History of ScummVM article on Ars Technica

Ender · Post by **Ender** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 6:05 am

Hi all,

Richard Moss has put together a really great article on the history of the project - from 'then' to 'now' - on Ars Technica.

Really worth a read for those who are curious and maybe don't follow the 'behind-the-scenes' of the project:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2012 ... live.ars/1

Its well worth a read, even for just the article title!

- Ender

(Feeling so nostalgic reading the article, he wants to post this as an Announcement but resists temptation to abuse forum powers :)

Post by **sev** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 7:34 am

One of the best articles on ScummVM I read. And quite accurate one.

Eugene

JamesWoodcock · Post by **JamesWoodcock** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 8:04 am

I will have a good read of that later

Freddo · Post by **Freddo** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 8:38 am

Very interesting read

Bobbin · Post by **Bobbin** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 5:38 pm

What a long way ScummVM has come thanks to all the great individuals involved. Very informative, just one question: One page 2 the article mentions that Revolution gave you the source code for Lure of the Temptress - wasn't this re'd by dreammaster? I thought Revolution lost the source code?

I also have to admit that I only played through one game in the seven years I do follow ScummVM's development. I'm much more fascinated by the development itself, how new games come to life. Always thought about adding an engine myself (I'd love to see support for the Dynamix games) but unfortunately I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have the time for it. However - looking forward to following ScummVM's progress in 2012

dreammaster · Post by **dreammaster** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 10:21 pm

Bobbin wrote:What a long way ScummVM has come thanks to all the great individuals involved. Very informative, just one question: One page 2 the article mentions that Revolution gave you the source code for Lure of the Temptress - wasn't this re'd by dreammaster? I thought Revolution lost the source code?

I was just joking about that with Strangerke last night. Technically, the article is accurate - they were able to locate a copy of the original source code, but it was only after I'd pretty much reverse engineered the entire game. It wasn't too much of an issue anyway.. the original source was commented assembly, so it would still have required a similiar amount of effort to rewrite as C++, and the source did provide a useful basis as I did final bugfixing for the game engine.

Bobbin · Post by **Bobbin** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 4:24 pm

dreammaster wrote:It wasn't too much of an issue anyway

At least it helped you getting into reverse engineering. I also imagine this Virtual Theatre thing not being the easiest to reverse engineer but then again I always thought that Rex Nebular would ave a straight-forward engine - but we all know how that turned out

hippy dave · Post by **hippy dave** » Sat Jan 21, 2012 5:33 am

really enjoyed that, thanks for sharing. a fine tribute to 10 years of collaborative achievement.

topolinik · Post by **topolinik** » Fri Jan 27, 2012 1:13 pm

It was 2002 when I stumbled into scummvm and with my SuSE I launched (for the first time on a non-win32 pc) monkey2 from a command line... I thought I was dreaming.
[Incidentally scummvm helped me learn how to build a program by myself in linux world also.]
Since then I was able to re-play monkey 2, BASS and flight of the amazon queen but, I would like to have more time to play all the games scummvm supports today.
A big "thank you" to the developers for all this to be real.

Anyway, I have a question: sev, it is said in the article scummvm fixed several bugs found into the original commercial releases of the games so, have you listed those bugs? Are there some details in the docs? I'm just curious...

Post by **sev** » Fri Jan 27, 2012 1:16 pm

topolinik wrote:Anyway, I have a question: sev, it is said in the article scummvm fixed several bugs found into the original commercial releases of the games so, have you listed those bugs? Are there some details in the docs? I'm just curious...

We started to track them relatively recently and that never was systematic anyway.

Search for 'Bugs found in original' on our Wiki. Then in the source code most of such places are marked by codeword 'WORKAROUND,' and several of our engines, most notable are SCI and Tinsel have full blown game script patching subsystems to fix those bugs.

Eugene

Post by **eriktorbjorn** » Fri Jan 27, 2012 1:43 pm

topolinik wrote: Anyway, I have a question: sev, it is said in the article scummvm fixed several bugs found into the original commercial releases of the games so, have you listed those bugs? Are there some details in the docs? I'm just curious...

One of the more well known [*] is probably the "pyramid bug" in Broken Sword 2. At one point in the game you had to pick up a torch, but if you had spoken too many times to a nearby character it was no longer possible to pick it up. That bug was particularly nasty because other than that, there was no indication that anything bad had happened. The game would just be impossible to finish.

But most of the bug fixes that I'm personally aware of have been for less serious issues, or ones that - while annoying - are obvious when they happen. A good example of a very minor fixed bug used to happen in the CD version of Loom, where the game's villain makes a dramatic entrance and proudly proclaims that "I am Choas." Of all the possible places to misspell "Chaos", they had to pick that one...

[*] Well, perhaps not really well known but it used to be documented on the official support page for the game.