[Scummvm-devel] Fan translated versions of games

Johannes Schickel lordhoto at scummvm.org
Sat Nov 27 19:38:13 CET 2010


On 11/27/2010 05:35 PM, Simon Sawatzki wrote:
> The MI patches are NOT supported already. I have tried with current daily build and I get an error due to a present monkey.cfg.
>
> The creator of the patch makes a modified version of ScummVM available. The problem is that he can only provide the source code and the Windows binary but no builds for other ports. So it would be a good idea to include it in the official ScummVM build (however not in the way of MD5's as they might change).
>
> I'd like to add that I feel generaly that ScummVM became "ScummVM for Prisoners" over the years.
>
> At the beginning, all the games were detected by data file names. Every version could be detected. Then the MD5's came. It was a nice additional help for users to get the settings. Still, when the users wanted to set other settings ("wrong" settings like for language etc) it was possible as well as setting up games with unknown entries.

It is definitely true that there was a time were most engines used a 
file name based detection. On the other hand the common MD5 based 
detection, called the "AdvancedDetector", which was a refactorization of 
the SAGA/AGOS detection code done roughly 4 years ago, was used by all 
engines, which were added after the "AGI" engine.

Apart some engines still feature a filename or other detection which is 
not based on MD5 sums.

Engines, which use the AdvancedDetector, with a custom fallback 
detection include:
AGI,
Tucker (seems it can only detect the demo version though),
SCI

Engines, which use the AdvancedDetector, but have a filename based 
fallback include:
GOB,
Mohawk,
Touche

Engines, which do not use the AdvancedDetector at all:
SCUMM,
Sky,
Queen,
Sword1,
Sword2

>     Then there was suddenly the point when only games were detected that had MD5's avaiable in the database. If this entry was not present, the detection fails. Even when the user tries now to manually set up an entry from a game in scummvm.ini, ScummVM wants to know better and says that the game could not be detected when the player wants to start the game via the available list entry.

I can just say for SCUMM this is not true, SCUMM still features the old 
detection scheme as fallback, it will complain about unknown MD5 sums 
then though. Apart I would like to hear what fan translations suddenly 
stopped working over the years.

>     This a very annoying state for me: Fan patches can not be played by ScummVM, even if they contain major improvements and bugfixes. I would wish that we could reobtain the state that we had before MD5's were obligatory, thus giving more freedom to patch developers and patch distributions.

So what fan patches are you talking about, which just don't work because 
of the md5 based detection?

> After all, doesn't ScummVM have a competition with DOSBox? Or would you prefer if all your users would abandon ScummVM in favour of other solutions because the freedom is taken away and good improved versions are denied to play?

We have a competition with DOSBox? I do not think so.

// Johannes





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