[Scummvm-devel] Fan translated versions of games

Eugene Sandulenko sev at scummvm.org
Sat Nov 27 23:16:04 CET 2010


On Sat, 27 Nov 2010 17:35:03 +0100
"Simon Sawatzki" <SimSaw at gmx.de> 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.
Of course. You should understand, that we replace the original exe. Can
you run it with original unmodified executable? That's why it is not
possible to run it in ScummVM either without modification.

> 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).
The patch was submitted, it is just me who did not have enough time to
review and commit it.

> 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.
I wanted to make a blog post about md5s for a while now. But let me
express some thoughts here. What you say is all completely wrong. MD5s
were added for several important reasons: Some games, i.e. Full Throttle
(first game where md5s started from) have game script modifications
incompatible between the versions. Attempt to load a savegame from
different version lead to crash. Later we added support for Humongous
Entertainment games and without md5s it would not be possible because
there are dozens of games with same file names but built on different
engine versions. Same thing is with other languages, like with AGOS,
when the filenames are the same for all localized versions, but
different font has to be used for proper subtitle display.

Nevertheless we always tried to support and even encourage properly
made fan translations.

> 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. This a very annoying
> state for me: Fan patches can not be played by ScummVM, even if they
> contain major improvements and bugfixes.
I can safely say, that especially with the fact that you're an old
lurker over here, it is solely your fault. I.e. there is a feature
request tracker where you could request special support for the game
translators. I.e. something like adding additional keys for overriding
the autodetection. Technically that is a pretty easy thing to do, just
nobody requested it. If that would be some specific engine, like Dragon
History, then it has to be requested too. We are not developing ScummVM
for "all theoretically possible cases" just because we have very
limited resources. But again, we love our userbase and especially those
folks who put additional efforts by translating the games. So, simple
helps a lot.


Eugene




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