Discworld 1 Best Version

[Onizuka]

Hello there.

I'm new to the forum.
I wanted to play again this old game as well as the sequel I had as a child, but I'm having some troubles with ScummVM.

Dialogues, for instance, are very slow. When a character ends his line, there's a few more seconds break before the new line appears. I tried to raise the option for "Text Speed", but it doesn't change anything. Anyone knows if there's a fix?

I also read that later in the game during a cutscene there's a glitch that makes the game crash. And I generally read that this version is full of bugs.

Anyone here managed to finish the game with ScummVM? Is there maybe a "Best version" to get? I found an ISO that was said to be the bug-free version, but it doesn't work on ScummVM.

Thanks in advance if anyone could help. I'd really love to play this game again on PC.

[Mustrum]

I found an ISO that was said to be the bug-free version, but it doesn't work on ScummVM.

Give the ISO back again; 0) No Warez. No Abandonware discussions.

[Kurufinwe]

Dialogues, for instance, are very slow. When a character ends his line, there's a few more seconds break before the new line appears. I tried to raise the option for "Text Speed", but it doesn't change anything. Anyone knows if there's a fix?

The "text speed" option in ScummVM is a complete misnomer (and has been forever). It's more of a "text delay", i.e. the higher it is, the longer the text stays on screen. If you want the game to move to the next line as soon as the audio for the current line is over, you should set the "text speed" to 0.

[Praetorian]

Hello there.

I'm new to the forum.
I wanted to play again this old game as well as the sequel I had as a child, but I'm having some troubles with ScummVM.

Dialogues, for instance, are very slow. When a character ends his line, there's a few more seconds break before the new line appears. I tried to raise the option for "Text Speed", but it doesn't change anything. Anyone knows if there's a fix?

I also read that later in the game during a cutscene there's a glitch that makes the game crash. And I generally read that this version is full of bugs.

Anyone here managed to finish the game with ScummVM? Is there maybe a "Best version" to get? I found an ISO that was said to be the bug-free version, but it doesn't work on ScummVM.

Thanks in advance if anyone could help. I'd really love to play this game again on PC.

Please don't ask for support for illegally obtained copies of games.

If you have an original copy of the game, and this issue persists with that one, please clarify this in the original post or your next message, so that we may look into the issue further. Ideally, and again only for an original version of the game, we would prefer a bug report on our bug tracker.

I have, however, found an existing "bug report" (actually an enhancement request) on our tracker, mentioning the in-game control slider for "Text Speed" which may possibly be counter-intuitive to some players. Maybe this is related.
https://bugs.scummvm.org/ticket/7739

Dialogues, for instance, are very slow. When a character ends his line, there's a few more seconds break before the new line appears. I tried to raise the option for "Text Speed", but it doesn't change anything. Anyone knows if there's a fix?

The "text speed" option in ScummVM is a complete misnomer (and has been forever). It's more of a "text delay", i.e. the higher it is, the longer the text stays on screen. If you want the game to move to the next line as soon as the audio for the current line is over, you should set the "text speed" to 0.

I don't think it is a "complete misnomer", since a lot of the early supported games for ScummVM did not feature speech audio, in which case "text speed" actually controls the speed of subtitles.

However, perhaps we could update the description, at least the one in the popup bubble that explains the option, to reflect how it works in games with speech.

[Kurufinwe]

I don't think it is a "complete misnomer", since a lot of the early supported games for ScummVM did not feature speech audio, in which case "text speed" actually controls the speed of subtitles.

It does control the speed of the subtitles, but it's wired backwards. When you increase the "subtitle speed", it makes the text stay on screen longer. (That's because what ScummVM calls "subtitle speed" isn't actually a speed, but rather the time that it waits before moving on to the next line; unfortunately, speed and time are inversely correlated.)

[Praetorian]

I don't think it is a "complete misnomer", since a lot of the early supported games for ScummVM did not feature speech audio, in which case "text speed" actually controls the speed of subtitles.

It does control the speed of the subtitles, but it's wired backwards. When you increase the "subtitle speed", it makes the text stay on screen longer. (That's because what ScummVM calls "subtitle speed" isn't actually a speed, but rather the time that it waits before moving on to the next line; unfortunately, speed and time are inversely correlated.)

Ah, I see. I didn't know it was reversed. Probably worth opening a ticket on the bug tracker for this.

[Onizuka]

Thank you for the replies. Actually, I do have the original copies of both Discworlds, but they don't work anymore on this PC (obviously). The only way to have it work is via ScummVM. I deleted that ISO anyway.
I had no idea Text Speed worked the other way around. Now that I have set it to 4 is more acceptable and dialogues end at a normal speed!

About my other issue about other bugs. It's just something I read about Discworld I having many bugs. I think that's the reason I could never finish it as a child.
Are there any known bugs that I should be really aware of? Like something that doesn's allow me to advance in the game?

[Praetorian]

Thank you for the replies. Actually, I do have the original copies of both Discworlds, but they don't work anymore on this PC (obviously). The only way to have it work is via ScummVM. I deleted that ISO anyway.
I had no idea Text Speed worked the other way around. Now that I have set it to 4 is more acceptable and dialogues end at a normal speed!

About my other issue about other bugs. It's just something I read about Discworld I having many bugs. I think that's the reason I could never finish it as a child.
Are there any known bugs that I should be really aware of? Like something that doesn's allow me to advance in the game?

This is the list of reported bugs we have for the game. (Of course, the TINSEL engine developer(s) from ScummVM may have a longer list of known bugs)
https://bugs.scummvm.org/query?status=! ... =Discworld

Note that not all of the listed bugs apply to all versions of the game or to a Windows PC platform (some are for Android, Wii, FreeBSD).
Also, from a quick look, I see that many of those bugs were reported years ago, so maybe their status has changed, but noone provided feedback in order to close the bug.

[Onizuka]

I saved that page, thanks!

A sort of issue I'm encountering is that I cannot lower the game music, not with ScummVM nor with the in-game settings. The music is still very high even at the lowest settings, it doesn't seem to change one bit.

Anyone knows if there's a fix to this?

[criezy]

There is a page on the wiki that lists the bugs that occur in the original (and not just ScummVM): https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php?title=Tinsel/Bugs

The "text speed" option in ScummVM is a complete misnomer (and has been forever). It's more of a "text delay", i.e. the higher it is, the longer the text stays on screen. If you want the game to move to the next line as soon as the audio for the current line is over, you should set the "text speed" to 0.

It's a bit more complicated than that as it depends on the engine. For some games it is indeed a "text delay" and for others it really is a "text speed", which makes it maybe even more confusing. There is a discussion about this in the bug #7722 .