Support for: The Clue/Der Clou possible?

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EctoOne
Posts: 32
Joined: Sun Apr 18, 2021 6:18 pm

Support for: The Clue/Der Clou possible?

Post by EctoOne »

Hello,

I was wondering if it would be possible to add support for The Clue/Der Clou.
The game has become free and there are already some SDL projects available for Linux/Windows.
I believe the more advanced one is: https://sourceforge.net/projects/cosp/ which also has the game files.
And the other one I know of is: https://github.com/vcosta/derclou which I even successfully compiled on a Raspberry Pi 3b.

I'm asking because I really wish I could play this on my tablet. I hate playing on my PC. :)
chrisis
Posts: 150
Joined: Sun Oct 30, 2005 4:06 pm
Location: Austria

Re: Support for: The Clue/Der Clou possible?

Post by chrisis »

I know the game and even own it somemewhere, I remember back then it was a big deal when they open sourced it.
It's a pretty fun game from what I remember (haven't played it in many years though).
it's also not really an adventure game, though admittedely the focus for ScummVM has been slightly loosened in the last few years and there are some not striclty adventure games supported now...

However the license for the open source release is not at all compatible with the GPL used by ScummVM so I don't think any of the code could legally just be reused and reimplemented in ScummVM.
And the original licensee NEO Software went defunct many years ago, no idea who the current rights holder is (if it's even known) who could be contacted for relicensing... (I think they were bought by Rockstar back then and rebranded to Rockstar Vienna before they were shut down, so maybe the rights are with Rockstar/ Take 2 these days, good luck contacting Rockstar for that ;))
Last edited by chrisis on Sun Dec 12, 2021 3:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
EctoOne
Posts: 32
Joined: Sun Apr 18, 2021 6:18 pm

Re: Support for: The Clue/Der Clou possible?

Post by EctoOne »

It is not a typical Adventure but because of the Story and how it is structured in Chapters it was always more to me than the typical Simulations which existed back then. And if I remember that, it has a lot of replay value because it is not possible to break into all buildings in one playthrough. Unless you save/reload after each heist. So I think it would be a good addition to ScummVM.

But yeah, I wasn't even thinking about the license. :(

Well, I just tried to run the Windows version using Wine on my Raspberry Pi and I think I got it working. It does crash when starting a new game but it works when I load a saved game. So, I've just built the Linux version again, and saved right after the introduction speech. I have to see if it works fine from here on. I think on one version I had an issue with the doors but I can't remember which version that was. And I even can play it remotely on my tablet. So fingers crossed. Yet, I'm still hoping to play it using ScummVM in the future.

Edit: Sadly I stumbled across some more issues. One of them I was able to fix but both versions do crash under certain conditions. Meh, guess I have to dust off my windows machine if I really want to play it now. :(
Srandista
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Aug 11, 2010 9:28 am
Location: Czech Republic

Re: Support for: The Clue/Der Clou possible?

Post by Srandista »

As far as I know, there was some effort to port The Clue/Der Clou to ScummVM, but there's a radio silence about that port, unfortunately :(

You can read about it here: https://www.serra.me/en/2020/02/creatin ... -the-clue/

And here's a GitHub repository with Clue branch: https://github.com/lotharsm/scummvm/tree/clue

EctoOne wrote: Wed Sep 22, 2021 5:25 am And the other one I know of is: https://github.com/vcosta/derclou which I even successfully compiled on a Raspberry Pi 3b.
I was also able to compile that version on my RPi 3B+, but that SDL2 port is not that good. Performance is pretty bad, and the bilinear scaling make everything really blurry. I recommend you to compile SDL1 version, the speed of it is much more usable, and with 2x scaler (-g2x flag) is super sharp.
https://github.com/vcosta/derclou/tree/ ... 483ac8d205
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rootfather
ScummVM Lead
Posts: 182
Joined: Tue Mar 31, 2015 11:59 am
Location: Germany
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Re: Support for: The Clue/Der Clou possible?

Post by rootfather »

It is correct that we have the WIP engine in my GitHub (lotharsm is my alternative nickname at GitHub).

But yes, currently development is halted due to various issues. I have no idea if or when development will resume - everyone who is able to help us out is very welcome to leave a message :-)
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