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ScummVM
ScummVM
ScummVM 1.0.0's graphical user interface with the "modern" skin
Original author(s)Ludvig Strigeus
Developer(s)ScummVM Team
Initial releaseOctober 5, 2001; 23 years ago (2001-10-05)
Stable release1.7.0 / July 21, 2014; 10 years ago (2014-07-21)
Repository
Written inC++ and SDL
Operating systemCross-platform
TypeInterpreter
LicenseGNU GPLv2 or later
Websitewww.scummvm.org

ScummVM is a collection of game engine recreations. Originally designed to play LucasArts adventure games that use the SCUMM system (the VM in the name stands for virtual machine), it also supports a variety of non-SCUMM games by companies like Revolution Software and Adventure Soft. It was originally written by Ludvig Strigeus. Released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, ScummVM is free software.

ScummVM is a reimplementation of the part of the software used to interpret the scripting languages such games used to describe the game world rather than emulating the hardware the games ran on; as such, ScummVM allows the games it supports to be played on platforms other than those for which they were originally released.

Features

ScummVM is a game emulator, allowing the user to play supported adventure games on their platform of choice. ScummVM does not provide any of the original assets for the games it supports, and expects the user to properly own the original game's media as to use the software in a legal manner. Atop emulating the games, ScummVM enables players to save and load the state of the emulator at any time, enabling a save system atop whatever the emulated game may provide. It has also begun to work at providing alternate controls for newer devices, such as mobile devices with touch screens, which work atop the original games.

History

ScummVM was created in September 2001 by Ludvig Strigeus, a computer science student at the time. Looking to write his own adventure game, he looked to seeing how the mechanics of an existing game engine, specifically working to create an emulator to play Monkey Island 2. Approximately the same time, Vincent Hamm was also looking to develop a SCUMM emulator, and though he had done deeper research into understanding how the SCUMM engine worked, found that Strigeus was much farther along, and the two joined together to craft the emulator. While Strigeus finished the required emulation for Monkey Island 2, Hamm worked separately to prepare the engine for Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and once completed, the two found some dis-coordination on their efforts but eventually got the emulator working for both games.

News of ScummVM was picked up by the tech news website Slashdot in November 2001, drawing a large interest to the project, and a number of other developers became part of the project to help support other games. These developers frequently turned to the creators of the original games to obtain information in informal manners to help create the emulation. Additional developers helped to support games that did not use SCUMM, such as Adventure Soft's Simon the Sorceror; there was some debate about changing the name of the program at this point, but ultimately kept the ScummVM title, believing that SCUMM was the most well-recognized adventure game engine. Strigeus had built support for iMUSE, the sound software used by many LucasArts games, but feared including it due to potential backlash from LucasArts; other developers on the project advised him that there should be no legal issues and it was eventually included. Though Strigeus and Hamm would leave the project in 2002, it had a large enough development team at that point to allow it to grow, now led by James "Ender" Brown. Following this shift, the engine's code was changed from C to C++, and a graphical user interface was added.

With increased awareness of the project, LucasArts sent a cease & desist letter to the project, believing they were using some of LucasArts' proprietary code. Brown worked over the next four years with LucasArts's legal representatives to explain the nature of the emulator and the source of their information to demonstrate that what they had created was legal; Brown considered that LucasArts was trying to be accommodating as ScummVM helped to raise interest in these titles. They ultimately came to a legal agreement to allow ScummVM to continue to be developed. The project had also entered into favorable agreements with other adventure game developers. Revolution Software helped the developers with source code and technical advice for their games, and once ScummVM supported their engine, they released Lure of the Temptress and Beneath a Steel Sky as freeware and provided assets from its first two Broken Sword games in a open media format. The renewed interest in these games from younger players enabled Revolution to work on two more Broken Sword games. Other developers that worked closely with ScummVM include Adventure Soft and The Wyrmkeep Entertainment Co..

The project would also incorporate other parallel efforts to make game emulators for other adventure games. Games from Sierra Online were of high demand for the project, requiring them to emulate the Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) and the more advanced Sierra's Creative Interpreter (SCI) engines. AGI support was added in 2006, but efforts for SCI support were hampered by the parallel project, FreeSCI. Though both ScummVM and FreeSCI aimed to reverse engineer the workings of SCI, FreeSCI had stated they took a more clean-room approach to avoid any legal question about their reverse engineering, and believed the ScummVM project had run afoul of some of Sierra's approaches and thus hesitant to work together. However, the FreeSCI began to languish in interest compared to ScummVM; after a developer took it upon themselves to make the FreeSCI engine work in ScummVM, the FreeSCI saw more participation in their project, and they agreed to merge their efforts into ScummVM. Initial SCI support was subsequently released in a 2010 version of ScummVM.

