ScummVM Game Engine Coming to webOS 59
Fresh on the triumph of getting Doom and Quake working and playable, the webOS Internals team is working on getting an entire existing game environment running on the Pre: ScummVM.
For those that aren’t familiar with it, ScummVM is a multi-platform virtual machine for games developed using LucasArts’ SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion), and includes classic Lucasfilm games like Maniac Mansion, The Secret of Monkey Island, Sam & Max Hit the Road as well as games from Activision, Adventuresoft, SierraAGI (Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards!) Humongous Entertainment (the Freddi Fish series) and many more. (The complete current ScummVM compatibility list is here.)
More details - and a video - after the break!
According to Rod Whitby’s tweets and the above video, ScummVM has been successfully ported to webOS, although keymaps await some additional development resources.
Even once ScummVM is fully packaged and ready for the Pre, though, users will still need to obtain games. There are a few games like Beneath a Steel Sky and Flight of the Amazon Queen that are freeware and legally available for download from the ScummVM project page; for others, users will have to find original software discs in their attics and basements, buy them on eBay or perhaps use more creative methods of obtaining the necessary game files.
You can track the progress of the ScummVM project at webOS Internals’ wiki page, its official forum here, or just by listening for the sound of happy gamers reliving the nostalgic fun of their old favorite games while standing in line at the pharmacy or waiting in the doctor’s office.
59 Comments
WebOS Internals is truly doing amazing things. Love the Lucas Art's library, can not wait for this to happen!
sounds great I'm very excited about the gaming possibilities being brought out on our pres.
Ha this is pretty awesome. I'm in love with WebOS.
I know Doom is hardware accelerated, but are all these games coming out (since they are native apps) also using the GPU?
ScummVM is made possible on webOS because Palm included the SDL libraries. ScummVM is an SDL application.
SDL inclusion was just genius on Palm's part.
Most, if not all, of the games via SCUMM are not really graphics intensive and were written prior to dedicated 3D graphics processors being standard.
In addition, they are not really "native", since they are running in an emulator (SCUMM).
DOOM uses SDL, just like this title. I don't think it uses the GPU. You can have games use SDL without OpenGL. DOOM was also released at a time when it was pretty rare for someone to even own a card with 3D support. The quake port is software rendered as well as far as I know.
Psst. Jonathan! Your ScummVM compat list link points to the Leisure Suit Larry compatibility page. Just lettin' ya know...
I look forward to trying this out. I love that the WebOS-internals team is focusing on games as of late. All work and no play makes for a dull Pre.
Psst. Spiral! Not any more. Thanks! {J}
Thats just amazing, keep up the good work!
Have Palm approached anyone at webOS Internals with a job offer?
They work with them i know that, and i'm sure they could be scouting some people as well.
They do great work. Its crazy how many "off the shelf" linux packages are on the Pre though. Seems like it takes very little to get things going sometimes haha
Thank you guys. The chance to play Maniac Mansion again makes me very happy.
Was Zak Mckraken and the Alien Mindbenders one of Lucasarts games?
Yeah I love Zak Mckraken... I used to play on C64...
awsome
Why on Earth did they give it that name? I know it's an acronym but seriously. I was kind of embarrassed to have the name in full color displayed here at work. When I clicked the link my company's proxy kicked in and denied access.
SCUMM came from the acronym given in the article. That was never made public with the actual games, but was appropriate to call the Virtual Machine that ran SCUMM games as SCUMM VM.
The open source community names things to make them as uncomfortable as possible. I was working with the GIMP just a while ago.
The name "SCUMM" was made public in the actual games. When you beat most LucasArts adventure games, the end credits mention the SCUMM engine and Ron Gilbert.
Hey, don't forget "Full Throttle." The theme song alone is reason enough to love the game. As are the exploding toy bunnies.
King's Quest series and Return to Zork! Very exciting.
Kings Quest was Sierra, and Zork was Infogames I believe, would they work? What about Space Quest, and Police Quest?
Infocom, not Infogrames.
You, Sirs, are truly the best.
