Release of ScummVM 1.6.0 "+4 to engines"

[Phase Angle]

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[Wesker]

Just wondering. Which are the language versions supported for the Eye of the Beholder games?

[LordHoto]

Just wondering. Which are the language versions supported for the Eye of the Beholder games?

English and German.

[Wesker]

Just wondering. Which are the language versions supported for the Eye of the Beholder games?

English and German.

Thanks.

The same compatibility issue with all Westwood games.

[LordHoto]

Just wondering. Which are the language versions supported for the Eye of the Beholder games?

English and German.

Thanks.

The same compatibility issue with all Westwood games. :(

What are you talking about?

[Wesker]

English and German.

Thanks.

The same compatibility issue with all Westwood games.

What are you talking about?

I'm talking about unsupported language versions of the Westwood games, of course. It's not possible to make ScummVM running them, because the game is not even detected. Other game engines are more friendly because at least the games can be detected as English versions or similar, but with the Westwood games it's a real pain for sure and not even the fantranslations are detected.

You are lucky to be German and have easy access to German versions of all the supported Westwood games to properly implement them into ScummVM. Other language versions of the Westwood games are usually out of luck.

[LordHoto]

I'm talking about unsupported language versions of the Westwood games, of course. It's not possible to make ScummVM running them, because the game is not even detected. Other game engines are more friendly because at least the games can be detected as English versions or similar, but with the Westwood games it's a real pain for sure and not even the fantranslations are detected.

We usually try to support fan translations when somebody comes up with one. However, we only do that when there's a patch against a known (preferably) English version.

However, we could detect the games as English, but we cannot make them work fully translated (and that's then usually people will start complaining about that) unless we have a copy of the game. That's why we choose not to do that.

You are lucky to be German and have easy access to German versions of all the supported Westwood games to properly implement them into ScummVM. Other language versions of the Westwood games are usually out of luck. :(

You can donate a copy of your game to us and we can/will happily try to make it work. But usually the versions people want to be supported are hard to obtain and they don't want to donate their copy. Thus, we can't really do anything about it. We happily accept feature requests/bug reports for unknown versions though, that will give us an idea what versions are a missing. Also what language (and game) are you talking about in specific?

[Wesker]

Also what language (and game) are you talking about in specific?

Spanish.

Regarding Westwood games, I'm missing The Hand of Fate the most, as ScummVM doesn't detect either the Spanish floppy version or the fantranslated CD-ROM version. The Legend of Kyrandia has the Spanish floppy version supported, but not the fantranslated CD-ROM version which is detected as an English demo and then the game locks up after the intro.

The bad thing about the fantranslations of both CD-ROM versions of the Kyrandia games is that they are not accurante to the official floppy version translation because of character limit imposed by the original engine. The Legend of Kyrandia fantranslation is patched to the French version and there are some constraints because of that. The Hand of Fate fantranslation is patched to the English version and all menu, options and inventory text remain untranslated because that's in the .exe and they didn't even touch that.

Lands of Lore is no problem because, although ScummVM doesn't detect the Spanish floppy version, it detects the fantranslated CD-ROM version as the French version and runs perfectly, together with the fact that this fantranslation is fully complete and not partial like the ones of the Kyrandia games, without character limit and such. This is an exception to what the Westwood games are used to.

Lastly, regarding the Eye of the Beholder games, I don't think they ever had CD-ROM versions, so these would have to be either supporting the Spanish floppy version or nothing. Either that or "fantranslating" some English or German version with the content of the Spanish version.

We usually try to support fan translations when somebody comes up with one. However, we only do that when there's a patch against a known (preferably) English version.

However, we could detect the games as English, but we cannot make them work fully translated (and that's then usually people will start complaining about that) unless we have a copy of the game. That's why we choose not to do that.

Yeah, I know, the fantranslation must be in patch format and not "copy and paste files here" format because that violates Rule #0.

If the ScummVM engine doesn't pose as much a limitation as the original engine did, I could try to translate both CD-ROM versions of The Legend of Kyrandia and The Hand of Fate accurately to their floppy Spanish versions, without any cuts and constraints to the script and else. But I don't know if this would be possible because maybe ScummVM is respecting what the .exe is doing with the games (becase this limitation problem is always given by the .exe and not anything else). And of course, I would provide them as packed patches, because the current fantranslations are both in "copy and paste files here" format.

