Support for Sword1 GBA?

[h3xx]

I was astonished when I found out that a game as complex as Broken Sword also came out for the GameBoy Advance. Naturally, the first question that popped into my mind was "Will ScummVM ever be able to support playing it?"

Well, will it?

[clem]

Well, will it?

Probably not

[joostp]

I think it's safe to say that it will never be supported by ScummVM.

The engine is completely different from that of PC Broken Sword, and it would be a *lot* of work to support this vastly inferior version.

[manias]

why would you want to anyway.. controls are not exactly the same etc.
Just use a gba emulator like visualboy advance

[iPwnzorz]

And besides, how the heck do you get a GBA game to a PC conventionally? Just buy a Gameboy/DS....

[raina]

And besides, how the heck do you get a GBA game to a PC conventionally?

Isn't that beside the point? How do you get Amiga, C64 and NES versions of supported games to ScummVM platforms?

[iPwnzorz]

Good point.

Actually, how DO you? Amiga I can understand because you can take the files. NES I can't see, it's in a cartridge and C64 - I've never seen their media, so no comment.

But GBA doesn't seem credible. I know there's ROMs but... yeah.

[zorbid]

How do you think these "ROM" images are created?

ROM cartridge dumpers can be purchased online, but selling and using them is illegal in a lot of countries AFAIK (although I don't know how the gaming companies managed to lobby governments to bypass the laws protecting fair use for personal backup copies... It could be because, in practice, these tools were used for spreading illegal copies.).

That's also how you can extract MT-32 ROMs, but with a custom built dumper.

The Amiga 3.5" floppies can be turned into image files usinga standard PC with a floppy drive and a custom driver, if I'm not mistaken.

C64 could either read data from tape (standard music tapes IIRC), or from 5.25" floppies (one side at a time, but you could use the second side of a double sided floppy by putting it upside down :-). Both can be dumped with appropriate tools.


Edit: eriktorbjorn beat me to it while I was editing my post...

[eriktorbjorn]

and C64 - I've never seen their media, so no comment.

5.25" floppies, I would guess. Or do we support any C64 games that were released on tape?

[clem]

NES I can't see, it's in a cartridge.

Sending a NES cartridge to a guy who can dump it and returns cartridge and ROM information to you is rather trivial (finding such a person on the net isn't too hard either)

If that is done by taking the cartridge apart and reading out the chips, or hooking the cartridge to some home-built reader I cannot say, but it works.

If you manage to load a program onto some game console (GameBoy Color?) and swap the cartridge against a game cartridge I guess it'd be even possible to dump the ROM information using the original device over some (2 player link?) port.

[iPwnzorz]

I'd better end this before it turns into Rule #0.

It's all clear to me now, thanks.

[hippy dave]

The Amiga 3.5" floppies can be turned into image files usinga standard PC with a floppy drive and a custom driver, if I'm not mistaken.

just as a point of trivia - no, a pc as standard can't read amiga floppies, the pc's floppy drive controller doesn't have the capability. it's possible to buy a custom floppy drive controller card (aka a catweasel) which will allow the pc to read amiga disks, but these aren't common or cheap. the vast majority of amiga disk image files will have been made on amigas

[sev]

just as a point of trivia - no, a pc as standard can't read amiga floppies, the pc's floppy drive controller doesn't have the capability.

Still it is possible. Though, as it is pointed out, it requires 2 floppy drives attached to one controller. This can read any Amiga disk even with protection, and is much cheaper than Catweasel.


Eugene