Welcome to Mortville Manor

Post by **Strangerke** » Sat Jan 18, 2014 2:40 pm

You are Jerome Lange, a Bogart clone private eye who's received an invitation from an old friend to join her at Mortville Manor to help with a desperate situation. With a name like Mortville you might suppose something is seriously wrong and, yes, you're right. Your old friend Julia has already departed to Deadsville.

So... Who did dunnit?

Based on the sources provided by DotEmu and by Lankhor founders and developers, the ScummVM Team is pleased to announce support for France's 1987 Game of the Year: Mortville Manor. Only the DOS versions are supported, and ScummVM is bringing to you the first DOS English translation. So, grab your disk and copy the files, then start playing using the latest daily build of ScummVM and help us testing it.

As usual, all bugs should be reported to our bug tracker following our bug submission guidelines. While you play through the game, we would also love it if you could take some screenshots for us.

Freddo · Post by **Freddo** » Sat Jan 18, 2014 4:04 pm

Very cool

Any plans on supporting other versions of the game too, like the Amiga version?

Jade · Post by **Jade** » Sat Jan 18, 2014 8:04 pm

i don't speak french and there are seemingly no relevant results when searching under Mortville on ebay, should i be searching under something else?

Post by **Strangerke** » Sat Jan 18, 2014 10:51 pm

@Jade: Mortville Manor was released for DOS in French and German only. We added an English translation, to help people not speaking those languages. The French title is 'Manoir de Mortevielle', the German title is 'Der Landsitz von Mortville'.

@Freddo: I can't say when it'll happen, but yes, Amiga and Atari versions are interesting us. They are easier to find on ebay, and are using better graphics. And most likely they are using the same hardcoded logic, except the questions asked when entering the crypt which could be missing in the early Atari versions.

Jade · Post by **Jade** » Sun Jan 19, 2014 5:15 am

so, just to clarify, i can buy either the french or german version and play either one in english?

Post by **Strangerke** » Sun Jan 19, 2014 9:44 am

Exactly. Or in German, or in French: we made the DOS version multi-language EN/FR/DE in ScummVM.

OmerMor · Post by **OmerMor** » Sun Jan 19, 2014 11:33 am

This game looks very interesting - thanks for supporting it.
From the mobygames page of this game, it appears as if there is an English DOS version:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/mortv ... tId,11628/

The picture was added in 2007, so it's not your translation. Maybe a fan translation?

Also, the Atari ST pictures looks identical in resolution and color depths to the DOS ones. Are you sure its supposed to have better graphics? The Amiga pictures looks entirely different, and it looks like the art was completely redone for this port. The Amstrad CPC port also appears to have completely different graphics, but they are much worse then the rest.

Post by **Strangerke** » Sun Jan 19, 2014 1:49 pm

Mobygames is wrong. The screenshot in English is from an Atari ST version. You can see that by some details in the palette used as well as the design of the clock.

OmerMor · Post by **OmerMor** » Sun Jan 19, 2014 2:02 pm

We should let them know.
Are there any authentic DOS pictures anywhere?

Post by **Strangerke** » Sun Jan 19, 2014 5:38 pm

This one:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/mortv ... tId,10855/

The same on Atari:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-st/ ... Id,368807/

The same on Amiga:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/mor ... Id,221950/

The other DOS screenshots are from the Atari version, afaict

scoriae · Post by **scoriae** » Wed Jan 29, 2014 7:55 pm

When calling scummvm via command line, the games short name is mortevielle. If I add the game through the gui, the German version is mortevielle-de, the "improved" German translation is also mortevielle-de, and the English version is just mortevielle.

I do not understand how it differentiates between the standard and improved German translations when it uses the same id for both games.

Assistance with this would be appreciated.

Post by **criezy** » Wed Jan 29, 2014 9:43 pm

@scoriae: it uses the "extra" field to differentiate between the original and improved German versions. You can check in the scummvm.ini file after adding the game that this field will be empty for the original version and will contain something for the improved version ("Improved Translation" I think).

By the way, this improved version is not much improved. The menu was changed and that's about it. I was told the German was very bad so we wanted to improve it, and that is relatively easy to do, but we need somebody to actually do it (the text is on github in gametext.h and enginetext.h).

scoriae · Post by **scoriae** » Wed Jan 29, 2014 11:34 pm

Hmm, I notice that with the grman version, it launches the german version from the comman line whether you specify mortevielle or mortvielle-de. By having the gui look at the second field, this breaks the ability to launch the proper version from the command line.

Unfortunately, that creates problems for anyone launching scummvm games from a front end. Would you consider adding the language to the shortname like other scummvm games?

Post by **eriktorbjorn** » Thu Jan 30, 2014 5:39 am

scoriae wrote:By having the gui look at the second field, this breaks the ability to launch the proper version from the command line.

I don't have the game, but I thought ScummVM looked at the "language" setting in the configuration file, or the -q / --language command line option. Do neither of these work here?

scoriae · Post by **scoriae** » Thu Jan 30, 2014 5:43 am

i don't generally add the game to scummvm first, as I never use the gui. so there is no configuration file for it to check at launch unless I do that first.

I'll have to look into the language command line option. I have never had to use this before in the past, and yet every scummvm compatible game I have has launched perfectly with out it.

I'll give it a go in the morning and report back.