ScummVM allows you to run certain classic graphic adventure and role-playing games
A few days ago it was announced release of the new version of ScummVM 2.8, version in which A large number of support improvements have been introduced, both for new games, platforms, in the engine, as well as optimizations and more.
For those who are unaware of ScummVM (Scumm Virtual Machine), you should know that this is software that allows you to run graphic adventures originally created for the LucasArts SCUMM engine. ScummVM also supports a variety of games that do not use the SCUMM engine, made by companies like Revolution Software or Adventure Soft.
As its name suggests, ScummVM runs the games through a virtual machine, using only its data files, so it replaces the executables the game was originally released with. This allows games to run on systems they were never designed for, such as wii, pocketPCs, PalmOS, Nintendo DS, PSP, PlayStation 3, Linux, Xbox or cell phones.
Main new features of ScummVM 2.8
In this new version that is presented of ScummVM 2.8, the inclusion of 50 new games, among which the following titles stand out: Adibou 1, The Dark Eye, Dark Side, Escape From Hell, Gadget: Invention Travel and Adventure, Gobliiins 5, The Excavation of Hob's Barrow, Kingdom: The Far Reaches, Might and Magic Book One, Muppet Treasure Island, Nancy Drew: The Final Scene, Nancy Drew: Message in a Haunted Mansion, Nancy Drew: Secrets Can Kill, Nancy Drew: Stay Tuned for Danger, Nancy Drew: Treasure in the Royal Tower, Primordia, Reah: Face the Unknown, Schizm: Mysterious Journey, Shardlight , Strangeland, Syberia and Syberia II, Technobabylon, The Vampire Diaries, Whispers of a Machine, Wrath of the Gods, and 4 other games from the same developer, as well as 14 games based on the AGS (Adventure Game Studio) engine.
Another novelty that stands out is the work carried out in the RetroArch port rewrite, which is now part of the ScummVM code. It is also highlighted that has been rewritten from scratch and adapted for direct hardware access (without using SDL) the port for the Atari platform.
In addition to this, we can also find that Graphical representation operations have been improved, using SIMD vector instructions such as SSE, AVX2 and NEON to speed up the AGS motor and some basic functions. As a result, the rendering speed has increased by 4-14 times in many situations.
It has been integrated with the Backyard Sports Online project, lor which has allowed the addition of support for several online multiplayer games, such as Backyard Football, Backyard Baseball 2001 and Backyard Football 2002. Preliminary support has also been added for the Moonbase Commander online game.
And motor AGS has been updated to version 3.6.0.53 and with it accelerated graphics manipulation, added support for early font rendering, to match the original interpreter, added support for playing transcoded videos instead of unsupported codecs, implemented audio playback MOD and various fixes were also implemented.
Of the other changes that stand out:
- Numerous native graphical dialogs have been implemented for SCUMM games.
- Added optional dependency for libvpx.
- Added optional dependency for libmikmod.
- Added support for PC98 source ROMs.
- Code has been redesigned to support sound in SCUMM Humongous Entertainment games.
- Added YUV422 and YUV444 support to the Theora decoder.
- Implemented specialized CPU routines for graphics blitting for ManagedSurface.
- Changed default GM device to “auto” for better compatibility.
Finally yes you are interested in being able to know more about it, you can do it from the following link.
For those interested in the project code, you should know that it is distributed under the GPLv3+ license and you can obtain the installation files for the different supported platforms. In the case of Linux, deb, Snap and Flatpak packages are offered from the following link.