My Gobliiins version

[raina]

I just bought a PC CD-ROM game compilation called Power Pack, released by Infogrames back in 1993. The disc has 5 games, most notably the original Prince of Persia and Gobliiins, which sealed the deal. (Well, that and the good condition and ridiculously low price.)

Now, I was trying to add Gobliiins into ScummVM by copying only the necessary files according to http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Datafiles#Gobliiins but after the intro sequence and the first "Loading" screen, the game would just exit. There was no error shown in the console. So, I went the elimination route and found a file called COMMUN.EX1 was required in addition to the .STK files, at least by this version. Which brings me to this:

Code: Select all

Looking for gob
Trying to start game 'Gob engine game'
Your game version appears to be unknown. Please, report the following
data to the ScummVM team along with name of the game you tried to add
and its version/language/etc.:
  "intro.stk", "6d837c6380d8f4d984c9f6cc0026df4f", 192712

The game now works with the COMMUN.EX1 file in place but indeed, it was first added as "Gobliiins (unknown/DOS)". I'm pretty sure this is just another floppy version copied on the CD because there's no GOB.LIC and there are no audio tracks on the disc (English btw, can't find any version information, it just says (c) 1991 C.V.S.). Which raises another question. The title screen shows sound effects and music credited to Moby but so far I've only heard the digital effects (solved 6 screens). Any idea where the music might be?

Oh, and I found a "bug" when the goblins go underground: instead of a regular load screen, there's a bigger image with some story text on it but it's only displayed as briefly as the load screens giving the player hardly enough time to read the text. I distantly recall somebody mentioning this before but there's nothing in the bug tracker. Is this a known thing?

[DrMcCoy]

So, I went the elimination route and found a file called COMMUN.EX1 was required in addition to the .STK files, at least by this version.

Oh, so there actually is a PC version with this file.
Interesting.

Updated the wiki page.

The title screen shows sound effects and music credited to Moby but so far I've only heard the digital effects (solved 6 screens). Any idea where the music might be?

None in the PC version.
Only the Mac version has music, AFAIK.

Oh, and I found a "bug" when the goblins go underground: instead of a regular load screen, there's a bigger image with some story text on it but it's only displayed as briefly as the load screens giving the player hardly enough time to read the text. I distantly recall somebody mentioning before but there's nothing in the bug tracker. Is this a known thing?

This is a know bug for EGA games (and there's a workaround in place, which doesn't trigger for your game version, because it was until now unknown).

Is your version a EGA one as well, or is it a VGA one?


EDIT:

I.e. does your version look like this (EGA):

Or like this (VGA):

[raina]

I knew I forgot something. The game is VGA.

[DrMcCoy]

Hmmm, does the version on the CD have, perchance, .ADL files?

[raina]

There are .ADL files on the CD, but only in the directory SS2, meaning they are for another game called Super Ski 2 ((c) Microids). (AdLib music by Moby would have been sweet though, if that's what you were suggesting.)

[DrMcCoy]

Okay, so it's similar to the Mac version, but without any music.

I added the MD5 to the SVN repository.
Could you try with a recent checkout / next daily build and tell me, whether the story image workaround works?

[raina]

Shall do.

[Ceri Cat]

This has me curious as I'm pretty sure I had music in my copy of Gobliiins (DOS CD), so I'm going to go through the CD stack tomorrow and see if I can't hunt it down to check.

[DrMcCoy]

Yes, of course, the PC CD versions have CD audio music. I was talking about the floppy versions when I said "no music".

[Ceri Cat]

Heh ok, just when I'd already dug it out along with my Space Quest collection and Inca.

Sorry I thought you meant any version except Mac the way you said it.

On a side note was Space Quest VII ever released as there's a demo of it on my SQ collection CD but I've never seen it for sale.

[md5]

Heh ok, just when I'd already dug it out along with my Space Quest collection and Inca.

Sorry I thought you meant any version except Mac the way you said it.

On a side note was Space Quest VII ever released as there's a demo of it on my SQ collection CD but I've never seen it for sale.

Nope, sadly it got canceled. Read here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Ques ... n_Numerals

[eriktorbjorn]

On a side note was Space Quest VII ever released as there's a demo of it on my SQ collection CD but I've never seen it for sale.

According to Wikipedia, Space Quest VII: Return to Roman Numerals was cancelled.

[Ceri Cat]

That's what I figured.

Space Quest was a truly sad series of games in a lot of ways, but I always found them enjoyable for both the puzzles (multiple solutions are always nice) and the story such as it was.

[raina]

I added the MD5 to the SVN repository.
Could you try with a recent checkout / next daily build and tell me, whether the story image workaround works?

I've now tried the July 8th and 9th daily builds for Windows but the version is still reported as unknown and the story image issue persists.

EDIT: 16.7. Just tried again today, no change.

EDIT2: Ah, missed the PM earlier.