You can donate a copy of your game to us and we can/will happily try to make it work. But usually the versions people want to be supported are hard to obtain and they don't want to donate their copy. Thus, we can't really do anything about it. We happily accept feature requests/bug reports for unknown versions though, that will give us an idea what versions are a missing.

That's the real problem with all this: donating near impossible to get versions of these Westwood games because of being exclusively released in floppy format, something which makes the issue very complicated to solve. Many people who had these versions tend to just throw them away when they are no longer able to boot floppy disks in their current computers, not to mention the reliability this format has always had compared to the CD-ROM format.

And then again, when you try to look and find alternative copies of the games in order to donate them (because the "donation" format is also another problem which implies missing your own copy of the game, if you accepted lending the games and returning them when the work is done instead of plain donating, then it would be different story), either you are not able to find them, or you do it but they have prohibitive selling prizes due to the rarity and exclusivity of the version.

So probably, we will never had proper ScummVM support of the Spanish floppy versions of The Hand of Fate, Lands of Lore (which fortunately has the CD-ROM version fantranslation which runs fine), Eye of the Beholder and Eye of the Beholder II because of this. You were lucky to have the floppies of Spanish The Legend of Kyrandia provided back in the day, as that one is very rare too.

[LordHoto]

Regarding Westwood games, I'm missing The Hand of Fate the most, as ScummVM doesn't detect either the Spanish floppy version or the fantranslated CD-ROM version. The Legend of Kyrandia has the Spanish floppy version supported, but not the fantranslated CD-ROM version which is detected as an English demo and then the game locks up after the intro.

That Kyra1 CD fan-translation detection bug is indeed annoying, but I can't remember anyone reporting it so far. I can try to make a fix that the version isn't detected as CD Demo anymore. Of course, that won't make the version supported.

The bad thing about the fantranslations of both CD-ROM versions of the Kyrandia games is that they are not accurante to the official floppy version translation because of character limit imposed by the original engine. The Legend of Kyrandia fantranslation is patched to the French version and there are some constraints because of that. The Hand of Fate fantranslation is patched to the English version and all menu, options and inventory text remain untranslated because that's in the .exe and they didn't even touch that.

The bits about the exe are actually why we need a copy of the game to support it.

Lands of Lore is no problem because, although ScummVM doesn't detect the Spanish floppy version, it detects the fantranslated CD-ROM version as the French version and runs perfectly, together with the fact that this fantranslation is fully complete and not partial like the ones of the Kyrandia games, without character limit and such. This is an exception to what the Westwood games are used to.

Yes, for LoL and Kyra3 it is easiest to support any fan-translations because they nearly keep no language specific strings inside the executable. LoL should only keep the character names inside the executable and Kyra3 should only keep the main menu strings inside the executable IIRC.

If the ScummVM engine doesn't pose as much a limitation as the original engine did, I could try to translate both CD-ROM versions of The Legend of Kyrandia and The Hand of Fate accurately to their floppy Spanish versions, without any cuts and constraints to the script and else. But I don't know if this would be possible because maybe ScummVM is respecting what the .exe is doing with the games (becase this limitation problem is always given by the .exe and not anything else). And of course, I would provide them as packed patches, because the current fantranslations are both in "copy and paste files here" format.

Right now we live with the same limitations. I planned on changing that but it's a bit more tedious work and I am currently more focussing on other aspects of ScummVM. I will come back to you when that situation is different though.

You can donate a copy of your game to us and we can/will happily try to make it work. But usually the versions people want to be supported are hard to obtain and they don't want to donate their copy. Thus, we can't really do anything about it. We happily accept feature requests/bug reports for unknown versions though, that will give us an idea what versions are a missing.

That's the real problem with all this: donating near impossible to get versions of these Westwood games because of being exclusively released in floppy format, something which makes the issue very complicated to solve. Many people who had these versions tend to just throw them away when they are no longer able to boot floppy disks in their current computers, not to mention the reliability this format has always had compared to the CD-ROM format.

See, we can work easily with floppies. I only had very few issues with broken floppies so far, nearly all of the games I picked up on ebay on floppies worked fine. I even managed to dump crazy Japanese 1.2M 3.5" floppies. Thus, I don't think the format itself imposes any hard issues. I would rather say that Italian and Spanish versions of Westwood games are pretty uncommon even back in the old days (there must have been a reason why they stopped making translations with later games anyway). But when a copy turns up we can work with it.

