Talk:ScummVM

Moved information from the first paragraph

I found the first paragraph a little cluttered with all those links, so I moved some information around and added a full list of supported LucasArts games.--Deadworm222 22:18, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Other game engine recreations

This subsection is not about ScummVM at all. If it is at all needed, it should be an infobox or other template (to be included on every engine recreation), but ideally this should be a category. Shinobu 15:38, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

• Agreed. I have split that section to another article and added a "see also" reference on the ScummVM article. MetaFox 17:00, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

List of supported games

Someone added games to the list as soon as they appeared in SVN. Please, do not do that, as those games aren't really supported, i.e. at least not for end-users. When we feel confident about some game, we add it to our compatibility list. Until that, please, do not list them here. The reason behind it is that when game is supported, we accept bugreports about it, add new category to bug trackers, write proper documentation on how to run it, etc. Questions about unsupported games distract us from real development. -- Sevua 11:52, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps they could be listed under a different heading. 'Games that may be supported in the future' of something like that. --JiFish(^Talk/_Contrib) 13:55, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

No, we prefer to not have those additional questions raised at all. Sometimes it is really annoying. Even questions like 'when at last this and this will be fully playable' take time to read and reply. --Sevua 12:42, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

With respect sir, and I am a huge fan of ScummVM, but if the information is true and sourced there's no good reason that it shouldn't be included. This is an encyclopedia. The fact the ScummVM team doesn't want to recieve questions about it doesn't really cut it as a reason. Perhaps a sentence to the effect that the ScummVM team doesn't wish to recieve messages about unsupported titles would be a fair compromise. --JiFish(^Talk/_Contrib) 15:23, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I am really sorry, but I am one of three ScummVM co-leaders. Check Our credits page (username sev was already taken here so I had to use Sevua). That's our (not my alone) decision and as I've told, we really had bad experiences and believe that this exposure will put unnecessary load on us. Though of course if you will decide to ignore this and re-add the games in question to the list, we will not run into edit fights or somethig. However, this will not oblige us to give support for users who will inquiry info on these WIP titles, and their requests will usually be ignored, and I believe that this will plainly disappoint them. --Sevua 17:19, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I am aware of who you are. That is why I wanted you to know what a big fan of your work I am. Which is why it upsets me to have to restore the information. But you must understand, wikipedia can't just let people remove information because they don't want people to know about it. That would be a very bad policy for an encyclopedia. I have tried to be as clear as possible about the state of these engines. Please feel free to edit the section. If you still disagree with me, maybe we can ask a few other editors to weigh in on the situation.

I hope you don't see this as malicious. I am trying to do the 'right thing'. Your fan, --JiFish(^Talk/_Contrib) 22:22, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Is there any reason to keep those games listed on Wikipedia there if they are not officially supported? Is mentioning unsupported games in an encyclopedia article reasonable?-Wormsie 09:01, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

The information is factual, IMO notable and may be of use to someone. I have clearly indicated the status of these games. I believe it is reasonable. --JiFish(^Talk/_Contrib) 10:52, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Check in progress engines for complete and up-to-date list. --Sevua 21:21, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Regarding the ScummVM screenshot

Why has it been changed to the version 0.8.0? 0.9. is the latest.--Wormsie 06:34, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Apparently Wikipedia switched all images to Wiki Commons, and screenshot wasn't updated there. I pointed this article to 0.9.0, however that screenshot is made with bad resolution (640x400 instead of 640x480), and I can't update the file on commons for some reason. I get '.png is not allowed format' error.--Sevua 12:35, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I have add two screenshots of the scummvm version 0.10.0 one for the modern skin and the other for the classic skin (i apologize for my poor english)--81.42.90.18 02:26, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

GP2x official support added

The GP2x has been added to the officially supported platforms. So far a preview version has been released and a forum section added. Hasn't been announced on the website front page thought. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.43.105.22 (talk • contribs) 10:08, 12 October 2006

Yes, a port becomes truly official when a release with it was made. In 0.9.1 we expect to have NDS, GP2X and GP32 ports added. -Sevua 06:07, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Possible shutting down of the project?

