ScummVM

ScummVM is a program that supports numerous adventure game engines via virtual machines, allowing the user to play supported adventure games on their platform of choice. ScummVM provides none of the original assets for the games it supports, and expects the user to properly own the original game's media so as to use the software legally. The official project website offers games that are freeware that work directly with ScummVM. Atop emulating the games, ScummVM enables players to save and load the state of the emulator at any time, enabling a save system atop whatever the emulated game may provide. It has also begun to work at providing alternate controls for newer devices, such as mobile devices with touch screens, which work atop the original games.[1]

While ScummVM appears to function equivalently as a game emulator, the ScummVM team does not consider it as such. Outside of some subsystems like audio engines which they are forced to rely on emulation, ScummVM recreates game engines from older languages into more portable C++ code, so that the high-level opcodes in a game's assets will execute in the same manner as from their original release, while improving the portability of ScummVM to numerous platforms. The ScummVM team consider this an improvement over simply running the older games and their executables through an operating system emulator, such as DOSBox, since ScummVM's implements are more lightweight and require less processing power and memory, allowing use on more limited processing environments like mobile devices.[5]

Work on ScummVM started in September 2001 (with the first public release at October[2] and a site launch at November[12]) by computer science student Ludvig Strigeus. Looking to write his own adventure game, he looked to see how the mechanics of an existing game engine, specifically working to create an emulator to play Monkey Island 2.[1] At about the same time, Vincent Hamm was also looking to develop a SCUMM emulator, and though he had done deeper research into understanding how the SCUMM engine worked, found that Strigeus was much further along, and the two joined together to craft the emulator.[1] While Strigeus finished the required emulation for Monkey Island 2, Hamm worked separately to prepare the engine for Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, and once completed, the two found some dis-coordination on their efforts but eventually got the emulator working for both games.[1]

News of ScummVM was picked up by the tech news website Slashdot in November 2001, drawing a large interest to the project, and several other developers became part of the project to help support other games. These developers often turned to the creators of the original games to obtain information in informal ways, to help create the emulation.[1] Further developers helped to support games that did not use SCUMM, such as Adventure Soft's Simon the Sorcerer; there was some debate about changing the name of the program at this point, but they ultimately kept the ScummVM title, believing that SCUMM was the most well-recognized adventure game engine.[1] Strigeus had built support for iMUSE, the sound software used by many LucasArts games, but feared including it due to potential backlash from LucasArts. Other developers on the project advised him that there should be no legal issues and it was eventually included.[1] Though Strigeus and Hamm would leave the project in 2002, by then it had a large enough development team to allow it to grow, led by James "Ender" Brown.[1] Following this shift, the engine's source code was changed from C to C++, and a graphical user interface (GUI) was added.[1]

With increased awareness of the project, LucasArts sent a cease & desist letter to the project, believing they were using some of LucasArts' proprietary code. Brown worked over the next four years with LucasArts' legal representatives to explain the nature of the emulator and the source of their information to demonstrate that what they had created was legal. Brown considered that LucasArts was trying to be accommodating as ScummVM helped to raise interest in these titles. They ultimately came to a legal agreement to allow ScummVM to continue to be developed.[1]

The project would also incorporate other parallel efforts to make game emulators for other adventure games. Games from Sierra Online were of high demand for the project, requiring them to emulate the Adventure Game Interpreter (AGI) and the more advanced Sierra's Creative Interpreter (SCI) engines. AGI support was added in 2006 by incorporating efforts from the Sarien project, but efforts for SCI support were hampered by the parallel project, FreeSCI. Though both ScummVM and FreeSCI aimed to reverse engineer the workings of SCI, FreeSCI had stated they took a more clean-room approach to avoid any legal question about their reverse engineering, and believed the ScummVM project had run afoul of some of Sierra's approaches and thus were hesitant to work together.[1] However, FreeSCI began to languish in interest compared to ScummVM; after a developer took it upon themselves to make the FreeSCI engine work in ScummVM, the FreeSCI saw more participation in their project, and they agreed to merge their efforts into ScummVM. Initial SCI support was subsequently released in a 2010 version of ScummVM.[1]

ScummVM continues to add new games or game engines, though the process to create these is relatively slow. According to the team's project lead Eugene Sandulenko (as of 2017[4]), game engines are chosen for inclusion into ScummVM either if they are given the source code that makes it easy to port into the software's architecture, or if one or more of the team members are passionate about bringing a game engine into the program to do the difficult task of reconstructing the game's code from the compiled versions.[5] The only restriction is that ScummVM will only include 2D game engines, leaving 3D games to be handled by the sister project ResidualVM.[5] The 2.0 version of ScummVM was released in December 2017, adding support for several full motion video games and some very obscure titles, such as Full Pipe and Plumbers Don't Wear Ties. With this release, ScummVM has support for 64 different game engines.[5]

An attempt to bring in Another World by Éric Chahi brought some internal stress within the project in 2004. Another World was not a point-and-click adventure game, and used polygon-based graphics instead of pixel-based ones most adventure games employ, and thus was considered a serious departure from the focus of ScummVM. Though the project was scrapped in a few days after Chahi requested its removal as he was preparing a 15th anniversary remastered for sale, the current leads of the project had to refocus the group and define the ideals that ScummVM should meet.[1]

ScummVM has also had difficulty in bringing games using the Adventure Game Studio (AGS), which is used frequently in indie adventure games, such as the Blackwell series. While the source code for AGS had been put into the open by its developer Chris Jones in 2010, the ScummVM team was met with a large backlash of complaints from developers using the AGS engine for their games, stating they did not want to see their games run in ScummVM.[5]

ScummVM has been a participant in the Google Summer of Code every year since 2007 except for 2015. A sister project, ResidualVM, was started to implement engines for three-dimensional adventure games, such as Grim Fandango and Myst III: Exile, named as such as these games reflect the residual of those not already covered by ScummVM.[13] By late 2020, it was announced ResidualVM is officially merging with ScummVM.[2]

GUI of ScummVM 0.8.0 with the "Classic (builtin)" skin

The following games have support built into the current release of ScummVM.[20][21]

• Game engine recreation
• Z-machine
• Category:ScummVM-supported games

Wikimedia Commons has media related to ScummVM.

• Official website
• ScummVM on Google Play
• "ScummVM MIDI Music Enhancement Project". jameswoodcock.co.uk.