The Big ScummVM and ResidualVM Thread
Jennifer
Moderator
There's been quite a few threads about specific games in ScummVM and ResidualVM, but never one all-encompassing thread, so I figured I'd make one since ScummVM and ResidualVM are ever-evolving. 
I'm a huge fan of the 2D adventure game program ScummVM and it's sister project for 3D adventures, ResidualVM (and the sister project ScummVM-Misc which includes an engine for text adventures made with Inform) by extension. So much so that I actually prefer to play adventure games through these programs.
I enjoy testing out engines as they're WIP, and there's often some times when the engines play straight through to completion long before they're added to a stable release. I'm playing through Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers in ScummVM right now, and it works really well despite being WIP, and I played through Grim Fandango in ResidualVM before it received a stable release.
I've played ScummVM on Windows, Mac, Linux, BeOS, GP32, Dreamcast, Wii, and iPad and ResidualVM on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
I'm a huge fan of the 2D adventure game program ScummVM and it's sister project for 3D adventures, ResidualVM (and the sister project ScummVM-Misc which includes an engine for text adventures made with Inform) by extension. So much so that I actually prefer to play adventure games through these programs.
I enjoy testing out engines as they're WIP, and there's often some times when the engines play straight through to completion long before they're added to a stable release. I'm playing through Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers in ScummVM right now, and it works really well despite being WIP, and I played through Grim Fandango in ResidualVM before it received a stable release.
I've played ScummVM on Windows, Mac, Linux, BeOS, GP32, Dreamcast, Wii, and iPad and ResidualVM on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
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I've got scummVM on my tablet with curse of mi. Does anyone know if it's possible to change the controls from virtual touch pad (the whole screen is a mouse) to actual touch?
On Android, you apparently toggle between touch-pad and direct mode by configuring the "Mixed AdLib/MIDI mode" on the MIDI tab from the "options" button in ScummVM's menu (since the android port currently lacks its own configuration dialog).
Some info about the iPhone/iPad port can be found here.
Some info about the Android port can be found here.
It's a ScummVM sister project for 3D adventure games that uses the same GUI and has the same codebase framework as ScummVM. It used to be a sub-project called Residual, but the sourcecode was moved from the ScummVM repository.
There is only official Amiga, Windows, Mac, and Linux support at the moment, but because it shares the same codebase as ScummVM, I wouldn't be surprised if many new ports pop up when a stable build is released.
I can see why it's not ready for primetime yet. The flashlight doesn't work properly in the crypt, and the drum code selector is a bit fidgety (I had to select things from the far right in order for them to register correctly). Other than that though, it worked quite well.
I was going to keep this post ScummVM specific, but I just have to say one thing about the game in general: Jim Cummings as the desk sergeant made me think of Bonkers every time I heard him. It's the same voice that he used for detective Lucky in that show.
Funny, I think it works fine on Wii with the exception that the Save Game screen text is too small.
I've played Curse of Monkey Island from start to finish on my Wii once before.
I have too... Kings Quest 5 and 6 work well on there as well... If you plug in a USB keyboard you can play the parcer games on there just fine too.
I've got ScummVM on my DS and it runs beautifully. I just wish I had a GBA memory cart so I could use the ROM that takes advantage of the extra memory so I can play Full Throttle and The Dig on it. Someday.
You can't use the original menus for games with unscripted menus (eg: most of the SCUMM games [the ones that share a common menu layout]) because the game's script only gives the text inside the buttons and none of the actual graphics or layout (that's all hardcoded in the original executable).
I'm not sure which setting in scummvm.ini it is.
Me standing behind you strangeling a cat to create sounds.
Certain games, if you enable Sound Blaster support, have digital sound effects. However, for the DOS versions, if you don't have a Sound Blaster they have MIDI equivalents. Like the sound of the ship taking off in SQ3 and SQ4 (disk version). KQ1SCI also has digital sound effects for the front gate when it closes. Water splashing, falling to the ground, etc. All the digital sound effects in SQ5. There are MIDI equivalent sound effects for all of these.
For SQ4 in particular, all the digital sound effects are merely lo-fi recordings of the MT-32 sound effects. So if you have MUNT or a real MT-32 you don't need the digital sound effects as they wouldn't sound as good as the real deal. However, ScummVM automatically defaults to digital sound effects no matter what in most cases. It used to be for all games, but only some now. At least there is some progress. That's been an issue for a long time.