I've noticed that scummvm.org went down yesterday, with the downloads page going down first. I have also noticed that LucasHacks is down as well. Are you guys perparing for a new release or has Lucasarts come down on you? Any feedback would be apperciated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.144.40.209 (talk • contribs) 16:30, 18 October 2006

/me laughs. No. Use scummvm.sourceforge.net. It's just SF.net which broke their vhosts somehow. And visit our forums at forums.scummvm.org to make sure that the project is alive and kicking. New game support was added couple days ago.--Sevua 18:43, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Added Parallaction to the SVN

Recently the Parallaction engine was added to the SVN. This engine was used by the games Nippon Safes, Inc and it's sequel Big Red Adventure, maybe "Tequila & Boom Boom".

http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Parallaction

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.217.11.94 (talk • contribs) 14:30, 15 January 2007

Intro reorg / lists / general attitude towards cleanup

So recently the laundry tag was removed without any attempt at cleanup twice, and I just had a whole lot of copyediting reverted on the basis that it was "a lot clearer" previously. The previous focus on technical minutae (including the "not an emulator" gibberish which only makes sense to people who come from a console emulation background) was not at all useful.

As for the lists, either they need rewritten or they should be removed entirely. This article shouldn't be a simple bulleted reiteration of stuff from the ScummVM website. It should seek to describe the subject in a way which adds some insight into what the project is about. Describing the differences between the supported platforms and grouping them by category in prose does this. Arbitrarily-ordered lists of 10+ items doesn't. Chris Cunningham 08:34, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Now that the article is tagged, it suggests that the list of games should also be changed to prose. I strongly disagree. You said lists shouldn't be here at all, but there's a place for lists. Changing something like a list of games (or a list of compositions by an artist or a list of albums) to prose when there's no need or intention to elaborate on talk more of the individual games makes the article worse because it makes it a lot less clear. It doesn't add anything to it. It is not the job of this article to explain anything about the games, that's why the games have their own articles.--Wormsie 11:25, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

The list of games isn't the core point of the article any more than MAME should be a list of games. Giving a bit of information on each engine supported along with some example games would be much more informative than a simple chronological ordering of them. People resort to lists for bundles of data much too readily on Wikipedia, and this article (which until recently consisted of little more than some introductory text refactored from the website and five or six different lists of games or hardware) is a prime example. People can go to the article website for that kind of trivia. This article should treat the subject as a point of academic interest. Chris Cunningham 11:52, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Why exclude a full list of games? That'd be like saying that articles about artists shouldn't include all albums they have made or an article of a composer shouldn't include all his compositions. And what is there to be said of the individual engines? The interesting information would be from the point of ScummVM developers and what they have discovered about them, but alas, this information is not commonly known. And information on each engine should be in the articles about the engines themselves, anyway. By all means, expand the article, but there's nothing wrong with the list per se.--Wormsie 14:01, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

There's a difference - we list compositions because they are written by the artist. These games were not made especially for ScummVM - and the fact that it can run them simply follows from the fact that ScummVM is a reimplementation of the game engine they run on. It would be like having an article on a musical instrument, and then listing "All songs that can be played on that instrument". I can see it reasonable to mention a few of the more well known games, but what's the point in repeating information when we could just link to the original source? This list is redundant, and has to be continually updated or become out of date. Mdwh (talk) 04:20, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