And then again, when you try to look and find alternative copies of the games in order to donate them (because the "donation" format is also another problem which implies missing your own copy of the game, if you accepted lending the games and returning them when the work is done instead of plain donating, then it would be different story), either you are not able to find them, or you do it but they have prohibitive selling prizes due to the rarity and exclusivity of the version.

The problem with lending is: If a version specific bug turns up after we gave the copy back, it is usually harder (or sometimes nearly impossible) to fix that bug because we don't have access anymore.

See, as long as the copies are not completely overpriced (which is somewhat starting around 30 Euro for DOS versions in my eyes) we can usually buy them (and as long as they ship to Germany or some other country where a ScummVM developer lives so he can ship it to _athrxx or me afterwards). After all, we also support FM-Towns/PC-98 copies of (some) Westwood games, which might be even more obscure than Spanish/Italian translations. So, if you have ebay links (or similar) you can always drop us an E-Mail (for example my nick @at@ scummvm [.]dot[.] org) and we can try to pick them up.

[Wesker]

That Kyra1 CD fan-translation detection bug is indeed annoying, but I can't remember anyone reporting it so far. I can try to make a fix that the version isn't detected as CD Demo anymore. Of course, that won't make the version supported.

Do as you prefer, even if that's not solving the game detection problem. At the current state, absolutely nothing can be obtained from that wrong detection anyway.

And to tell you the truth, I don't like that much how the CD-ROM version frantranslations of both The Legend of Kyrandia and The Hand of Fate handled the translated scripts (either butchered or incomplete) because they don't mirror the official translations of their floppy equivalents due to restrictions in the .exe of these versions and the different languages supported (English, German and French). On the other hand, The CD-ROM version frantranslations of both Lands of Lore and Malcolm's Revenge are perfect, and in the case of Lands of Lore it completely mirrors the official Spanish version of that game (Malcolm's Revenge didn't have one, but the fantranslation is excellent and nothing is butchered or incomplete).

That's why, at the moment, I prefer playing the Spanish floppy versions of the first two Kyrandia games and dismissing their CD-ROM equivalents entirely, until their fantranslations are finally able to match their script of the Spanish floppy versions.

Yes, for LoL and Kyra3 it is easiest to support any fan-translations because they nearly keep no language specific strings inside the executable. LoL should only keep the character names inside the executable and Kyra3 should only keep the main menu strings inside the executable IIRC.

Then again, Malcolm's Revenge Spanish fantranslation is officially supported, so that doesn't pose a problem either. That must be the reason why they got that fantranslation so smooth and professional, without any constraint done to the script like what was done with the Spanish fantranslations for the CD-ROM versions of The Legend of Kyrandia and The Hand of Fate.

Right now we live with the same limitations. I planned on changing that but it's a bit more tedious work and I am currently more focussing on other aspects of ScummVM. I will come back to you when that situation is different though.

Good to know. Please PM when the situation with the Kyra engine changes, even if it's not anytime soon. I'm very fond of Westwood games and I would do anything to have the CD-ROM versions of The Legend of Kyrandia and The Hand of Fate featuring the very same script of the official Spanish floppy versions, without any contraints and cuts to be done in order to make the game running (which is the major loss of these fantranslations).

See, we can work easily with floppies. I only had very few issues with broken floppies so far, nearly all of the games I picked up on ebay on floppies worked fine. I even managed to dump crazy Japanese 1.2M 3.5" floppies. Thus, I don't think the format itself imposes any hard issues. I would rather say that Italian and Spanish versions of Westwood games are pretty uncommon even back in the old days (there must have been a reason why they stopped making translations with later games anyway). But when a copy turns up we can work with it.

The reason why Spanish and Italian versions of these games are so rare must be, aside from commercial reasons, due to the fact that most people who have had these games in floppy format have either lost them or throwed them away because they are no longer considering them worth retaining them. It's a cultural mentality issue that maybe doesn't take place in countries like Germany, France and Japan (and of course, many English-speaking countries), but it's bound to happen in countries like Spain and Italy where the general mentality of the people with this kind of property is way different and not as careful.

I wouldn't do it for sure, and maybe there's people who are either keeping these versions or they have sold them to keep them in the market instead of having them missing or destroyed them so these copies are lost forever. This affects to lots of games released in Spain (and I suppose, Italy) released in floppy format, and the Westwood games take a major hit because they probably weren't as sucessful as LucasArts and Sierra games to begin with, together with the fact that these translated versions of Westwood games received absolutely no re-release of any kind (if it would have been in CD-ROM format, it would have helped a lot).

