ScummVM feat. AGS: Thousands of games needing testing

[the_schut]

https://www.scummvm.org/news/20210404/

The hype is real.

Also thanks to bicilotti for the link to this news from Apr 4, 2021 (this fellow  deserves an AGS lifetime award..)

[Danvzare]

It's about time. 
Now I can finally play Maniac Mansion Deluxe using the same thing I use to play Day of the Tentacle. (Wait, is Maniac Mansion Deluxe supported?)

[Ali]

This is great news. Well done to all the devs involved!

[Cassiebsg]

Awesome news! 
Congrats to all devs involved! 

[Thanyx]

Hello guys,

So we've heard the news that ScummVM Android now supports AGS games. When I tried to play our game Metaphobia (you can dl for free here https://digital-mosaic-games.itch.io/metaphobia) I couldn't run it.
I got this error: "ScummVM could not find any game in the specified directory!"

Other games worked fine, so I guess it isn't a problem of ScummVM.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Thanyx AKA Dave

[Khris]

According to the facebook announcement:

The engine has thousands of games. So far, we added detection ‘just’ for about 1,200, but much more are coming.

So apparently each game has to be added individually...?

[Thanyx]

Oh... had no idea. I thought it was pre-defined in the software to recognize all games.

Thanks a lot Khris, helpful as always

[Crimson Wizard]

I am not completely certain about all of scummvm inner logic. I know they have a hard-coded game detection table for each engine, but one of their devs also mentioned there's a fallback mechanism. Maybe it's not implemented fully yet to detect any game. Perhaps it's best to ask on their forums for clarification.

[Monsieur OUXX]

Wow

[cat]

  Awesome!

[Hobbes]

Such amazing news. I just had a go and yep, my very old-timer MAGS game "Buccaneer" works a treat. So for anyone looking to give that 2003 MAGS Winner a try, it works fine in the latest daily build of ScummVM. :-)

[Crimson Wizard]

Such amazing news. I just had a go and yep, my very old-timer MAGS game "Buccaneer" works a treat. So for anyone looking to give that 2003 MAGS Winner a try, it works fine in the latest daily build of ScummVM. :-)

FWIW your game runs with the current AGS engine too. I just wanted to clarify that was possible (that is how people are playing all the old games on AGS Linux port for instance all these years).
In this context ScummVM has an advantage of being easier to install as a game launcher (and on more platforms).

[cat]

I tried Toffee Trouble but the dialog does not work. I have custom dialog options but I can't select them with the mouse, it just won't move over them.

How is this generally intended to happen? Do we have to go to the bug tracker and everyone has to create an account or should we make a thread here to collect general issues with AGS games in ScummVM?

[Crimson Wizard]

I tried Toffee Trouble but the dialog does not work. I have custom dialog options but I can't select them with the mouse, it just won't move over them.

How is this generally intended to happen? Do we have to go to the bug tracker and everyone has to create an account or should we make a thread here to collect general issues with AGS games in ScummVM?

BTW because most of the logic code was plain copied from AGS, it may be worth to quickly check same issue with the 3.5.1 engine before reporting to scummvm. If that's convenient of course.

[cat]

Good idea. I downloaded the package, but how can I run the game with the latest acwin.exe? Is this done via command line parameters?

[Crimson Wizard]

Good idea. I downloaded the package, but how can I run the game with the latest acwin.exe? Is this done via command line parameters?

Variant 1. Place acwin.exe into game folder and simply run it. You may need to do "acwin.exe --setup" from command line to run newest winsetup if the game is too old.
Variant 2. Run acwin.exe from any folder, but pass path to game folder as an argument in command line.
More info on command line here: https://github.com/adventuregamestudio/ags/blob/master/OPTIONS.md#command-line

[cat]

Interesting, here the dialog works but the translation has problems (text is translated but translated graphics for buttons are not used and I can't switch in-game)

Maybe if I have more time I'll investigate.

[Crimson Wizard]

Well, maybe there are separate issues, as the engines have same logic base, but there are already some differences, and will be more over time.
Anyway, ScummVM has its own bug tracker where they post and handle their bugs, also I heard they have their own Discord server, and then one of their developers is visiting AGS Discord under username of "criezy", so these are some options for reporting problems that I know.

[cat]

I found a thread where the developers are active
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=58591.20

[criezy]

I just checked and we already have a detection entry for Metaphobia and it is recognised properly.
Also there is indeed a fallback detection for games for which we do not yet have a detection entry.

When you wrote "Other games worked fine", do you mean other AGS games? Or other non-AGS games?
I suspect here that you might be trying to use a version of ScummVM that is too old, for example the 2.2.0 release. We have only added support for AGS games recently, so you need a recent development build of ScummVM to play AGS games.

[criezy]

I have just tried it, and there is indeed an issue in ScummVM. The mouse seems to get stuck at the top of the dialog choices. It does actually work, and this might only be a display issue (I will need to investigate this further), but you have to imagine where the mouse might be as you don't see it moving, which make it difficult to select the dialog choice you want.

