Broken Sword 1&2

[Death.]

Hi.

I have an issue with Broken Sword in that the version I bought comes with a single CD for both the first and second versions of the series. Opening the CD it has the 'Sword1' folder and 'Sword2' folder, as well as a 'DVDNow' folder and some files (00000000.256, 00000001.TMP, 00000002.TMP, Autorun, DrvMgt.dll, ManualBS1, ManualBS2, Now, ReadmeBS1, ReadmeBS2, SECDRV, Setup.Now). Inside Sword1 it has the application file Setup as well as files Setup.2 and Setup.3. So I'm not sure how to get the files as needed from the Datafiles list.

I've tried installing Broken Sword 1 and with it get the CLUSTERS folder (inside are the *.CLU and SWORDRES.RIF files). Then there's the MUSIC folder with all the needed files. There's an empty Saves folder and the SPEECH folder (SPEECH1.CLU and SPEECH2.CLU). There is an Uninstall, a urls and a video folder with the latter having various .ogg, .pal and MPEG files. But there's no SMACKSHI folder. It also has the Broken Sword launch file and icon, the Manual and README, as well as version 0.7.0.0 of ScummVM along with its Configuration Settings file and an SDL.dll file.

When I try to run through ScummVM 0.7.0 (the launcher redirects to use it) it comes up with the error "8 important files are missing, the game can't start without them. Please copy these files from their corresponding CDs:" and goes on to list 7 .CLU/.RIF files that are all found in the CLUSTERS folder as well as a non-existing cows.mad file. If I launch through ScummVM 1.5.0 the game runs but shows the error 'MPEG2 cutscenes are no longer supported' before skipping past the intro to the first gameplay screen. However after downloading the DXA Cutscenes pack from the Downloads page and replacing the .ogg and .pal files in the video folder with the .dxa and .fla files downloaded the game seems to run fine with the intro playing.

So having said all that I think the only issue is the missing SMACKSHI folder and whether the game will be okay without it?

[eriktorbjorn]

So having said all that I think the only issue is the missing SMACKSHI folder and whether the game will be okay without it?

I don't have this particular release, but speaking in general...

The short answer is that the SMACKSHI folder used to hold the animated cutscenes. The DXA cutscenes are a replacement for these.

The original releases of Broken Sword 1 and 2 used a video codec called Smacker, which ScummVM didn't support. (As I understand it, there were concerns that it was still commercially licensed, so reverse engineering it may be frowned on, but don't quote me on that.) So for quite a while, we provided re-encoded MPEG versions of the cutscenes instead. These were lower quality than the originals, and they used 16-bit graphics at a time when ScummVM only really supported 8-bit graphics, so displaying them was messy. But it worked.

Later, support was added for The Feeble Files, which also used Smacker for the PC version but a different format called DXA for the... I think it was the Amiga version. Re-encoding the movies to DXA instead of MPEG meant we could have 8-bit graphics, no loss in quality, and cutscene files about the same size as the original Smacker files. So adding support for DXA to the Broken Sword games was a natural step.

Later, the Smacker format was reverse engineered (by the FFmpeg project, I believe) and ScummVM added support for it. When the cutscene player for the Broken Sword games was rewritten to handle both DXA and Smacker, MPEG support was dropped to make things easier. It's unfortunate that there is a commercial release of the game that includes the MPEG cutscenes, and that's one reason why the DXA cutscenes are still provided.

[icanntspell]

On Steam my Broken Sword 2 game recently got updated to Broken Sword 2 Remastered which doesn't use ScummVM (and thus no MPEG). I am glad I made a copy before the update

[ron2x]

hi icanntspell is the update successful anyway?....