[Scummvm-devel] MD5s of Scumm data files

[Marcus Comstedt]

Max Horn <max at quendi.de> writes:

> Yo folks,
>
> recently we had some discussion on #scummvm regarding making a table
> of MD5 checksum of game data files (right now restricted to scumm,
> though this could easily be applied to other engines, if desired).
>
> The idea: Collect MD5s of the data files of all supported games in all
> existing variants (of course this is quite a big number considering
> all the localizations etc.). For most purposes, taking the MD5 of one
> file (the "first" data file, so
> 00.LFL/000.LFL/*.000/*.la0/*.he0/*.sm0) is sufficient, for some others
> it's better to have the MD5 of all

I'm all for this.  Having "perfect" auto detection in the ScummVM
proper would allow me to can my own auto-detection hacks which tend to
break whenever someone edits the launcher.  :-)

However, hashing files means that they have to be opened, which
introduces seek times on a CD-only system, so I'd prefer restricting
the hash to one or two (named) files per game rather than taking one
of all datafiles.  Using the first datafile is good, since it's
typically very small, saving the time to read and hash large data
amounts.  Remember that you'd have to do this every time you startup
ScummVM on the Dreamcast, for every game on the CD.


  // Marcus