And I have also verified that this is an issue specific to ScummVM and that it does not occur with AGS 3.5.1.

[cat]

@criezy Thank you for having a look!

[LimpingFish]

Just as a initial test I've tried two of my own games in ScummVM, and while they are recognized correctly as Heartland Deluxe and Unbound, they will only load under the fallback option. The only problem is that they run really slow. This may be a problem with AGS itself, as I've found that the Panorama Module runs a lot slower in any version of the engine post 2.72. Otherwise, they work as intended.

[criezy]

while they are recognized correctly as Heartland Deluxe and Unbound, they will only load under the fallback option

Do you mean that you get the unknown variant message when trying to add the game to ScummVM? We indeed have detection for those two games already, but they may be for different versions than the ones you tried to add. In such a case the message you get when trying to add the game to ScummVM should tell you to report some information to us so that we can add detection for that variant as well.

[LimpingFish]

Do you mean that you get the unknown variant message when trying to add the game to ScummVM?

That's right.

We indeed have detection for those two games already, but they may be for different versions than the ones you tried to add.

They are the latest versions I've released (v1.1 for Heartland Deluxe, and v1.0 for Unbound), which are pretty much the most widely available ones (especially if they were downloaded through the links on the AGS database). I'd be surprised if an earlier version or either was used, but it's certainly not impossible.

EDIT: Come to think of it (nearly thirteen years later!), Unbound v1.0 is the only version available, as an earlier version was never publicly released.

In such a case the message you get when trying to add the game to ScummVM should tell you to report some information to us so that we can add detection for that variant as well.

No problem.

Heartland Deluxe V1.1:

Spoiler

The game in 'Heartland Deluxe v1.1\' seems to be an unknown game variant.

Matched game IDs for the ags engine: heartlanddeluxe

  {"Heartland.exe", 0, "0829f8e184ed6a4bf36b14ba42003a67", 6701875},

[close]

EDIT: Actually, Unbound (v1.0) is recognized correctly and runs in the latest build of ScummVM (2.3.0git15028-g78c48fd9df (Apr 10 2021 05:31:24)), though it crashes when loading .mpg files. Don't know why it wasn't correctly recognized last time, though I wouldn't put it past my own technical ineptitude.

Like I said, it's not impossible that v1.0 of Heartland Deluxe would also be recognized correctly, though it's almost impossible to find for download (every website I checked that currently features the game is hosting the v1.1 version). In fact, I can't even find a copy to test myself. It may have existed on the now defunct AGSArchives, but it's not available in the archive torrent, so maybe not.

TLDR: Unbound v1.0 is recognized and runs. Heartland Deluxe v1.1 is recognized, returns an unknown variant error (see above), but runs correctly under the fallback option.

[criezy]

Thank you. I have added the detection for this version of Heartland Deluxe now. The detection we had was for an executable that is a bit bigger than yours (it might indeed be version 1.0).

I have also create a bug report on our tracker for the Unbound crash so that we do not forget to look at this.
Do you happen to use a ScummVM version in which mpeg support is not included (it is optional)? You can check this in the About dialog in ScummVM (check if it is listed in the list of "Features compiled in"). That could explain the crash (although even if that is the issue we need to handle this better than with a crash).

[Thanyx]

Hello @Criezy

Actually, I have downloaded the newest version of ScummVM that is available on Google Play. I downloaded it just like five minutes ago.

And by other games, I meant non-AGS games (INDY FOA, and so on), as well as AGS games.

[criezy]

Actually, I have downloaded the newest version of ScummVM that is available on Google Play. I downloaded it just like five minutes ago.

Unless I am mistaken, the version on the Play Store is the last official release (2.2), which is several months old and does not contain the AGS engine. Only development builds are able to run AGS games currently.

[Thanyx]

Hello,

ok thank you. So can you please help where can I download this version? I am not able to find it on the official site.

[cat]

Hello,

ok thank you. So can you please help where can I download this version? I am not able to find it on the official site.

https://buildbot.scummvm.org/#/snapshots, it is linked in the news of ScummVM (linked in the first post).

[Monsieur OUXX]

Reviving this, september 2021.

- What is the current status of AGS games running on ScummVM?
- Who is involved from the AGS forums?
- What is the best place to talk about it?
- What are the current limitations? (theoretical ones -- Not talking about performance and such)

Spoiler

ScummVM as the de facto AGS engine has a tremendous potential because... It is signed and downloadable from stores. Lol, ScummVM on iOS/MacOS expreriences the same roadblock as many other open source apps on Mac recently : it requires to be built with XCode and ...the critical features of a Mac Developer account (related to signing) is no longer free.

[close]

[Crimson Wizard]

- What is the current status of AGS games running on ScummVM?

Many of them seem to work, at least judging by their bug tracker, people were playtesting alot.

- Who is involved from the AGS forums?

Because AGS port is largerly based on the current engine code, I'm helping their developer with fixing game logic errors in the older games (in parallel to fixing them in our engine).

- What is the best place to talk about it?

I guess it's ScummVM forums and discord.