Is there a way to skip commercial Inc. logos?

[dreammaster]

Non-technical/ethical bit:
Thanks for your answer. I saw Dreammaster's post above. My question was more about, is it possible to modify the game data itself. I mean all the disk.vga files which are available for download. As far as i understand it, please correct me if i'm wrong, that's new ScummVM code in intro.cpp and you simply "read" content with it.

You're correct. The ScummVM Lure engine is hard-coded to read in each of those screens in sequence, and pause briefly between each. So even if you hacked the data files to have those screens blank (all issues of license aside), it would still pause for the same length of time.

If it were really necessary to do this, I'd introduce a new optional configuration parameter the game engine could detect, and skip the startup screens if present and set. That way, it could become part of the main git repository rather than having to maintain a hacked version just for Debian, and all you'd have to do then, is build a distributable with a compiled copy of ScummVM, the game data, and a scummvm.ini with the section for Lure already set up, and including that parameter.

[criezy]

If it comes to that, rather than blank the logos completely and modify the code to skip displaying them, could they be replaced with some generic text (as a pixmap), e.g. 'Published by Virgin', 'Developed by Revolution Software'? Would that be sufficient to make the Debian folks happy?

It just feels so wrong to remove the credits for the people who made that game. But to me personally even replacing the logos with a text feels wrong, just slightly less so than removing them altogether.

[Apo]

@dreammaster

Thanks for your offer. I really hope it won't be necessary. I'll contact both ScummVM maintainers for Debian who are also maintaining BASS and FOTAQ and ask them for their opinion.

@criezy

Sounds strange but this could also be a solution, yes, but i don't want to speculate here before i have talked to Debian's ScummVM maintainers.

I'm also interested whether it is possible to replace random content in the game. Not to mention the logo but would it be possible to replace all torches in the game with ropes for example? Or can this, if at all, only be done with some kind of hex editor magic?

[dreammaster]

I'm also interested whether it is possible to replace random content in the game. Not to mention the logo but would it be possible to replace all torches in the game with ropes for example? Or can this, if at all, only be done with some kind of hex editor magic?

It would be difficult without substantial effort. From what I remember off the top of my head, all the data is in a series of compressed archives, and the individual images use compression as well. Animations were even more complicated. Not to mention that EGA was a whole secondary can of worms.

Not really worth it, in my opinion, just for minor cosmetic changes, unless you were planning to do significant changes to the graphics and make a full blown editor. And since the game logic is all hardcoded in the engine, there's not much point, since you couldn't use such an editor to make a brand new game.

[Apo]

Thanks dreammaster. That gives me an idea how much effort it would be to change something.

The good news is, i have talked to the ScummVM maintainer and he saw no problem with Lure. The package is already in NEW

ftp-master.debian.org/new/lure-of-the-temptress_1.1%2Bds-1.html

Provided the ftp-masters treat the game like BASS and FOTAQ, then there should be no further concerns about it.

Now i'm going to package Drascula. License and game looks good and i see no issues here.

Another story is Dreamweb but that's also another thread.

Thank you all for developing ScummVM and keep up the good work!