And now that you mention about why subsequent Westwood games weren't translated to Spanish and Italian, it's funny, but it seems to be related to the change of format. All the floppy releases of Westwood games like the Eye of the Beholder games, the first two Kyrandia games, Dune II and Lands of Lore were translated to Spanish (and I suppose, Italian), but neither of the CD-ROM versions of these games were, and when they started with CD-ROM exclusive games like Malcolm's Revenge and Command & Conquer, the Westwood games weren't translated to Spanish and Italian (they were only released in English, German and French) until 1997 when Westwood went back to these languages starting with games like Lands of Lore II and Blade Runner (which would be an awesome addition for ScummVM by the way, or maybe that's ResidualVM territory?). Sure, commercial reasons were also involved, but the change of format was what make that language policy change drastically.

The problem with lending is: If a version specific bug turns up after we gave the copy back, it is usually harder (or sometimes nearly impossible) to fix that bug because we don't have access anymore.

See, as long as the copies are not completely overpriced (which is somewhat starting around 30 Euro for DOS versions in my eyes) we can usually buy them (and as long as they ship to Germany or some other country where a ScummVM developer lives so he can ship it to _athrxx or me afterwards). After all, we also support FM-Towns/PC-98 copies of (some) Westwood games, which might be even more obscure than Spanish/Italian translations. So, if you have ebay links (or similar) you can always drop us an E-Mail (for example my nick @at@ scummvm [.]dot[.] org) and we can try to pick them up.

If I can help you getting spare official copies of the Spanish floppy versions of games like The Hand of Fate, Lands of Lore, Eye of the Beholder and Eye of the Beholder II, I will do it. But believe me, I have tried looking for them several times and they are rare as hell. I'll try to do what I can but the situation is like this and it's very frustrating to say the least.

I don't think these are more obscure than the Japanese versions you mention due to the reasons I mentioned above and because Japanese people specifically tend to keep and preserve their products a lot. Maybe, because of their general reluctance to hae contact with foreings, it's uncommon for them to put such things in a market where us can get it from them, but you can be sure there are enough remaning copies of everything they have, something that maybe can't be said the same about Spanish and Italian versions of these Westwood games.

[NoiZje]

I am currently working on enhancing the digital midi track of Discworld MAC by reducing the noise levels.

Removing most of the noise and hiss has already been done. But when I save the file, ScummVM doesn't recognize the track anymore. This is either because the RAW format is somehow changed and / or because there are track markers inside the data which are lost while editing the file.

Any help please?

An alternative solution is saving the file into separate James Woodcock Enhanced track listing. But A this is a lot of work, and B, I am looking towards creating a diff file which could be legally distributed on this website.

[Raziel]

I am currently working on enhancing the digital midi track of Discworld MAC by reducing the noise levels.

Removing most of the noise and hiss has already been done. But when I save the file, ScummVM doesn't recognize the track anymore. This is either because the RAW format is somehow changed and / or because there are track markers inside the data which are lost while editing the file.

Any help please?

An alternative solution is saving the file into separate James Woodcock Enhanced track listing. But A this is a lot of work, and B, I am looking towards creating a diff file which could be legally distributed on this website.

You sure you picked the right thread?

[NoiZje]

After 11 long months we are thrilled to announce the release of ScummVM 1.6.0.

Other significant features include support for the Macintosh version of Discworld 1 and the music in the Macintosh versions of LucasArts adventures

Or should I create a new thread?

[Raziel]

This thread is about the last release...it's already rather old and people tend to not look there anymore

If you create a new one you might reach more

[barbarian_bros]

2 questions for ScummmVM Team :

1 - "The Journeyman Project: Pegasus Prime"

Only Pegasus Prime version released in 1997? so bad.. I have the 'turbo' version for Windows 3.x (release in 1994 for Mac and Windows3.x) and the 'original' version on Mac (released in 1992 for Mac, and in 1993 for Windows3.x).
Do you plan to support these older versions too?

2 - Hopkins FBI :
As the game is not listed in the "games data files" list, can you detail what files/folders are required? I've deleted the most obvious non required files/folders (directX and install folders, autorun and others .exe/.ico at CD root)
But It still takes 972 files in 13 folders and 592MB (better than the 611MB on the CD, but still huge.