[Scummvm-devel] MD5 errors -- "unsupported" game versions

[Max Horn]

Am 14.11.2005 um 16:02 schrieb <Torbjorn.E.Andersson at personec.com>  
<Torbjorn.E.Andersson at personec.com>:

> Max Horn <max at quendi.de> wrote:
>
>> I stated this before, but I'll repeat it: I am not happy that we now
>> are so extremly picky about MD5s matching. This was *never* what I
>> intended when I said a long time ago that we should try reducing the
>> number of SCUMM targets.
>
> This is the same discussion that was held briefly about feature  
> request
> #1286150 ("Third-party translations"), which resulted in the
> "target_md5" configuration setting. I believe that it can only be
> changed by manually editing the config file though, which is not very
> user friendly. Having a GUI for it when adding a game might go a long
> way towards making everyone happier.

I don't think so. The "target_md5" key is mostly a hack, and only  
usable by "pros". It's OK that it is there, but exposing it via the  
GUI to our users doesn't solve the real problem . People who can  
figure out the required MD5 key usually should be able to edit the  
config file; OK, some target systems may not make this easily  
possible, but still, target_md5 just tries to cure the symptoms, not  
the real problem! We can of course offer it in a "For experts only"  
section of the GUI, but I prefer proper solutions over hack on the  
long run :-).


>
>> From what I understand/remember of the previous discussion, the main
> problem that the MD5 sums solve is telling the various, almost
> identical, versions of the HE games apart. We can't really expect the
> user to make any educated guesses there...

We don't have to, though! In many cases, we *can* figure out what the  
game is (because there aren't many variants anyway). In those we  
should just silently do that, instead of erroring out.
In many more case, there are only a few possibilities which are  
easily distinguishable for most users (think of modified versions of  
Indy 3 PC vs. Indy 3 FM-TOWNS). Here we could offer the user the  
choice between those possibilities, just like we used to do (or still  
do? hrm) when the user selects a dir which contains a 00.LFL with  
unknown MD5 -- we let'em choose. Again, usually they should easily be  
able to make the correct choice.

The case of the HE games of course is different. But there is no  
reason to let the users of the other games suffer because of this.  
Furthermore, even here we could be slightly more user friendly. At  
the very least, we should display a nice proper error dialog  
explaining the problem before quitting.


Cheers,
Max