A couple of random questions

[Avatrunei]

I am new in ScummVM (I prefer DosBox etc) and after experimenting with several games, these questions occurred to me. I am afraid the answers will be negative but here goes

1. I understand that SVM uses its own save game system. This means that if you begin a game in a "clean" (Dos) or emulated environment (DosBox, WinUAE), you can't switch to SVM and resume gameplay with your previous savegames. Is there a way to make SVM read the 'official' savegame files?

2. I have no idea about game ripping, reverse engineering or game programming, however this daring idea occurred to me: I saw a package of "enhanced music" mp3s that can be read by SVM while playing a specific game, so you have a better aurial experience instead of the original MIDI music. So, how easy can it be to tweak the source code and do this for other games?

For example, the Amiga versions of the latest LucasArts adventures (MI2 and Fate of Atlantis) lack several tracks and there are whole scenes of silence or repetitive music. So, if I downloaded the soundtrack mp3s, can I make SVM read them while running the Amiga versions of those games? I am sure it's not a simple task, but where does it start from?

[eriktorbjorn]

1. I understand that SVM uses its own save game system. This means that if you begin a game in a "clean" (Dos) or emulated environment (DosBox, WinUAE), you can't switch to SVM and resume gameplay with your previous savegames. Is there a way to make SVM read the 'official' savegame files?

There are a couple of game engines where I'm told the save game format is the same as the original, but not the SCUMM engine. I think (but I could be wrong) it's only happened for games where we've had the original source code to work from, and not even all of those.

2. I have no idea about game ripping, reverse engineering or game programming, however this daring idea occurred to me: I saw a package of "enhanced music" mp3s that can be read by SVM while playing a specific game, so you have a better aurial experience instead of the original MIDI music. So, how easy can it be to tweak the source code and do this for other games?

Depends on the game. In many of the games, the music is just played, with no variation, until the game tells it to stop, or it reaches the end of the song. That translates well to replacing MIDI with recorded music. In a game like Monkey Island 2, where the music can change smoothly from one song to another, individual instruments can be turned on or off, etc. it would be a lot more work. (I would have said nearly impossible, but the Special Edition proved me wrong on that.)

[Avatrunei]

Then let me consider a simpler scenario which doesn't use iMuse.

Let's say I download the Zak McKracken FMTowns version soundtrack from http://s-island.mixnmojo.com/zak.php. And let's say I have the Amiga version files.

Let's say that for some strange reason, I don't want to play the with the 256 colors graphics, but with the Amiga graphics.

How easy would that be to patch or mod the SVM code to play said mp3s instead of the Amiga soundtrack?[/url]

[Raziel]

I doubt downloading the soundtrack is legal.

I for one wouldn't want to waste any energy/coding to "patch" all sorts of different things in games that are already fine to play.