I just played through Rosemary with it, and it looked and played great (with the exception of the final scene and credits which didn't yet play due to a script runtime error). Here's a screenshot of Rosemary in ScummVM (compiled and played in Linux):
It's amazing that it's come so far so fast. It also already has features from the full Wintermute that the Wintermute Lite engine does not (video playback and sprite mirroring and rotation).
The author of the Wintermute engine in ScummVM completed these five Wintermute games, so they should work with it: Dirty Split, The White Chamber, Chivalry is NOT dead, Rosemary, and Pigeons in the Park. I only played Dirty Split and Rosemary so far, but they both worked fine for me (although the videos are very slow, which is a problem that was inherited from the ogg video player used in ScummVM's Broken Sword 2.5 engine).
Not entirely true, I still haven't fixed rotation.
There's also been a lot of progress in the unstable developments builds. Myst III is completeable (with glitches and some missing features), and Escape from Monkey Island is now playable up to Lucre Island (and the Escape from Monkey Island demo is completable now).
Although this is just a bugfix release, it's a big one. There's over 40 gameplay fixes for Grim Fandango, including fixes for 14 bugs that were present in LucasArts' original 1998 release.
I just noticed johndoe123 made a pull request with an engine for Beavis and Butt-head in Virtual Stupidity, which is said to be fully completable. I played this game a lot during my childhood, and playing it is still a guilty pleasure (Beavis and Butt-head grate on me a bit now that I'm older, but it's still a fun adventure).
EDIT: It's now in the trunk, so you can try it out with the latest daily builds.
A programmer named Tobias Pfaff has released Grim Mouse, a modified ResidualVM and Grim Fandango so that the game can be played completely with point and click mouse control.
Grim Fandango can now be played with point and click control in all scenes, including the scenes where the camera shifts to close-up view. It also has a new point-and-click inventory system. In order to accomplish this feat, Tobias had to make major modifications to both the ResidualVM code and the game source. Luckily, ResidualVM's PatchR code allows for fan patches to be applied at run time, so all that is required to run this is the original game, just as the main ResidualVM branch.
Tobias has released a Mac and Windows build of Grim Mouse, and the sourcecode is freely available if you want to compile it to try it on other platforms. It is currently in early alpha phase, so there are likely to be bugs present since it hasn't been fully tested yet. If you want to participate in the testing, or just want to try it out for yourself, head over to the Grim Mouse thread on the ResidualVM forums.
It's always fun to follow the progress of the GSoC students working on anything that improves ScummVM, but my personal favorite projects are those that add new games or improve the support of games in existing engines. And this year, the students are going to be working on lots of those. :)
In ResidualVM, JoseJX and akz are going to be working on improving support for Escape from Monkey Island, and subr3v is improving the TinyGL implementation.
In ScummVM, uruk is adding support for the adventure game Sfinx by LK Avalon and translating it to English from Polish, and Lukaslw is adding support for The Prince and the Coward from Metropolis and also is translating the game to English. :)
It's still early days, but the students working on improving support in ResidualVM for Escape from Monkey Island have already created fixes for some issues in EMI that have been merged to trunk, so support is already better than before. :)
There's been major progress for both ScummVM and ResidualVM lately. ResidualVM 0.2.0 is out and now has full support for Myst III: Exile, alongside Grim Fandango. Escape from Monkey Island is also now completable in the latest daily builds, and the team is going to work to get Escape from Monkey Island fully supported in 2015.
On the ScummVM side, the last officially released Zork games, Zork Nemesis and Zork: Grand Inquisitor are now supported in ScummVM and are playable in the latest daily builds. The GSoC task of getting Sfinx supported in ScummVM was also a success, and an English translation (and the original Polish version) of Sfinx is available on the ScummVM games page. Sfinx is also now completable in the latest daily builds.
This is normally the time of year when I'd be getting all excited about GSOC progress in ScummVM, but sadly both ScummVM and ResidualVM didn't get accepted into the Google Summer of Code program this year.
That's not to say cool things aren't happening though. Electronic Arts gave the source code for the two Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes games to the ScummVM team. So far, the DOS version of Serrated Scalpel is completable. The second game, Rose Tattoo is being worked on, but only the intro sequence is completable. The team is also working on getting the 3DO version of Serrated Scalpel working, which will be nice as it included 16-bit color, video portraits, and full speech for every conversation in the game.
I only came because the title looked weird.