANE cutscene engine used in games such as Full Throttle. Our lack of information on this system has left us at a dead-end as far as progress in this game goes. If you can acquire this person, or any information regarding INSANE, you will be well rewarded. Anonymity will be honored, if the 'acquiree' desires it.
As an alternative, we can negotiate a deal if someone wishes to raid LucasArts HQ and persuade it's occupants to part with source or information regarding this two items. Our own attempts as infiltration of this facility have failed, due to some mysterious person called "Management".
Seriously, if anybody does have any information on these two headaches for us, please get in touch with Ender. If you've previously worked at LucasArts and wish to help anonymously, we'll respect that. I wouldn't be too afraid about giving assistance, as our own negotiations have revealed they are quite willing to let us exist, they are just not willing ('at the moment') to share any actual information or source.
Thanks for playing, and remember - "never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game"!
Unfortunatly, nobody told me when my birthday was, they told me I was an orphan! But I'm going to try and throw a party anyway. So everyone is invited to attend my IRC channel, #scummvm, on irc.freenode.net!
If your someone like famous, or you like me, or whatever, and you want to pop in and say 'Hi!' to me and my parents... come on by! Or if you just want to send me a birthday card, or RSVP for the party, go over to the Contact page and e-mail Endy or someone. Or post in my new shiny Birthday Forum. We should be around pretty much all day.
If you want to actually meet a ScummVM developer in real life, and buy him (I don't have a mummy! Wahh!) a beer or something.... you can always drop a post in the Birthday Forum and see if theres anyone else in your area. I'm sure they would appretiate it!
Oh, and I lost a small, fleece sweater with three blue roses on it. If you see it, please commit it to CVS for me!
Firstly, an update on our legal negotiations with LucasArts. We are hopefully very close to finalising our arrangement, and sometime in the next week hope to make an announcement regarding this. Of course, we had hoped to make an announcement a good month ago. Unfortunatly things are rather busy at LucasArts, so it has taken a while to talk to the relevant people.
On another note, I would like to address something that comes up at least once a week. No, ScummVM is not currently in any kind of position to start supporting OTHER non-SCUMM games. The inclusion of Simon support aside, the current team has far too much on their hands trying to complete support for existing LucasArts classic adventures. Although we may add support for other games in the future, we do not currently plan on it... and any requests to do so will be promply ignored.
Unless it is accompanied by a donation of money over $2,000.
Meanwhile, we would suggest asking for help at the wonderful VOGONS (Very Old Games on New Systems) site if you require help with other games on modern operating systems.
Anyway, thats all for the moment. Donations have been rather nonexistant lately, so if you havn't already, please consider using the PayPal button under the menu on the left... and send us some cash. Currently we are using donations for legal costs, and purchasing software (such as a copy or three of IDA Pro, as well as games some of our developers may not already have).
I have heard rumors the project is dead, and I would like to assure everyone that's not so. We have been working very hard lately, and many bugfixes have been made to various games. In fact, we are almost ready for another release.... but we are waiting for a resolution to our Legal Drama before that happens.
So, what is happening on the legal front? Well, our erstwhile project leader (James 'Ender' Brown) has had many phone conferences with LucasArts, and we should shortly be announcing an agreement that will make both parties happy. I would like to thank LEC for being open to helping keep the project alive, instead of just forcing us to shut down.
Hopefully within the next week, news of our future will be announced. Until then, keep donating, and keep telling everyone how much you love ScummVM. Remember, it's not people saying 'LucasArts SUX' that will convince them to keep helping the project... it's people saying 'ScummVM Rules' that will!
So far most of our communication has been off-the-record and fairly vague, but be assured we haven't vanished, and we'll give you the latest news as it happens!
Also, thanks to people donating. We are currently at a little over $100, which is tagged to be spent on both buying versions of games for testing, and also saving up to our target of $300 to purchase a copy of IDA Pro, arguably the best disassembler on earth. Keep donating :)
Today was a milestone for the ScummVM project, as we finally received the long-awaited for e-mail from LucasArts Legal regarding the project.
Thankfully, they do not yet appear to have a valid complaint. Their message requesting the removal of the site is based on the presumption that we are distributing LucasArts own engine on this site. Of course, ScummVM is a fully original work based equally on reverse engineering and original decoding work by many different people in the community, so this request doesn't really affect us.