An attempt to bring in Another World by Éric Chahi brought some internal stress within the project in 2004. Another World was not a point-and-click adventure game, and used polygon-based graphics instead of pixel-based ones most adventure games employ, and thus was considered a serious departure from the focus of ScummVM. Though the project was scrapped in a few days after Chahi requested its removal as he was preparing a 15th anniversary remastered for sale, the current leads of the project had to refocus the group and define the ideals that ScummVM should meet.

Ports

Portability is a design goal of the project. Ports of ScummVM are available for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and a variety of Unix-like systems including Linux (RPM Based, Debian based, source based), members of the BSD family (FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD/DragonFly BSD) and Solaris. It has also been ported to console systems. Less mainstream personal computer ports include those to Amiga, Atari/FreeMiNT, Haiku/BeOS/ZETA and OS/2.

A variety of game consoles have official ports; ScummVM has been ported to gaming machines such as the PlayStation 2, Dreamcast, Nintendo GameCube and Wii, and to handheld consoles including the GP2X, Nintendo DS and the PlayStation Portable. Handheld computer platforms supported include Palm OS/Tapwave Zodiac, Symbian OS (UIQ platform, Nokia 60, 80 and Nokia 7710/90 phone series), Nokia's Internet Tablet OS (used by the Nokia 770, N800 and N810), Apple's iPhone, MotoMAGX, MotoEZX phones and Windows Mobile. Platforms supported by unofficial ScummVM ports include the Microsoft's Xbox gaming console, BlackBerry PlayBook, Zaurus, Gizmondo and GP32 portable device platforms. Mobile phones running Android, webOS or unofficial Samsung's bada OS are also supported.

Games supported by ScummVM

GUI of ScummVM 0.8.0 with the "Classic (builtin)" skin

The following games have support built into the current release of ScummVM.

LucasArts SCUMM games

In order of the games' original release dates:

Sierra On-Line games

Coktel Vision games

Adventuresoft/Horrorsoft games

Humongous Entertainment

Various games by Humongous Entertainment use the SCUMM engine, and are therefore playable with ScummVM.

Games by other developers

ScummVM also supports the following non-SCUMM games:

Mistic's GPL violations

In December 2008, members of the ScummVM team discovered that three games for the Nintendo Wii console ("Freddi Fish and the Case of the Missing Kelp Seeds", . . . "Pajama Sam: No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside", . . . and "Spy Fox: Dry Cereal", . . .) made use of ScummVM, without complying with the terms of the GPL license. They sent a warning letter to the German distributor of these games, Atari Deutschland GmbH, who was not aware that ScummVM was used in the creation of the games. Atari Deutschland GmbH established contact with Mistic Software Inc., the developers of the games.

Mistic Software Inc. responded by denying that members of the ScummVM team hold any rights to the particular code they used. The dispute was ultimately settled in May 2009 by Mistic Software Inc. paying all legal fees and making a donation to the Free Software Foundation as a sign of good will, without acknowledging copyright infringement.

—GPL conflict with Atari, cyx, fingolfin, June 19, 2009

In December 2008, the ScummVM team was informed that three games for the Wii console were using ScummVM illegally. Atari had contracted Majesco Entertainment to port these titles to the Wii, who in turn contracted Mistic Software to port the games. Mistic used the ScummVM binary (version 0.9.0), in addition to the games' assets and source code, to port the games, but did not credit the ScummVM team or distribute ScummVM source code as required by ScummVM's license, the GNU GPL. Examination of the binary showed a clear violation; the ScummVM team credits were still in the code, as well as known bugs from that release.

The team contacted gpl-violations.org for legal representation. At first denying the charges, Atari later started negotiating when they learned the ScummVM team only desired adherence to the GPL, and not monetary compensation. Upon learning that using open-source software is forbidden by Nintendo for use with the Wii software development kit, the developers challenged the legality of the reverse engineering methods used by the ScummVM team, claiming that they therefore had no rights over the resulting code. The ScummVM team denied these charges.

Faced with a long court battle, the matter was settled by ScummVM team members fingolfin and cyx, who agreed to post a press release and no longer speak of the case. The remaining copies of the games violating the GPL were ordered to be sold within a set period, after which time all remaining stock copies must be destroyed or high fines will be levied. As a result, Mistic must make a donation to the Free Software Foundation in addition to paying all expenses incurred by the lawyers working for gpl-violations.org.

Development

ScummVM was a participant in the Google Summer of Code 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015.