MAME is an emulator of many different arcade systems, ScummVM a reimplementation of a few engines. ScummVM is smaller in scope, and it's worth listing which game engine versions (i.e. which games) it does support and doesn't support. (And it wouldn't hurt if the MAME article mentioned which systems it can emulate.) People don't generally know if, say, Grim Fandango used Scumm or not, and just referring to "LucasArts adventure games" would be confusing.--Wormsie 14:19, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. A full list of games is just a huge wad of data for most people. If you look at the articles of prolific authors, they don't always include complete lists of works for precisely this reason. I'm happy for the article to document the different systems it supports, but I believe this can be done in a much better way than a chronological list of games. For now, at least the intro is okay, and we're down to three large lists rather than five. Chris Cunningham 11:50, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, I am the one, standing behind that "gibberish" that ScummVM in not an emulator. And now you removed that sentence and wrote a paragraph with misleading explanation. That was my intention to avoid such things when I added my clause. Let me explain. ScummVM does not emulate any part of the software (in fact, there are several hardware-related emulators in it, particularly for sound chips), but it is a [i]rewrite[/i] or [i]reimplementation[/i] of original engines. That is, we obtains source code of some engine, either directly from the company, or by means of reverse engineering and then make it portable, leaving all original logic intact. What you wrote is completely wrong. So, please, express these thoughts in better words as you seem to feel more qualified for this.-- Sevua 12:49, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Call it what you will ("recreation", "simulation", "high-level emulation" to name three common ones), this practice is widely referred to as emulation in the general sense, so flat-out saying "it is not an emulator" presupposes that the reader takes a particular idea of what an emulator is. In this case, the article which is wikilinked makes clear that there is nuance here, and that "virtual machines", "simulators" and "compatibility layers" all emulate other systems in this sense. There's already a distinction in the new intro between what ScummVM does and full hardware emulation, and I've specifically used game engine recreation as the primary term used to refer to the app. Chris Cunningham 13:25, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

(That is the reason why I reverted the rest of the edits, as I saw them as inaccurate.)--Wormsie 14:01, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, Sevua, knowing you are a ScummVM developer I would see you more qualified in writing about this. :)--Wormsie 14:01, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Recent controversy regarding Wii software

Check out the ScummVM website. Might be added? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.184.127.235 (talk) 21:58, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Added. 69.177.215.119 (talk) 09:30, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Some attempt at NPOV would be nice, this hardly counts: "they again became hostile, and attempted to blackmail the ScummVM team over their methods for developing the software" 193.131.2.146 (talk) 12:39, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Plus this: "which were nevertheless legal in the United States and Germany (as in other countries)" is a claim with no evidence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.131.2.146 (talk) 12:48, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Residual merge

Why was the Residual (open source project) article merged into ScummVM? Residual no longer is part of ScummVM. If anything, it should be merged into GrimE, which is the engine being recreated in it. -Clone2727 (talk) 05:49, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Guess what, more than a decade later ScummVM and ResidualVM are officially merging (see history)! -Cardace (talk) 11:38, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Multiple-Disc Games?

Hey guys; I realize that this isn't a FAQ thread, but I had a question that I'd like to ask. On games such as Curse of Monkey Island that have multiple discs to them, after you finish with the first disc, what do you do? When I beat the first half of COMI it asked for the second disc, I put it in, and nothing happened. Just wondering if anyone else has had this problem before. Let me know, thanks you guys! DoomedAnfauglir (talk) 03:55, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Heh, this is really not a FAQ thread, neither it is ScummVM README where this specific topic is covered, Section 3.5 "Multi-CD games notes". Sevua (talk) 20:07, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

new source

just posted at Ars Tech, a 4 page history of the software. --MASEM (t) 14:26, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

The ArsTech article provides a great potted history of the project, it includes a lot of the information I had hoped to read here at Wikipedia. I'll try to briefly summarize: from a 1 man project to a 2 man project, eventually getting a code repository. Story on Slashdot November 3, 2001, bringing many more developers and users. The scope of the project expands to more than just SCUMM games. Rewritten from C to C++ starting in 2002, addition of a GUI, etc.

Then the legal issues with LucasArts -- this is far a more notable part of the history of the project than an alleged GPL violation many many years later -- and their amicable resolution and ongoing development of the project. (That's just page 1)

Then cooperation from games companies, sharing of source code and in some cases offering the games as freeware (a section of prose on this would provide context and make the long lists of later in the article more meaningful). ScummVM developers even working with games companies under NDAs. Merging the SCI engine goes from April fools joke to actual reality over many years.

half of page 4 of the article talks about the Mystic GPL issue that already has been given undue weight in this article, an issue best solved by rebalancing the article with more prose. The article mentions touch support added for WebOS that might be generalized and also mentions the Google Summer of Code.

