Installer

[mrmamen]

I have always been wondering if I should install the game before I use scummvm or just play it from the CD. I'm also wondering if I should use ScummVM to run a game, if it seems to be working without.
I recently tried to play 7th Guest, but I had to find the wikipage and copy all files specified. Since it was quite a few files, divided on two CDs and several directories I was wondering if it was possible to make an installer into scummvm, by using this scummvm can copy all files needed.

What advantages do I get when playing t7g from scummvm. Options in other scummvm games seems to be missing.

[Red_Breast]

I think there are one or two games that either need to be installed or work better if you install first. I think Feeble Files is one. Maybe that's it.
About an installer. It probably would be handy for some people but I doubt the ScummVM team will do it. It's far more interesting for them getting games running than writing a boring installer script. Remember this is only a hobby for them.
Really I don't personally see the problem of some copy and paste.
As for ScummVM advantages. It has save states. Graphic filters.
It's portable C++ code means it can run on loads of platforms, just look at all the sub-forums. Also say you have a game for a certain platform but don't have the platform itself. I think t7G came out on Mac. Let's say you have that game but only have a Windows PC now. With ScummVM you can play it.

Edit
When you say several directories I'm sure that it's not a problem for ScummVM. That's if you mean on the game CD it has sub-directories/folders.
I don't think I've tried it personally, as like I said copy and paste isn't really a problem for me, but I think you can put all the files in one directory/folder for use with ScummVM and it will find them.

[bobdevis]

Don't use the original installer of any game. This is pointless. Just copy the needed files manually.
Don't play directly from CD either. It MIGHT work, but with multi-disk games it will definitely NOT.

How many files you have to copy doesn't really matter. Just copy EVERYTHING if it is too much bother to sort it out.
Since 500GB discs are default these days, drive space should not be an issue.

What advantages do I get when playing t7g from scummvm.

If the original game runs perfectly on your machine and you are a Windows user, not that much. Except maybe a bugfix here and there.
With every new version of Windows and every new generation of hardware it becomes less likely that some old game will run on it though.

Options in other scummvm games seems to be missing.

What options are you looking for?

[Red_Breast]

If by missing options you mean options in the ScummVM menu it's because those options weren't in the original game.

For example the option for only speech or text or both.
If the game only has text and no speech (voice audio) then there won't be a speech option for the game in the ScummVM menu.

Something you might need to check. I think there was one puzzle for t7G which wasn't finished for the last release of ScummVM (0.13.1) but it's finished now. So it might be worth using the latest pre-1.0 unstable build. These are at the bottom of the downloads page.
Unstable is not the best word for these releases. It's just the opposite of stable. They're perfectly fine.
One more thing. The game used CD audio for music during the credits. I think it's used once during the game.
If you want to complete the experience you'll have to read up about ripping the tracks (mp3/ogg/flac) and naming them correctly. But you don't need to do this.

[mrmamen]

Hi. Thanks for the replies. t7g is the only game I had to do some work before I could play. Like ripping the CD audio. The options I was thinking about is the visual rendering (alt shift + a number I think), and using f5 to access load/save functions. I think the scummvm works fine, but it seems more useful for scumm games (not that strange I guess).

[raina]

I'd like to enforce the issue of bugs. They exist in both the original games' scripts and interpreters as well as ScummVM but the big difference is that ScummVM is being actively developed which means bugs can be fixed and working around the kinks of the original scripts is possible.

PC versions of some older games might still work on Windows. But that's about it, the rest of the world changes and you can't but embrace the flexibility and consistency ScummVM brings to point'n'click.. no, adventure.. (Daymn, the thing's gotten versatile!) good old desktop gaming. Running games up to and over 20 years of age on modern desktop and portable systems as native code just rocks.

But let's just have the scenario of PC games on Windows. If they're supported by ScummVM, using it is preferable IMHO because you can run them in windows of various sizes or go full-screen and when you have to alt-tab out to check something boring, you can pretty much count on the game still being there when you come back, not having crashed or turned its palette to puke etc.. And even if something does go wrong, there's support and an active community available.

[eriktorbjorn]

The options I was thinking about is the visual rendering (alt shift + a number I think),

Ctrl + Alt + <number>. That should work for all games, though the effect tends to be less noticeable for "high"-resolution games. Also, ScummVM assumes that the default scaler setting is only for low-resolution games, so unless you set a scaler specifically for it, it will start at its original resolution.

[sev]

I have always been wondering if I should install the game before I use scummvm or just play it from the CD.

FAQ #5.2


Eugene

[mrmamen]

ahh thanks