Tutorial: Getting Monkey Island 3 to run properly

SilentBeutlin · Post by **SilentBeutlin** » Tue Jul 08, 2008 6:50 pm

After a couple of hours trying different things, I finally got The Curse of Monkey Island running perfectly fine on the Wii. If you're experiencing hiccups, looong loading times and off lip-syncing, this might help:

PREPARATION

1. Get the latest ScummVM, atm this is rev32565:

2. Usa a Fat(16)-formatted SD-Card, do not bother to use high-speed cards, it won't make a difference.

3. I suspect you know how to get the scummvm-.dol running. (Twilight Hack / Homebrew Channel)

4. You will need the following Monkey Island 3-Files: COMI.LA0, COMI.LA1, COMI.LA2, as well as the "RESOURCE"-Folder (should have 25 files ending in .bun .nut .san and .tab) - That's all the files you need for running the game on ScummVM/Wii.

5. You will also need
- a "compress_scumm_bun.exe"
- a "lame.exe"

The bun compressor can be found inside the scummvm-tools package on the scummvm download page: http://www.scummvm.org/downloads.php#tools
The "Lame.exe" is here: http://home.arcor.de/tomasherrmann/download/lame.exe (Right click -> Save)
If the link is down, google should also help.

COMPRESSION

6. Now that you've got everything together, you're going to compress the audio files of the game to approx. a third of their former size. This will eliminate all the loading times from the game! (at least I hope so, it did for me)
Create a folder ("C:\CMI" for example), put the .LA0, .LA1, .LA2 and your RESOURCE-directory in there. Put the two executables "compress_scumm_bun.exe" and "lame.exe" into "RESOURCES".

7. Inside the RESOURCES directory, create two new folders: "original" and "compressed". Move all .bun-Files (there are 4 files) into the "original"-Folder.

8. Create a TXT-File in the RESOURCES directory, copy&paste the following into the file:

compress_scumm_bun.exe MUSDISK1.BUN "original" "compressed"
compress_scumm_bun.exe MUSDISK2.BUN "original" "compressed"
compress_scumm_bun.exe VOXDISK1.BUN "original" "compressed"
compress_scumm_bun.exe VOXDISK2.BUN "original" "compressed"
@echo Completed
PAUSE

Save the file as (or rename it to) "compress.BAT"

9. Run the "compress.BAT". It will encode all the voice and music from the game into .mp3 format, resulting in smaller .bun files in the "compressed" folder. The whole process takes between 20 and 30 Minutes, so go watch an episode of Scrubs or something.

10. You now have
-"C:\CMI\" with the .LA files
-"C:\CMI\RESOURCES\" with all the game files, "lame.exe" and "compress_scumm_bun.exe"[/i], but without the .buns
-"C:\CMI\RESOURCES\original\" the original .bun files
-"C:\CMI\RESOURCES\compressed\" the compressed .bun files

COPY & PLAY

11. On your SD-Card, your scummvm should be under "\apps\scummvm\". Create a folder for Monkey Island, but NOT inside the scummvm-folde. Put it inside the apps-folder, thus "\apps\curse" or "\apps\MI3", the name doesn't matter. Copy the .LA files into that folder. Create a folder named "RESOURCES" and copy all the files (without the folders "compressed" and "original" and without the executables) from the "RESOURCES"-folder on your harddrive in there. Copy the .buns from the folder "compressed" into the folder "RESOURCES" on your SD-Card.

12. Your SD-card should now have \apps\curse\ with the .LAs, and \apps\curse\RESOURCE\ with all the game files, including the modified .buns.

That's it! Put the SD-Card into the Wii, start SCUMMVM and load The Curse of Monkey Island. The full motion Videos might still stutter a bit, but the game itself should run smoothly, without significant loading times between screens or voice/music tracks, and with working lipsync. Have fun!

(Sorry for any cases of bad english. Credit goes to PSPswampy for writing a simliar .bat-file for a PSP-tutorial)

chojin · Post by **chojin** » Tue Jul 08, 2008 9:23 pm

You may want to compress the full motion videos as well, using the compress_scumm_san.exe for all san-files in RESOURCE-folder (parameters like bun-tool).

The opening video still stutters a bit in the beginning when there is much movement, so I guess the audio part is not the limit here. My files are compressed as OGG vorbis, which could be a bit more complex than MP3, but I'm not sure.

SilentBeutlin · Post by **SilentBeutlin** » Wed Jul 09, 2008 9:07 am

I tried compressing to OGG vobis, which resulted in a crashing game even before the intro. It's not more complicated, but it took more time.

And I read that compressing the .san files makes the stuttering even worse, so I refrained from doing so. Can anyone confirm this?

Badablek · Post by **Badablek** » Wed Jul 09, 2008 10:25 pm

And I read that compressing the .san files makes the stuttering even worse, so I refrained from doing so. Can anyone confirm this?

