eBay Weirdness

Every once in a while, I check on eBay for a few games that I either find interesting, might help ScummVM in some way, or because I'm trying to track one down. I was looking for Mac versions of Sierra games, and at one point I happened to scroll down to the bottom of the screen and something caught my eye. "Leisure Suit Larry" (along with "Lego Batman") was mentioned on the bottom of the screen:


Bewildered as to what that link could possibly mean, I clicked on it and it lead me to here. Apparently Leisure Suit Larry is a popular item on eBay. Or something. I don't really get it. Not to mention none of the products listed below the description are even related to LSL.

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EDIT (2/3/10): My continued eBay searching has left me somewhat confused. Sometimes the item is just ridiculous, sometimes the price is just ridiculous. Since I don't want to just create another post, here are a few oddities I have found:

- King's Quest I CD: In addition to the high price... "replaced with the CD version"
- King's Quest V FM-Towns: High price. I would love to have it to be able to support it though! (Will accept a donation :P)
- Indiana Jones FM-Towns... Phone Card: Self-explanatory
- LucasArts Japanese Mac Pack: I would love to have this too (not as much as KQ5 FM-Towns), but I don't want to spend this kind of money...
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Seems normal... until you see what it comes with.

And, the icing on the cake:

- King's Quest VI "Girl in the Tower" CD: My jaw dropped when I saw this one. Yours probably will too. The price pretty much tells all. But it has free shipping!!!!


In other news, I've been tinkering with the Mohawk QuickTime code and working on adapting it to the Graphics::VideoDecoder interface in ScummVM. The more I do this, the more it feels like shoehorning the features that QTPlayer has into VideoDecoder isn't working. In addition, md5 mentioned that IHNM Mac uses QuickTime MIDI files. Curious as to what that involved, I looked up some samples on the internet. They use the good bad ol' QuickTime format to hold its own MIDI format (I had hoped for SMF in a QuickTime wrapper). Here's what Apple's QuickTime specs said about it. Anyone out there have better info than that?

The Year We Make Contact

And so, 2009 comes to a close. For those of you who have a good memory, you might remember a post I made last year about what I had hoped to accomplish this year. Let's take a look:

2009 Goals: (In order of probable completion)
- Fix Cinepak decoder!
- Fix QuickTime IMA ADPCM!
- Get background videos working!
- Figure out image format for other Mohawk games (Current hunch: LZSS similar to Myst format)!
- Finish Riven support (aka all the hardcoded puzzles :P)!

I have crossed out what was accomplished. Technically, I have a WIP patch that allows for background videos to work in Riven and background videos already work in Myst. So, we might consider that one done, even on a bit of a stretch. :P And now for next year:

2010 Goals: (In order of probable completion)
- Finish Riven support (external commands, mostly)
- Finish Myst support (some resource fixes, and then lots of the hardcoded opcodes)
- A look into other games more

Again setting lofty goals! We may even consider them monolithic in size! (Pun intended!) And for one last treat, to see the "good" ending of Riven, open the debug console in ScummVM (ctrl+d) and use these commands:

var ttelevalve 1
var ttelepin 1
var ttelecover 1
var pcage 2
changeStack tspit 137

Turn the lever down and press the button and voila! (Note: The DVD version may have to use a different card number, but just walk over to the telescope if you end up elsewhere :P)

Happy New Year! :)

The End

Today, December 29, 2009 at 23:23:31 (UTC), Mohawk entered the main ScummVM tree. You can now go grab a daily build and try out Myst or Riven. And now Strangerke can make his own gameplay videos and not coerce me into making them. :P

So, this is the end. Mohawk is now in the trunk and everyone can attempt to play Myst and Riven in ScummVM. :)










Or, perhaps the ending has not yet been written...

Sync'd (aka December Update)

After about a year of work, videos finally work and now with full a/v sync (md5 suggested something that could be the problem and that was it). Of course it was about a five line fix, but that's the not the point. ;)

Mohawk progress in the past month, let's see... I don't really remember a lot of it. I've spent most of my time on Uni things. It's now break, so it's time to work on more! digitall has been working on QDesign Music 2 (a complex audio codec used in Myst ME) and then we've taken an early look into the Living Books games. Nothing playable yet, but we can parse the "book outline" files.

I'm sure there's more I've forgotten, but I'll give a quick wrap-up:

Myst: Playable
- Many graphical glitches
- Wrongly disabled hotspots
- Only Stoneship is accessible from Myst Island
- D'ni is accessible! Can't hand a page over though :P

Myst ME: Slightly less playable than Myst (inherits the same problems)
- Less videos work
- Probably some PICT problems that have yet to be encountered

Riven: Very playable
- Almost no status update since last time :P
- Fixed one minor regression from cleanup

Myst is movin' right along now! Unfortunately, both Myst and Riven have hardcoded puzzles which are the biggest impediment in progressing further. But fear not, they will be worked on!

Legacy of Time 10th Anniversary

Earlier this year, Tommy Yune, conceptual artist on most of the Journeyman Project series posted on his Journeyman Project blog that Presto Studios would be re-releasing Legacy of Time for Mac OS X as a 10th Anniversary Special Edition. This was put on hold after the evil QuickTime 7.6/7.6.1 bugs that caused Cinepak videos to not display properly.

On October 30, the game was available to order. I ordered as soon as I possibly could. And, it came yesterday. I played as normal, and as usual, pretty much everything came back to me about playing the game (I'm not done yet, but I did find two parts of the legacy already!).

One of the interviews mentioned there was a new easter egg in the game. It obviously caught my attention. Now, instead of looking through the game for the new one, I set off looking at the data files. Most of the files seem the same from the original PC DVD version (from 1998), but some of the dates are different. For instance, the final cutscene has a date from January of this year, so it was probably modified a bit.

Then, I was looking through some of the El Dorado videos, and lo and behold, a video had a date from 3/13/08. It has been touched since the original release! Looking at it, it's the video with the pool animations (EP/EPanim.mov). At the end of the video is the new easter egg involving a whack-a-rat type joke with the idol heads around the pedestal with the legacy. I haven't figured out how to trigger it in game yet, but that is the next step.

Also, while the interviews seem to suggest improved graphics, the files all have the same 6/25/1998 date (minus those couple videos, unless I missed some), so the files all have the original DVD release's graphics and they haven't been updated since then.

Easter eggs cannot hide from me! :P

The ScummVM Logo: A Lookback

If you didn't notice, ScummVM has an updated logo. So, in honor of that (even though it's a week late), I've taken the liberty of compiling all the ScummVM logos throughout history. Much thanks to archive.org. I just thought it was interesting how far it has evolved. Of course, I came much later and missed out on the old logos... (And, does anyone remember that first one?)

Ancient (2001):



Early 2002: (Website Redesign)



Late 2002:



Late 2005: (Website Redesign)



Late 2009: (Capitalization)

November Already!

Here we are. November. And when was the last blog post? A month and half ago? Bah! It's been too long!

Riven has improved a lot. Loads of hardcoded functions have been filled in, it's slowly becoming more completable. The marble puzzle is just bypassed currently because I haven't gotten around to its logic. So, you can now get up to trying to access one of the lesser domes. And, if you use the debug console, the game is actually completable. Whaddya know?!? Some other bugs (including another QuickTime scaling bug! Egad!) were fixed.

That's great and all. But, really, the biggest piece of progress has been in Myst. Around the time of my last post, a new developer came forward (digitall) and has been working on various portions of Myst bringing it up to a highly playable state. Myst is now explorable and Stoneship is also accessible from the start. Screenshots? Of course! Videos? No!