Maybe they could combine Tiger Wood's PGA 2010 with the Leisure Suit Larry game?
+1 :)
"...... or perhaps use more creative methods of obtaining the necessary game files."
lol
Woohoo! That's awesome. Long live lucasarts point-n-click adventure games! The Dig, here I come...again.
This just made my day! Giddy with anticipation.. seriously. On a side note, if you cannot wait however long it will take for SCUMMVM to be official on the pre, you can relive most of your Lucasart childhood on Steam now. A few of the games are available for a real cheap download, like 5 bucks. (Monkey Island, Indiana Jones: Atlantis, The Dig, Loom)
http://store.steampowered.com/publisher/LucasArts/
I'm pretty sure, though, that the downloaded files do not count as official game files; meaning, they probably won't work with SCUMMVM.
Personally I couldn't care less that they made ScummVM runnable on the Pre, or Doom or Quake. I had these running on my Linux PDA Sharp Zaurus 10 years ago (OK without the hardware OpenGL support).
We're living in the second decennium of the 21st century. Give us something more of this time!!
Don't get me wrong I think the webosinternal guys are geniusses. But I'm tired of seeing all these cliche ports on every single platform over and over again.
I understood that 1.3.5 allowed native linux apps to run (not just SDL games), so please port some useful apps, like voicerecording/dialing, ftp client, maybe even openoffice or something.
Think of it as a rite of passage.
And remember, 'Useful' is a subjective term. I'll never use Voice Recording or an FTP Client, but I'll sure play the hell out of Doom again.
Unfortunately, an OpenOffice port isn't in the cards anytime soon. OpenOffice requires X to run, and X running on WebOS is unlikely in the near future.
Proof Of Concept
That's true. I even had ScummVM on the good old Palm OS (I had a Palm Live Drive). But it's just a logical conclusion to first port the stuff which is easy. The first ported apps are always the console programs (And I don't miss anything here, I have Midnight Commander, joe, openvpn, ssh, ...). The second ported apps are simple graphical stuff like ScummVM. Next apps will be more modern free stuff like Quake III and I hope VLC will also hit webOS (So I can watch television streams from my VDR on the Pre). RDP and VNC clients would also be nice for administrating stinking Windows and Mac servers.
Personally I hope there are more old apps comming in. I'm waiting for Vice (To play old C64 games on the Pre), UAE (For Amiga games) and dosbox (To play old DOS games like Wasteland)
Anyone who knows the word "decennium" should also know that they are 10 years long, not 9, and thus we are still living in the first decennium, not the second :-)
Get outta here lame-O!
And I bet you'll demand that your firstborn skip straight to running rather than doing all of that crawling and baby-stepping around.
This is the 21st century
King's Quest FTW
We now have GameBoy, NES, and ScrummVM. Now all we need is MAME, Commodore-64 and Atari 2600 emulators.
The Pre can be the worlds most portable game emulator!
Heck, someone suggested we could have Android running in a card as well. Nahhhh -- who the heck wants that. :-)
Some games running with ScummVM are (legally) available on GOG.com ... (including Broken Sword 2 =)
Next step for the webOS Internals team : Heroes of Might and Magic II.
I wanna play Grim Fandango on the Pre! Someone please make it happen!!
What we need now is someone to modify the bluetooth stack to support one of those bluetooth gamepads!!
Fantastic!
Very excited about DotT, BASS, Broken Sword, and the 'Indy' games. Would be great to see Full Throttle, The Dig, and Grim Fandango as well.
Big thumbs up to the guys at webOS Internals (along with my stupified grin).
When will we see Crysis: Warhead for the Pre? I think we should focus more on next-gen games, over these outdated games of the 90s.
seriously? SRSLY???
Of course I am serious! I didn't get a high tech phone so I can play games from the 1990s.
Then, I think you're going to be disappointed by the fact it'll probably be 2020 before you're playing Crysis on your phone.