Compressed .san files play exactly like uncompressed ones...not better, not worse....San compression is some kind of zip compression, it only reduces the file size and split audio file (which is compressed in OGG or MP3 format).

BTW Ogg compression for speech (.bun) works great and helps scummVMwii to play the game with less lag (scenes' changes)

sdh · Post by **sdh** » Wed Jul 30, 2008 11:07 pm

This was very useful to me and I want to thank you for this!
Is it possible to get these kind of guides to other games, like Full Throttle for example? The file structure in that game is way messier and maybe there's lot to discard and compress. Maybe also for games like Broken Sword that uses multiple discs and contains lots of files. Just a thought. Thanks again!

Badablek · Post by **Badablek** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 7:07 am

sdh, everything is already explained here :

http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Datafiles

and with the scummvm tools, it's really easy to compress data...

http://www.scummvm.org/downloads.php

Ace2020Boyd · Post by **Ace2020Boyd** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 10:52 am

what does this help? does it help with the lag and a lot of other problems or what?

SigENeaT · Post by **SigENeaT** » Sat Aug 02, 2008 1:53 pm

From what i understand after reading up in this and other threads on how to get CMI/MI3 working with ScummVM (forget Wii for a moment), the LA files must be in the CMI root directiory with all of the other appropriate files under a directory called "RESOURCES" which nests as a subdirectory.

Correct?

Well i have just been playing around with mine and beating my head over a ScummVM error telling me that it was unable to find musdisk1.bun

Eventually i worked out that if i put *all* of the files in to the same directory (ie, no "RESOURCE" dir) then ScummVM does not have an issue and the game runs normally.

I was able to achieve the same result when tried on my Wii as when i tried on my PC.

I havent seen this discussed at all on the forums before which leads me to believe i have one hell of a unique set up =|

Would you think this can be considered a bug? Even though it happens whether i use the PC build 0.11.1 or the Wii build rev 33083.

Someone please feel free to point out if i have missed something obvious here...

Angelus3K · Post by **Angelus3K** » Sat Aug 02, 2008 3:49 pm

Sounds like I'm wrong here but I would of thought compressing anything would of increased the load times as the Wii CPU has to spend that bit extra time decommpressing, no?

clem · Post by **clem** » Sat Aug 02, 2008 9:08 pm

Angelus3K wrote:Sounds like I'm wrong here but I would of thought compressing anything would of increased the load times as the Wii CPU has to spend that bit extra time decommpressing, no?

However, it also takes time to load a file from a medium - if the file is smaller, loading is faster. If the CPU is fast enough loading smaller file + decompression is still faster than just loading a larger file.

billeke · Post by **billeke** » Sat Aug 09, 2008 8:58 pm

wow this is really handy
I wonder if it's possible to compress this game onto a 512mb sd-card (so the game may take 400-450mb space)?
when I compress it with the method in the first post it's simply too big!

I've read here and there that oggenc is better than lame for compression so will that help to get te filesize down? (64kbps ogg instead of 128kbps mp3?)(although I really don't want any quality loss)

and maybe someone can make a simmilar guide for the san files?

ps: please understand that this all is very new for me: those few lines in the first post is like the first bat file that I ever made! and yes I must get a bigger sd-card

EDIT: Also I reread the post and I'm confused: the map on the sd: should it be named resource or resources? ('cause it's resource on the cd's)

dhewg · Post by **dhewg** » Sat Aug 09, 2008 10:06 pm

Angelus3K wrote:Sounds like I'm wrong here but I would of thought compressing anything would of increased the load times as the Wii CPU has to spend that bit extra time decommpressing, no?

the real bottleneck is indeed reading data off the sd card. a rule of thumb for the wii port is: the smaller the files, the better it performs. of course one encoding format might be problematic while other's are not, but currently im not aware of any

clem · Post by **clem** » Sat Aug 09, 2008 10:18 pm

billeke wrote:wow this is really handy
I wonder if it's possible to compress this game onto a 512mb sd-card (so the game may take 400-450mb space)?

I have a compressed version of CoMI on my HD, about 475mbytes - as far as I remember I used MP3 compression with standard settings.

billeke · Post by **billeke** » Sat Aug 09, 2008 10:25 pm

clem wrote:
billeke wrote:wow this is really handy
I wonder if it's possible to compress this game onto a 512mb sd-card (so the game may take 400-450mb space)?
I have a compressed version of CoMI on my HD, about 475mbytes - as far as I remember I used MP3 compression with standard settings.

my version is like 540mb big

fingolfin · Post by **fingolfin** » Sun Aug 10, 2008 8:25 am

[quote="billeke"
EDIT: Also I reread the post and I'm confused: the map on the sd: should it be named resource or resources? ('cause it's resource on the cd's)[/quote]

The same names as on the CD should be used, i.e. in your case "RESOURCE" if that is what the CD says.