We're safe for the moment, and will continue to work on bringing the wonderful classics of the LucasArts company to your computing devices for, hopefully, a long time to come!
- 0.2.5: All supported games next to bugless
- 0.3.0: The Dig and MI1 VGA Floppy supported
- 0.4.0: Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade supported, more bugfixes
- 0.5.0: Full Throttle supported, basic CMI and Maniac Mansion support
- 0.6.0: More work on CMI, MM and further bugfixes
- 0.7.0: Maniac Mansion completable, Zak McCracken and Loom16 playable
- 0.8.0: Zak McCracken and Loom16 completable
- 0.9.0: Bugfixes and CMI completable
- 1.0.0: The end of the beginning
Work on ScummVM has been proceeding very slowly of late, as the main devteam is quite busy on other matters.
We are aware of quite a few issues in Zak256 and some very serious ones in Simon that were found for 0.2.0, and plan to do an interim release (0.2.1) as soon as they are fixed. We are of course looking for more developers willing to help out, as there is only currently one person working on the game interpreter itself (although several are working on more specialized parts of the engine).
We are also aware of a GP32 port in progress, and urge anyone who knows the developer to get him to contact Ender. Besides the fact we are quite interested in his work, and wish to invite him to join the team... we are quite peeved he has released binaries and there appears to be no way to contact him for the source code to his port (as is required by the GPL license ScummVM uses)!
Until the next update... I can't pick that up! No really! Read my lips.. I... Can't... Pick... That... Up!
Currently we have downloads for i386 Debian Woody, Windows, Dreamcast, MacOSX, Familiar/Intimate, and Windows CE. Over the next few days we will also be adding downloads for MorphOS, RPMs, and maybe a BeOS download.
Besides many major fixes, ScummVM now supports several new games, such as the FmTowns 256 color version of Zak McKracken, the CD version of Loom, and (strangely enough) Simon the Sorcerer! Several games supported in 0.1.0 are now completable in 0.2.0, such as Sam and Max.
ScummVM release 0.2.0 also includes several new platforms, better support for different CPU architectures and endians, many more commandline options and experimental (e.g., do not report bugs on it!) support for Full Throttle, The Dig, the VGA version of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and the VGA version of Monkey Island (floppy).!
So don't delay. Download it now, and if you really like it, click that little paypal button under the menu to donate money to help the ScummVM team buy tools and software to continue this project.
Of particular interest may be the fact that Zak McKracken 256 (the enhanced graphics fmTowns version) will be officially supported in 0.2.0, and can currently be completed with only two major bugs in the current CVS.
Also, we currently have someone working on a GBA port. This has been a popular request, and hopefully will be ready in time for 0.3.0. You can see proof of it's existence in this development screenshot. The port is currently too early to be placed in CVS, so just hang tight :)
In other port news, LyonHrt has compiled an old CVS build of ScummVM for the Dreamcast, maintained by our team member Marcus Comstedt. They can be found listed below. Please note that as these are old builds they are not officially supported by the ScummVM team. Comments on this port should be posted on the ConsoleVision Dreamcast forum
Oh, and by the way.. if anyone knows the location of Sean Clark or any other person who scripted Sam and Max, please kidnap them and force them to explain an annoying script race in the Mystery Vortex which has kept several of us awake for the last 48 hours.
Thanks, and enjoy ScummVM :)
Also some of you may have noticed a PayPal button at the bottom of the navigation bar. If you've enjoyed ScummVM please donate some money to help us buy software to help development. Thanks!
To the coders out there, feel free to browse the bug list and take a shot at commiting fixes for them. At the moment there is only one person regually working on ScummVM, so things are slow.
We need to make sure that the following games are completable with no major playability bugs (eg, crashes, freezes, etc - minor issues such as sound syncro do not count):
- Loom CD
- Monkey Island 1 (CD)
- Monkey Island 2
- Indy 4: Fate of atlantis
- Sam and Max
- Day of the Tentacle
- Sam and Max is now completable!
- inSane video engine working. Used in Dig and Full Throttle
- More command line options for control. See the readme.txt
- Preliminary work has begun on Curse of Monkey Island
- Mutle has committed the Mac port to the CVS tree
- Many many bugs have been fixed.
We have also placed a Compatibility Page online to help answer the most common question, "Which games work?". We will keep this page updated as development continues.

subset: commoncrawl