I use the Scumm Engine regularly, Full Throttle on my Pre would be mind-blowing!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jx3Vz6cpXY
While I love the old LucasArts games and think it's great that ScummVM is running on the Pre, I'm skeptical about how enjoyable it will be to try to tap on objects and verbs on the Pre's small screen with my fat fingers. Even in the video, the guy spends 15 seconds trying to tap the button to quit. =/
Also, waving the mouse cursor around the screen to see which things were recognized as objects was part of the gameplay mechanic, but you can't do mouse-overs with a touchscreen. =(
I love you Palm.
Monkey Island!!
That's nice. On a more important note: when is the Terminal app going to get fixed?!? We can play 3D games now, but can't (reliably) connect to other machines using an ~20 year old method 'cause the app dumps the OS when you close it.
M.
I would like to take a short interlude from commenting for a public service announcement:
Please remember that these guys are doing this FOR FREE on their OWN time. Even ignoring that fact, they are implementing things that are demonstrably moving the platform forward. There are only so many people with so many resources: they can't do it all.
If you want a better terminal app Xanadu and they aren't getting to it fast enough for your liking, join the webOS internals community and dig into the code a bit. If, like me, you don't have the skill then I think a measurable amount of appreciation and understanding are in order.
Yea I get all that. I've been living in the Open Source community since about 1995. I get it. I don't need to be told (1). I also get it when Devs are not responding, at all, to a lot of End Users letting them know them their app is broke. There's *no* Bugzilla (2) for these apps that I know of. There really should be since this type of "complaining out loud and off topic" is the only solution an End User has to get the most eyes on the issue.
Terminal hasn't been updated since August. There's been a good few OS updates since it was last dusted off. If the original author was interested in updating it,it would've been done by now, I'd imagine.
That said, I *do* intend on getting into the code and seeing if I can figure out what's wrong. I did find a link to the git repo for it. I have exactly zero idea how to package up a WebOS app and get it submitted to be installed OtA, but, I'll figure that bit out eventually when I actually *need* to. Right now, to make personal hacks to my phone, I just make back ups and manually copy images and sounds over the original ones. Ugly? Yes. Works? Yes.
I haven't had the time at home the past few days to pull in the git source, and at work I'm behind a proxy that only allows HTTP & HTTPS in/out. So I'm stuck there too. I should have some time Saturday afternoon and Sunday to look into this (my Son's Pinewood Derby car is due Friday for weigh-in and the derby is Saturday and it's not done being painted yet! :-\).
I don't know much code at all, but, JavaScript and HTML isn't exactly difficult. I'll just have to dust off that old hat of mine and put it back on and see what I can figure out.
M.
(1) I'm *NOT* bitching at you, since you make an EXCELLENT point. I'm only stating where I stand on this topic and am suggesting a better way to do it (BUGZILLA!!!) that has been proven to work (and work well) in my ~15 years in the FOSS community.
(2) If there is a Bugzilla that I'm unaware of, *PLEASE* let me know and I'll happily file a proper bug report and stop whining "out loud" like this.
Talk about the irony. You don't want to use a ~20 year old method to run a ~20 year old game.
I thought about that angle after hitting "Save"...
:-/
CAPS ATTACK!!!
PALM SHOULD DEFINITELY LOOK INTO HIRING THOSE GUYS OVER AT WEBOSINTERNALS! THEY OBVIOUSLY ARE VERY VERY GOOD AT WHAT THEY DO! I'D VENTURE TO SAY THE BIGGEST ADDITIONS TO WEBOS SINCE IT'S RELEASE HASN'T BEEN THROUGH THE UPDATES, BUT THROUGH HOMEBREW!
ScummVM is pretty awesome. But the docs say you have to put ScummVM-Frontend.prc in your /PALM/launcher folder. They must be talking about an older Palm phone because this one won't let you goto that dir. At least, I can't get to it when I put my phone in USB mode in Windows. It also says you need this BUG-1875588.patch to make a lot of games work (file that comes with the package). But WebOS Quick Install won't recognize that patch.
I posted a comment on the dude's forum though. This'll be pretty hot once I can get it working. So far I can play Legend of Kyrandia and Drascula on it. Real iffy on the mapping as of right now. I hear "orange > #1-9" are same as F keys though. Yes this emulator is very cool!
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