Issues and request from a teacher

[nozomi]

I teach elementary students, Kindergarten through 5th grade. This year we've used ScummVM extensivley and have found a few issues listed below and have a few requests. Our lab consists of 21 PC's running Windows 10 64bit, Raspberry Pi's with the latest Raspberry Pi OS and some MAC's running OSX High Sierra. All issues have been tested on ScummVM 2.2.0 and 2.3.0 WIP as of Feburary 17th 2021.


1. When in Windowed Mode and using OpenGL, the Ctrl+Alt+(+ or -) does not work within a game but does work in the ScummVM Menu.

2. Perhaps related, when using OpenGL and Windowed mode with Pixel Perfect scaling. The games used to automatically scale to the largest integer supported by your screen resolution. It now default to a much smaller resolution and as per the 1st issue, can not be changed. This used to work in version 2.0.0

3. The Griffon Legend...when fighting many enemies in close proximity, received an error about not enough sound handles. It's easy to reproduce on the second or third screen of the game by letting enemies bunch up and attacking them in a group.

4. Magic Tales: The Princess and the Crab. When in "Play" or "Story" mode, the game returns to the title screen after
reading page 3. (Did work properly in previous version)

5. Magic Tales: Three titles not listed on compatibility page are completable, they are...Baba Yaga, The Little Samurai and Imo and the King

6. Living Books...The new Kid on the Block - dialog does not match text after first page when in auto-read mode.

7. Living Books...Stellaluna - The "Bat Quiz" accessible from the title screen only functions for the first 2 questions.

8. Living Books...The Berenstain Bears in the Dark - both mini games accessible on title screen crash ScummVM

9. Living Books...Arthur's Birthday Adventure version 2 (not officially supported) crashes on page 7 with
error (missing EOS (got 05) and both mini games accessible on title screen crash ScummVM if selected.

10. Living Books...Arthur's Computer Adventure (not officially supported) crashes after selecting virtually anything from the title screen.

11. Living Books...Arthurs Reading Race (not officially supported) displays duplicate character images on title screen. The story is
completable in "read to me" mode but when in "Let Me Play" mode it just as as "read to me" mode. "Race" mini game from title screen crashes ScummVM

12. Rex Nebular Into animations do not play. Into does complete but many animation are missing. (Worked in previous Versions of ScummVM)

13. Ultima VI The False Prophet title screen is very sluggish. Get progressively slower the more it is scaled. 2X, 3X and so on. Very notable when at 5x or higher on 4K displays when using openGL and pixel perfect scaling.

Request...

Can the mini games accessible from the title screen on the living books titles listed above be disabled until support is added? This would keep students from crashing the program.

The Video in Blues Clues ABC Time Activities and Blues Birthday Adventure have a black lines giving it an interlaced look. Can the black line be optional? Similar to Sierra titles like Torin's Passage.
This allows for much better scaling on when not an exact integer is used.

Non interactive demos for "Kyrandia 1, 2 an 3, Lighthouse the Dark Being and Mixed-up Fairy Tales" all exit after completion. This is normal behavior but could an option be added to allow for looping the demo.
I display many ScummVM non-interactive demos to interest students but would like those to loop so they can play in the background during class.

The non-interactive demo for the EGA version of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade errors out after looping a few times.
Generally after 4 or 5 times.

Any work towards adding support for the Little Ark story books listed as un-supported using the Mohawk engine for (The Story of Creation and Daniel and the Lions Den) would be greatly appreciated. It would be used in the lab and play test with several groups of students just as the Living Book and Magic Tales titles are.

I'm not sure how but I'd like to share images of the lab with the ScummVM team. It's used daily and loved by the students and staff. I can't thank you enough for all the hard work put into this. You've truly blessed our students and school.
Thank you.

[digitall]

nozomi: I think the ScummVM project leads will echo this, but it is nice to hear that ScummVM is being used in this way.

To cover your bugs / issues, these should be reported on the bug tracker at bugs.scummvm.org with full details. You should do a quick search first to check that this is not a known issue.

The specific bugs i.e. #1, #2, #3, #12 and #13 should be easy to report. The Mohawk Living Books issues sound mainly like feature requests, rather than bug reports as they are to complete the support for those games. It is not likely that this will happen any time soon as the main developer for the Living Books work is no longer active currently. If you or someone else wants to pick up this work and are proficient in C/C++ then patches, pull requests are welcomed... or talk to the project leads.

[Praetorian]

I teach elementary students, Kindergarten through 5th grade. This year we've used ScummVM extensivley and have found a few issues listed below and have a few requests. Our lab consists of 21 PC's running Windows 10 64bit, Raspberry Pi's with the latest Raspberry Pi OS and some MAC's running OSX High Sierra. All issues have been tested on ScummVM 2.2.0 and 2.3.0 WIP as of Feburary 17th 2021.

(...)

I'm not sure how but I'd like to share images of the lab with the ScummVM team. It's used daily and loved by the students and staff. I can't thank you enough for all the hard work put into this. You've truly blessed our students and school.
Thank you.

Hi nozomi!

Even though I am not the expert and can't offer immediate help on the specific issues and requests, I also wanted to thank you and congratulate you for this great project of yours with your students!

When working on fan made translations to my native language (Greek) for classic adventures, and later joining the ScummVM team and working on the game engines, I kind of always have in my mind, how great it would be if these games (at least the age-appropriate ones) could be somehow integrated in the school teaching process.

I've seen one or two similar attempts (one of them by a Greek teacher, quite a few years ago) but, overall, not much is done in this direction.

So, again, your project makes me happy, and glad to read that the children love it too!

[nozomi]

I've created a few tickets and will create more but can't seem to find a way to submit a ticket for any of the "Living Book" titles or the "Magic Tales" They are not listed in the game selection drop down menu. I'm also not sure what engine the "Magic Tales" use.

When in Windowed Mode and using OpenGL, the Ctrl+Alt+(+ or -) does not work within a game but does work in the ScummVM Menu.
Ticket...https://bugs.scummvm.org/ticket/12187

The Griffon Legend...when fighting many enemies in close proximity, received an error about not enough sound handles. It's easy to reproduce on the second or third screen of the game by letting enemies bunch up and attacking them in a group.
Ticket...https://bugs.scummvm.org/ticket/12186

Rex Nebular Into animations do not play. Into does complete but many animation are missing.
Ticket...https://bugs.scummvm.org/ticket/12185

[OmerMor]

I've created a few tickets and will create more but can't seem to find a way to submit a ticket for any of the "Living Book" titles or the "Magic Tales" They are not listed in the game selection drop down menu. I'm also not sure what engine the "Magic Tales" use.

"Living Books" use the Mohawk engine.
"Magic Tales" use the composer engine.

[nozomi]

After some tinkering, I found the two "Little Ark Interactive" books using the Mohawk engine currently work in ScummVM. I simply had to modify an existing Living Book title. I chose "The Berenstain Bears In the Dark", then renamed the Little Ark files for the "Story of Creation" to match them. This allowed the title to run and to run to completion.

I have created ticket #12275 as I'm hoping it will be easy to officially add support for both titles as they seem to work well with the existing code.

Attached is and image from "The Story of Creation" running in ScummVM.

[sev]

This has been implemented now.


Eugene

[nozomi]

WIth support added the "The Story of Creation" and " Daniel in the Lions' Den", would it be possible to add support for "Noah's Ark" for the upcomming 2.6.0 release.
This title never actaully saw a commercial big box relase as the other two did, but is availble via the MAC store here...

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/noahs-ark ... 1168366362

All the data files are present but the index file has been renamed.