The following games have been added to ScummVM's Git tree. The engines may be in various states of operation.

Another World was integrated for a short period of time causing a brief but heated discussion, ranging from emotional to purely technical aspects. Some felt it was more of an action game than an adventure game, others worried that ScummVM, being geared towards bitmapped graphics, really was not the ideal platform for a polygon-based game. The discussion was rendered moot when the raw project was officially closed by its author, at the request of Eric Chahi, the original developer of Another World, who was developing his own Windows-based update. Operation Stealth and Future Wars support was added by integrating another stand-alone recreation of their engine: cinE.

In 2006, the Adventure Game Interpreter engine was added. It is based on Sarien code, an AGI interpreter that was outdated and buggy in some ways, which has been solved in the new ScummVM engine. The Sarien project stopped its development, continuing the development into ScummVM's AGI engine. TrollVM has also been integrated into ScummVM adding support for three pre-AGI games: Mickey's Space Adventure, Troll's Tale, and Winnie the Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood.

In 2009, there was a merge with FreeSCI project. The first official merged version appeared in October 2010, introducing support for Sierra's Creative Interpreter games.

ResidualVM

Main article: ResidualVM

ResidualVM is a sister project to ScummVM, focusing on 3D games.

Support from game companies and freeware releases of adventure games

See also

References

  1. history of ScummVM on ScummVM Wiki
  2. ^ Moss, Richard (January 16, 2012). "Maniac Tentacle Mindbenders: How ScummVM's unpaid coders kept adventure gaming alive". Ars Technica. Retrieved February 16, 2016.
  3. "ScummVM Portability guidelines". Wiki.scummvm.org. 2012-11-26. Retrieved 2013-09-26.
  4. Hinkle, David (2008-09-02). "News on Gamecube/Wii ports". Nintendowiifanboy.com. Retrieved 2013-09-26.
  5. 11/26/07 8:25am 11/26/07 8:25am. "Gizmodo news on iPhone port". Gizmodo.com. Retrieved 2013-09-26.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  6. "ScummVM for PlayBook". Forum.kpda.ru. Retrieved 2013-09-26.
  7. "scummvm-android". Sites.google.com. Retrieved 2013-09-26.
  8. "Webos Internals Team Ports ScummVM on WebOS". Webos-internals.org. 2010-01-28. Retrieved 2013-09-26.
  9. Not all games are completable or even playable. Some of them are still very much works-in-progress. For a complete, up-to-date list, see the official ScummVM compatibility chart.
  10. cyx, fingolfin (2009-06-16). "Jun 16, 2009: GPL conflict with Atari". Scummvm.org. Retrieved 2013-09-26.
  11. Eugene Sandulenko (2009-06-23). "GPL, ScummVM and violations". Sev-notes.blogspot.com. Retrieved 2013-09-26.
  12. "Summer of Code project ideas page". Wiki.scummvm.org. 2013-03-04. Retrieved 2013-09-26.
  13. DJWillis (2010-04-28). "Home". ScummVM. Retrieved 2012-12-28.
  14. "ScummVM". Archived from the original on 2012-03-29.
  15. "ScummVM - Homepage". Google-melange.appspot.com. Retrieved 2012-12-28.
  16. "Accepted organizations for Google Summer of Code 2012". Google-melange.com. Retrieved 2012-12-28.
  17. "Engines - ScummVM :: Wiki". Wiki.scummvm.org. Retrieved 2013-09-26.
  18. "Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? - ScummVM :: Wiki". Wiki.scummvm.org. 2011-01-12. Retrieved 2013-09-26.
  19. Moss, Richard (2012-01-17). "Maniac Tentacle Mindbenders: How ScummVM's unpaid coders kept adventure gaming alive". arstechnica.com. Ars Technica. Retrieved 2014-12-22.
  20. "cinE - the cinematic Engine". SourceForge.net. Retrieved 2013-09-26.
  21. "Old Sarien Site". Sarien.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 2013-09-26.
  22. "Old TrollVM Site". Archived from the original on 2010-03-23.
  23. "#9661 (TrollVM project removal) â€" sourceforge". Sourceforge.net. Retrieved 2012-12-28.
  24. ^ Strangerke (2012-10-21). "Home". ScummVM. Retrieved 2012-12-28.
  25. sev (2008-09-06). "Home". ScummVM. Retrieved 2012-12-28.
  26. Home. "Revolution Software Website". Revolution.co.uk. Retrieved 2013-09-26.
  27. ScummVM 0.5.0 Out, With Some Official Game Support at Slashdot

Further reading

External links

LucasArts adventure games
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