Question on Mohawk engine games

[Retrodude]

Recently I read that the Mohawk engine used for Myst and the like was being worked on for ScummVM. What caught my attention is the fact that Living Books series games also run the Mohawk engine, therefore making it possible to someday play those games completely in ScummVM. Anyways, a video on Youtube sparked my interest, because I saw somebody testing out Green Eggs and Ham on ScummVM. Now, I know that the games are very glitchy and thus not officially supported as of this time, but I would like to see how the games work is ScummVM anyways. I just have a few questions about these games:
1. How glitched up are the Living Books games when run in ScummVM?
2. Where could I find a list of the required datafiles for these games.
3. Could anybody give me a recommendation on any alternate techniques of running these games on newer systems?
Any help is appreciated.

[bobdevis]

3. Could anybody give me a recommendation on any alternate techniques of running these games on newer systems?
Any help is appreciated.

Just like Myst, you should be able to get the games made for Win3.x working by installing Win3.x inside DosBox.

[clone2727]

Recently I read that the Mohawk engine used for Myst and the like was being worked on for ScummVM. What caught my attention is the fact that Living Books series games also run the Mohawk engine, therefore making it possible to someday play those games completely in ScummVM. Anyways, a video on Youtube sparked my interest, because I saw somebody testing out Green Eggs and Ham on ScummVM. Now, I know that the games are very glitchy and thus not officially supported as of this time, but I would like to see how the games work is ScummVM anyways.

fuzzie's video is from the early days of the Living Books code, it's working much better now

1. How glitched up are the Living Books games when run in ScummVM?

Depends on the game. The 512x384 games should all be in good shape as well as the older 640x480 games. Green Eggs and Ham works well, except for the lack of minigames. As far as I know, they're either broken or working with little in-between (except for Arthur's Reading Race).

2. Where could I find a list of the required datafiles for these games.

Nowhere, because each game has a different set and each version has a different set. Just pointing ScummVM to the directory should do fine, unless it's not detected in which case we'd need a file listing from you (or rather, just the base 'bookoutline' file, usually with a ".lb" extension on Windows)

3. Could anybody give me a recommendation on any alternate techniques of running these games on newer systems?
Any help is appreciated.

If you can't get them to work in ScummVM, you can try DOSBox+Win3.1 or Wine or the like. Most of them have Win32 binaries, so you should (theoretically) be fine even on 64-bit Windows, except for maybe the installers which probably aren't necessary anyway.

[Retrodude]

So it should work fine if I just point to the directory with the contents of the disc on it? Great, thanks!
Also, I have another piece of information: Apparently a company called Riverdeep Interactive Learning Limited may have rereleased some of the Living Books games in the early 2000's, because my copy of The Cat in the Hat has a copyright notice for 2001 by them. I don't know yet whether their rereleases were tweaked at all, but it might be worth noting at least as a small blurb on the wiki page that lists the games.

[clone2727]

Also, I have another piece of information: Apparently a company called Riverdeep Interactive Learning Limited may have rereleased some of the Living Books games in the early 2000's, because my copy of The Cat in the Hat has a copyright notice for 2001 by them. I don't know yet whether their rereleases were tweaked at all, but it might be worth noting at least as a small blurb on the wiki page that lists the games.

They're the same data, but they might have a different bookoutline file. They're really just straight re-releases though.

[fuzzie]

So it should work fine if I just point to the directory with the contents of the disc on it?

I guess you found the wiki page -- the known-working games are the V1/V2 ones.

The Cat in the Hat is one of the newer (V3+) games which don't really work at all in ScummVM yet -- it has a lot of minigames embedded into the pages done using scripting, and I only really implemented enough of that to make Green Eggs and Ham work, so far.