I encourage others to take my brief summary and flesh it back out again to create a few paragraphs about the History/Development of ScummVM and improve this wikipedia article. -- 109.76.13.212 (talk) 00:09, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Merge with ScummVM

ResidualVM is now merging with ScummVM for a future update of the latter, which makes me wonder if we should do the same to the two articles. This doesn't just apply to the engine itself, but also to their respective websites, including forums and wikis. Compared to ScummVM, ResidualVM also never quite thrived as a project, having been a perpetual beta, supporting only 4 games, and having a smaller dev team. My opinion is two merge these two pages, but only after the merging of the two projects has been completed. 190.193.171.57 (talk) 14:47, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

  Y Merger complete. Klbrain (talk) 15:37, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Reverted edit about free software

User:Masem: Freeware means software that is distributed gratis. Free software is about freedom. The source code for the entries I changed were released under a free software licence. DesertPipeline (talk) 13:03, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

No, for example, Lure of the Temptest /Beneath a Steel Sky were released as freeware, not in a free-as-in-thought release, not under a open source license, as per the source. Further, ScummVM is an open-source program, and while it can be called "free software", it is properly called open-source software. --Masem (t) 13:13, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

User:Masem: If Beneath a Steel Sky and Lure of the Temptress aren't released as free software, why are they in Debian GNU/Linux's main repository, which only contains free software? How could releasing the source code as freeware assist the ScummVM developers? Why is ScummVM referred to free software in the lead of the article and then "open source" in the body? DesertPipeline (talk) 03:06, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

The copyright file for BaSS in Debian certainly is not an open source license, but a free-to-distribute-and-modify license, which makes it freeware but not open-source. --Masem (t) 03:14, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

User:Masem: So it's not free software as such, but it's not merely "freeware" (or what I should call gratisware for clarity). Calling it "freeware" is oversimplifying. Also, again, why does the lead refer to ScummVM as free software but the body refers to it as "open source"? It should be one or the other – and I would certainly prefer it to be called free software, because that's a much better term than Camp We Don't Care About Ethics's term, and right now at least, if something describes itself as "open source", then it's usually going to be counting as free software anyway. The GPL v2 is a free software licence anyway, so it is proper free software and not mere "open source". DesertPipeline (talk) 03:23, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

User:Masem: As it turns out, that copyright file is for Beneath a Steel Sky's art, not code. The code is in ScummVM itself. Therefore, because the article is talking about code, it is correct to say "released the code as free software". DesertPipeline (talk) 02:12, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

"open-source software" and "free software" (free as in speech) are often used interchangably, though there are very exceptional cases that not all free software is open-source. And as the free software page states, "free software" is a term geared towards end usage being unrestricted, while "open source" is geared to the open development model that most end-users care little about. Since ScummVM is GPL v2, it is fair to call it both free software and open-source, both actually should be used in the appropriate context (free software as a primary description, open source as to its distribution). Now, as to Beneath a Steel Sky and its assets, its release doesn't follow either the open source or free software model, and sources around it call it "freeware" (as in free as in beer), even though there free-as-in-speech aspects around it as well. This is likely because the game was originally a commercial product before it was integrated into ScummVM, and thus why "freeware" is a more apt term than "free software". --Masem (t) 15:51, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

User:Masem: I think you're confused. There isn't any context where one would need to use the term "open source", except when referring to people who use that term. Also, the game being previously commercial isn't relevant. There is such a thing as commercial free software, even. But I presume you mean "the game was previously proprietary". I don't think that changes what it is now, though. DesertPipeline (talk) 02:48, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes there is: again, as the free software page says, "free software" is a term more gears for the user (who cares little about the source code), while "open source" is used to describe the code's availability which is more of interest to developers. And "proprietary" is a term to be careful with as well, as that generally is for programs that may have some components of their source available to see, but which cannot be copied without restritions (eg such as Java). --Masem (t) 03:22, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

