Zniw Adventure and...Morphopolis? UPDATE

[GusCE6]

Recently I tried to get the Steam game "Zniw Adventure" running on the old 2001 Windows XP 32-Bit Sony VAIO. As it can use DirectX 9 there was a chance- with SwiftShader 2.1- the game would work, but all I got was "not a valid Win32 application."

Now, there are three reasons this can happen: 1) It's a 64-Bit application; 2) the EXE file needs to be "extracted" by something like WinRAR, or 3) it requires a later Operating System. I was told in the forums there that it can run as a standalone but needs Vista at least. However, the most recent version of SCUMMVM was said to run it.

The most recent I had was 2.2. So, over to Downloads here I went, and saw 2.5. Downloaded it, tried it- it never gets past the "Language Selection" screen, but it did get that far on the XP Sony even. This in of itself is impressive because it's the first time I've seen something for Vista or later run at all on the thing. If the other download works for Windows 98- or even 95!- and can get the game running then of course the potential pool of customers for the game is GREATLY increased too.


The only recommendation is that like 2.2 you can manipulate the windowed size, and the configuration file (maybe include a shortcut to it in the EXE's folder?) has something to manually allow one to switch between DirectX and OpenGL. I had to use 2.2 to make that switch for 2.5 on the Sony.


Now here's the weird part- just at random I go through other games, seeing what else SCUMMVM can do. There is a game called "Morphopolis" at Steam and GOG

https://www.gog.com/game/Morphopolis

When you click "Choose" you actually get a result! It says it's an "unknown game variant" and the matched game ID for the director engine is "athletics-win," the rest says "Project.EXE" (the name of the game's EXE file), 0, 9bcde08c17abe2c9f536b144d544b695, 3347456."


Click "Add Anyway" and the ID is "athletics-win-1" and the name "International Athletics (Windows/English).

Try to run it and you get a white window saying "ERROR: Invalid projector tag found in v4 EXE [MZ..]!

Does this mean this weird game is actually going to eventually work on SCUMMVM along with "Zniw Adventure?" That would be even more amazing.



Zniw Demo

https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/s ... game/1925/

[criezy]

Now here's the weird part- just at random I go through other games, seeing what else SCUMMVM can do. There is a game called "Morphopolis" at Steam and GOG

https://www.gog.com/game/Morphopolis

When you click "Choose" you actually get a result! It says it's an "unknown game variant" and the matched game ID for the director engine is "athletics-win," the rest says "Project.EXE" (the name of the game's EXE file), 0, 9bcde08c17abe2c9f536b144d544b695, 3347456."

I think this is probably a false positive (i.e. that the director engine incorrectly detects that game as being a director executable). If I remember correctly I think I read somewhere that the team behind the game developed the engine using C++ and the Marmalade SDK. So I doubt it will be supported anytime soon.

[criezy]

Recently I tried to get the Steam game "Zniw Adventure"

So, over to Downloads here I went, and saw 2.5. Downloaded it, tried it- it never gets past the "Language Selection" screen

There is a known bug that has now been fixed in the development version of ScummVM that indeed prevented from getting past the language selection screen in that game: https://bugs.scummvm.org/ticket/13251
So using a daily build of ScummVM (from https://www.scummvm.org/downloads/#daily) you might be able to go further.

[GusCE6]

Recently I tried to get the Steam game "Zniw Adventure"

So, over to Downloads here I went, and saw 2.5. Downloaded it, tried it- it never gets past the "Language Selection" screen

There is a known bug that has now been fixed in the development version of ScummVM that indeed prevented from getting past the language selection screen in that game: https://bugs.scummvm.org/ticket/13251
So using a daily build of ScummVM (from https://www.scummvm.org/downloads/#daily) you might be able to go further.

I know. Problem is it yields a "not a valid Win32 application" error message on the 32-Bit Sony, and breaking it down with 7Z does not help.

It seemed likely "Morphopolis" was a false positive and was not even going to mention it- except this does not happen with SCUMMVM 2.2, and technically it is a point-and-click game. So it seemed like a good idea to mention it.

Since daily builds become official builds it won't be much longer before "Zniw Adventure" is playable even on that antique. This is all the more remarkable because it won't run on Operating Systems earlier than Vista according to one of the programmers.

Now for the bad news- over at Steam they say that Gingertips "Foxtail" is now going to use the...UNITY engine. So there is almost no chance it will work on that laptop. Unless by "Unity" they mean whichever version was used for the two "Running Sheep" games. With 3D-Analyze they do work. But that's not likely, and those are the only two Unity games which have ever worked.

[GusCE6]

I found a Daily Build which does work on that antique hardware.

You would have to manually change the rendering to SDL type, which requires either using 2.5 to reach the Options screen or manually install the INI file with the proper settings (this is how I got it running in Puppy Linux mode), but once it runs so far so good.

"Zniw Adventure" works. It's slow due to the age of the laptop, but it is playable and slower play comes with the territory. Sometimes the SCUMMVM app crashes, this seems to have something to do with too much clicking plus the fact it isn't yet a stable build. But I have played through the first two scenes (Flowers and Backpack).

Again, what makes this remarkable is that SCUMMVM got something requiring an Operating System no earlier than Vista running on an XP system. I assume if it runs on earlier OS then the game would run on that too.

The videos, while they play properly on an outside player (e.g. Media Player Lite) lag in this case- the visual is slower than the audio. In XP mode I solved this by converting the videos (OGV) to 4 FPS and lessening the audio settings. But in Puppy Linux mode even this is not enough- again it is an old laptop so too bad, either the audio must be removed or only the music plays (no sound effects).

This is the first time I've ever seen SCUMMVM or anything else get something for a later OS running on an earlier one, especially on an ancient laptop.


Note that in XP mode at least SwiftShader 2.1 is essential to get SCUMMVM 2.6 running. I'm not 100% sure how I did it in Puppy Linux mode.