Feeble Files

[JurjenB]

I recently bought Feeble Files (4 CD).

I saw that it is 95% supported by ScummVM.

I find that not exactly true. It seems that you only have to install and start ScummVM, click on start program, select the first program CD and you're off.

No way, you first have to convert, extract and add files an hour of two.

So the 'supported function' should be 10% or something. Who agrees?

[raina]

The percentage roughly tells you how well the game engine reimplementation in ScummVM supports the features expected by the respective game scripts. And consequently, how close the game experience is to the original. It sounds like you're referring to some kind of "customer support", or how finished or unfinished a product is, which doesn't really apply. (Free, open-source software developed by volunteers for no compensation other than being able to enjoy their favorite old games on modern platforms.) In fact, the compatibility page talks nothing about "support", maybe just to avoid confusion.

There are complex issues preventing everything just working out of the box but some, like the video codec issue with Feeble Files (which was not an issue of compatibility to begin with, but one of politics), are being worked on. In the mean time, the game works perfectly if you meet it halfway by doing some converting or downloading. I myself am more than happy with how the things are done with ScummVM, functionality now, polish later.

And the other issue of having to copy multi-disc games to the HD (not sure if you noticed that yet) isn't really an issue to me, more like personal preference in these times of fast (=slowly up-spinning and noisy-as-hell) optical drives.

[eriktorbjorn]

There are complex issues preventing everything just working out of the box but some, like the video codec issue with Feeble Files (which was not an issue of compatibility to begin with, but one of politics), are being worked on.

ScummVM 0.13 seems to be able to play the original Smacker cutscenes. It wasn't mentioned in the release announcement though, so perhaps it's still considered an experimental feature. Or maybe it was simply forgotten.

The reason for not supporting Smacker in the first place, as I understood it, was that RAD Game Tools were still licensing it commercially, so they may feel a bit protective about it. (Their web page says they're still licensing it, but I can no longer find any price tag.) So apart from the usual reverse-engineering problem, there was the additional legal concern. Perhaps an unnecessary concern: The real advantage of licensing their code is probably a good encoder, and a well optimized decoder. Not the format itself.

Anyway, it wasn't until FFmpeg had supported it for some time that a Smacker decoder, based on their work I believe, was added to ScummVM.