User:Masem: ...Huh? Am I communicating with someone who exists in another universe where these concepts are completely different? Free software is, was, and always will be the original term for software which is free as in freedom. It began in 1985, or perhaps earlier, when Richard Stallman recognised the need for a free as in freedom operating system, as all operating systems back then were proprietary. "Proprietary" is another word for "nonfree", or "non-libre", meaning software that does not give you freedom. The "open source" term came about in 1998, when some people in the free software movement decided that "free" can be confused with "gratis", so they just decided to remove the concept of freedom from the equation entirely with their term. Now we are at the regrettable point where most people who even know anything about the concept of free software, GNU/Linux, etc, think "open source" and believe it began when Linus Torvalds released the kernel Linux. It seems though that you are even more confused about the real origins of free software and related concepts than most other people, and I really have no idea how that happened. DesertPipeline (talk) 03:28, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Again, we use the terms as they are used in sources, not any interpretation that we make. Yes, you are right about the origins of these terms, but today those origins don't mean much. "Free software" is applied to free-as-in-speech software from the viewpoint of the end user who probably cares little about the source code behind it, while "open source" is used to talk the same principle, but at the software developer level. It doesn't matter how they originated, how they may have been bastardized, that's the general use in sources, and we're supposed to follow the sources. There, a google news search shows higher preference for "open source" in describing ScummVM than "free software". And on "proprietary" versus "commercial", keep in mind that while all commercial software (software that is sold) is proprietary (software that has limited distribution rights) by definition, not all proprietary software is commercial, such as Java (Free in cost to download but there are limited with what you can do with it). And to that end, in describing Beneath a Steel Sky, it was once commercial software, but now it is free - both in cost and in rights - to distribute. While yes, that would qualify it as "free software", it is better to compare it as "freeware" as in opposition to its prior "commercial" release. --Masem (t) 03:38, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

User:Masem: So let me get this straight... because the sources are getting things wrong now, we should get things wrong too, even though the correct interpretation could be sourced? Because more people are ignorant than not, we have to be ignorant too? That is insane. I cannot support such a suggestion at all.

while all commercial software (software that is sold) is proprietary

I told you in my last message that free software can be commercial. "Free (as in libre)" and "commercial" aren't opposing concepts. You can sell copies of free software. When others have copies, it's up to them whether or not they want to distribute copies of their copy of the software to others gratis, but that doesn't change the fact that you can sell free software. And I think it could be successful. The fact that developers think they won't make money with free software is why the field of gaming is such a mess. Proprietary software everywhere, and a lot of developers take advantage of the control they have to make even more money. DesertPipeline (talk) 03:45, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Just like at the words-to-watch discussion, you're getting hung up on very specific meanings of terms that do not align with broader use of those terms. You're not wrong on the specifics, but because the terms have morphed since their introduction, we have to consider them nearly equivalent today and thus should follow the preferred term in the sources, since we're not supposed to engage in original research otherwise. --Masem (t) 03:55, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

User:Masem: Surely it isn't original research if there are actually sources out there which don't get this stuff wrong. This mistake hasn't always been present. DesertPipeline (talk) 04:10, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Split into List of games supported by ScummVM

This tag was added by User:Thumperward seemingly without discussion back in August of this year.

Regardless, support. That section takes up about a third of the page. 2800:2161:5400:5FD:7D15:6602:2E55:AE71 (talk) 17:43, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Other question is, whether we should even keep and maintain such a list on Wikipedia. Those lists will always be out of date and missing details. It's especially futile as there are 3 sources cited that will always contain up to date lists. IMHO we should only state number of supported games, game developers, maybe a few highlighted examples. And keep the references to the maintained lists outside of WP. – K4rolB (talk) 16:48, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Pretty much this. We're not a catalog, though keeping the list of game engines/developers that SCUMMVM supports is fair. I am pretty sure there's an "official" compatibility list at the project page that can go in the EL area. --Masem (t) 16:55, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

ResidualVM website

It's no longer an official site, but the old domain name goes to a spam site. I removed it from that section. (I accidentally used WP:BLACKLIST in my edit but should've mentioned WP:LINKSTOAVOID.) I'll try to ask ResidualVM (ScummVM) stakeholders about that website. 104.158.57.98 (talk) 00:10, 8 January 2024 (UTC)