DREAMM - The Best LucasArts Emulator? (Another Conversation with Aaron Giles)

[danielalbu]

Join me TODAY for the YouTube premiere of my second conversation with emulation wiz and former LucasArts employee, Aaron Giles!

In this conversation we showcase all of the new features of his new LucasArts emulator: DREAMM and we get to play a few LucasArts classics and discuss them!

Premiering in 20 minutes!
https://youtu.be/uxmaXwfXB1k

[KainXVIII]

Competition is good (right?)

[Praetorian]

I'd say it's not really competition. What it is, is a very useful tool even for ScummVM developers so we can easily check the originals' behavior and compare with the ScummVM engine's implementation, without going through setting up and optimizing DOSBOX per game (which while not difficult, it's not very user-friendly either).

Also having a another modern launcher for the 3d GRIME games is very welcome.

[Kasenshlogga]

I agree it's not competition. It's a great approach for people who want the games to run more like they did on original hardware. From a consumer's perspective it's always great to have options.

[eriktorbjorn]

I think it would be great if places like GOG and Steam bundled DREAMM with the LucasArts games, because then they'd be forced to include the original executables (not just the data files, as they sometimes do) as well. Because without those there is, of course, no way to ever compare ScummVM to the original behavior.

But I have no illusions of that ever happen, at least not just because of *my* wishes. I'm not even sure they could do anything on their own, because at least GOG has said in the past that they can only work with what the developers gave them. Which I guess would be Disney at this point, and they've done a pretty stellar job of completely ignoring my bug reports so far.

[petran79]

Dreamm is much easier for the FM Towns games as it does not require any cd audio rip tracks or extra files and can even read straight from the cue file.

But after ver2 it requires it's own game versions folders, wasting space.

Also it is not that lower res friendly. Tried the Linux versions of both on a CRT monitor and at 320x240 or 600x240 resolution, only Scummvm had correct aspect ratio and readable GUI.

[eriktorbjorn]

Dreamm is much easier for the FM Towns games as it does not require any cd audio rip tracks or extra files and can even read straight from the cue file.

I've only tried Loom (the only FM Towns game I own), and ran into a scrolling glitch during the intro. A known bug, apparently?

[petran79]

Dreamm is much easier for the FM Towns games as it does not require any cd audio rip tracks or extra files and can even read straight from the cue file.

I've only tried Loom (the only FM Towns game I own), and ran into a scrolling glitch during the intro. A known bug, apparently?

There are differences even in the same game.

Eg after v2, Dreamm does not play the DOTT floppy version if you apply the Roland MT32 sound patch.

Though on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade EGA version, Dreamm bypasses copy protection automatically while Scummvm does not accept any random codes in the translation notebook.

[eriktorbjorn]

Though on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade EGA version, Dreamm bypasses copy protection automatically while Scummvm does not accept any random codes in the translation notebook.

I guess Aaron is taking a more lax approach to copy protection. ScummVM generally only bypasses it if there are releases of the game that didn't include the copy protection information, and there is no way to tell the difference. (Which admittedly can be annoying. I'm looking at you, compilation release of Future Wars, Operation Stealth, and Cruise for a Corpse, with washed-out colors, teeny-tiny images, and part of the copy protection information cropped out of the manual! )