Support for unofficial patched versions?

[Retro64]

Hi, general question regarding the support of unofficial patches. Quite often specific language versions are not purchasable anymore - e.g. many old Sierra titles sold by GOG are only available in English, even thou an official localization exist(ed). Some people from the community provide language patches for these games. I know that we enter a gray zone here, on the other hand Scummvm also provides custom patches - e.g. subtitles for Blade Runner, SFX for Elvira II...

My question: Shall these custom patched variants been detectable or not? On the one hand this is not an official, "legal" variant, on the other hand it can be seen as a mod...

[sev]

Hi, general question regarding the support of unofficial patches. Quite often specific language versions are not purchasable anymore - e.g. many old Sierra titles sold by GOG are only available in English, even thou an official localization exist(ed). Some people from the community provide language patches for these games. I know that we enter a gray zone here, on the other hand Scummvm also provides custom patches - e.g. subtitles for Blade Runner, SFX for Elvira II...

My question: Shall these custom patched variants been detectable or not? On the one hand this is not an official, "legal" variant, on the other hand it can be seen as a mod...

If a game was translated by fans but then distributed as a patch against the English (or any official version), we do add the checksums. The only requirement that the translation should be stable and released, e.g. no intermediate internal versions.

Some engines implement fallback detection, so games translated for those engines could work as is. Still, we prefer to add their checksums to detection for documentation purposes.


Eugene

[Muncher666]

If a game was translated by fans but then distributed as a patch against the English (or any official version), we do add the checksums. The only requirement that the translation should be stable and released, e.g. no intermediate internal versions.

Some engines implement fallback detection, so games translated for those engines could work as is. Still, we prefer to add their checksums to detection for documentation purposes.

Eugene

Hi Eugene,

Is it possible to add support for patched versions of various Sierra SCI based games? NewRisingSun made a bunch of timer and script fixes for various games and obviously the checksums don't actually work with SVM out of the box. I could try and provide you with the relevant checksums but I also imagine that every time someone patches their copy it won't be the same checksum. I also noticed that there is mention of a few fixes, are all of the current fan 'fixes' already integrated?

Cheers.

[sev]

If the fixes are truly solving the in-game problems and not mere hacks, I would suggest in fact contacting sluicebox on Discord and providing the patches to him for inclusion.

Otherwise, I am not really sure it makes sense to add those checksums unless these patches are absolutely widespread.


Eugene