Talk:ScummVM

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Contents

[edit] Moved information from the first paragraph

I found the first paragraph a little cluttered with all those links, so I moved some information around and added a full list of supported LucasArts games.--Deadworm222 22:18, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Other game engine recreations

This subsection is not about ScummVM at all. If it is at all needed, it should be an infobox or other template (to be included on every engine recreation), but ideally this should be a category. Shinobu 15:38, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

  • Agreed. I have split that section to another article and added a "see also" reference on the ScummVM article. MetaFox 17:00, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of supported games

Someone added games to the list as soon as they appeared in SVN. Please, do not do that, as those games aren't really supported, i.e. at least not for end-users. When we feel confident about some game, we add it to our compatibility list. Until that, please, do not list them here. The reason behind it is that when game is supported, we accept bugreports about it, add new category to bug trackers, write proper documentation on how to run it, etc. Questions about unsupported games distract us from real development. -- Sevua 11:52, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps they could be listed under a different heading. 'Games that may be supported in the future' of something like that. --JiFish(Talk/Contrib) 13:55, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
No, we prefer to not have those additional questions raised at all. Sometimes it is really annoying. Even questions like 'when at last this and this will be fully playable' take time to read and reply. --Sevua 12:42, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
With respect sir, and I am a huge fan of ScummVM, but if the information is true and sourced there's no good reason that it shouldn't be included. This is an encyclopedia. The fact the ScummVM team doesn't want to recieve questions about it doesn't really cut it as a reason. Perhaps a sentence to the effect that the ScummVM team doesn't wish to recieve messages about unsupported titles would be a fair compromise. --JiFish(Talk/Contrib) 15:23, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
I am really sorry, but I am one of three ScummVM co-leaders. Check Our credits page (username sev was already taken here so I had to use Sevua). That's our (not my alone) decision and as I've told, we really had bad experiences and believe that this exposure will put unnecessary load on us. Though of course if you will decide to ignore this and re-add the games in question to the list, we will not run into edit fights or somethig. However, this will not oblige us to give support for users who will inquiry info on these WIP titles, and their requests will usually be ignored, and I believe that this will plainly disappoint them. --Sevua 17:19, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
I am aware of who you are. That is why I wanted you to know what a big fan of your work I am. Which is why it upsets me to have to restore the information. But you must understand, wikipedia can't just let people remove information because they don't want people to know about it. That would be a very bad policy for an encyclopedia. I have tried to be as clear as possible about the state of these engines. Please feel free to edit the section. If you still disagree with me, maybe we can ask a few other editors to weigh in on the situation.
I hope you don't see this as malicious. I am trying to do the 'right thing'. Your fan, --JiFish(Talk/Contrib) 22:22, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Is there any reason to keep those games listed on Wikipedia there if they are not officially supported? Is mentioning unsupported games in an encyclopedia article reasonable?-Wormsie 09:01, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
The information is factual, IMO notable and may be of use to someone. I have clearly indicated the status of these games. I believe it is reasonable. --JiFish(Talk/Contrib) 10:52, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Check in progress engines for complete and up-to-date list. --Sevua 21:21, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Regarding the ScummVM screenshot

Why has it been changed to the version 0.8.0? 0.9. is the latest.--Wormsie 06:34, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Apparently Wikipedia switched all images to Wiki Commons, and screenshot wasn't updated there. I pointed this article to 0.9.0, however that screenshot is made with bad resolution (640x400 instead of 640x480), and I can't update the file on commons for some reason. I get '.png is not allowed format' error.--Sevua 12:35, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
I have add two screenshots of the scummvm version 0.10.0 one for the modern skin and the other for the classic skin (i apologize for my poor english)--81.42.90.18 02:26, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GP2x official support added

The GP2x has been added to the officially supported platforms. So far a preview version has been released and a forum section added. Hasn't been announced on the website front page thought.

Yes, a port becomes truly official when a release with it was made. In 0.9.1 we expect to have NDS, GP2X and GP32 ports added. -Sevua 06:07, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Possible shutting down of the project?

I've noticed that scummvm.org went down yesterday, with the downloads page going down first. I have also noticed that LucasHacks is down as well. Are you guys perparing for a new release or has Lucasarts come down on you? Any feedback would be apperciated.

/me laughs. No. Use scummvm.sourceforge.net. It's just SF.net which broke their vhosts somehow. And visit our forums at forums.scummvm.org to make sure that the project is alive and kicking. New game support was added couple days ago.--Sevua 18:43, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Added Parallaction to the SVN

Recently the Parallaction engine was added to the SVN. This engine was used by the games Nippon Safes, Inc and it's sequel Big Red Adventure, maybe "Tequila & Boom Boom".

http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/Parallaction

[edit] Intro reorg / lists / general attitude towards cleanup

So recently the laundry tag was removed without any attempt at cleanup twice, and I just had a whole lot of copyediting reverted on the basis that it was "a lot clearer" previously. The previous focus on technical minutae (including the "not an emulator" gibberish which only makes sense to people who come from a console emulation background) was not at all useful.

As for the lists, either they need rewritten or they should be removed entirely. This article shouldn't be a simple bulleted reiteration of stuff from the ScummVM website. It should seek to describe the subject in a way which adds some insight into what the project is about. Describing the differences between the supported platforms and grouping them by category in prose does this. Arbitrarily-ordered lists of 10+ items doesn't. Chris Cunningham 08:34, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Now that the article is tagged, it suggests that the list of games should also be changed to prose. I strongly disagree. You said lists shouldn't be here at all, but there's a place for lists. Changing something like a list of games (or a list of compositions by an artist or a list of albums) to prose when there's no need or intention to elaborate on talk more of the individual games makes the article worse because it makes it a lot less clear. It doesn't add anything to it. It is not the job of this article to explain anything about the games, that's why the games have their own articles.--Wormsie 11:25, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
The list of games isn't the core point of the article any more than MAME should be a list of games. Giving a bit of information on each engine supported along with some example games would be much more informative than a simple chronological ordering of them. People resort to lists for bundles of data much too readily on Wikipedia, and this article (which until recently consisted of little more than some introductory text refactored from the website and five or six different lists of games or hardware) is a prime example. People can go to the article website for that kind of trivia. This article should treat the subject as a point of academic interest. Chris Cunningham 11:52, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
Why exclude a full list of games? That'd be like saying that articles about artists shouldn't include all albums they have made or an article of a composer shouldn't include all his compositions. And what is there to be said of the individual engines? The interesting information would be from the point of ScummVM developers and what they have discovered about them, but alas, this information is not commonly known. And information on each engine should be in the articles about the engines themselves, anyway. By all means, expand the article, but there's nothing wrong with the list per se.--Wormsie 14:01, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
MAME is an emulator of many different arcade systems, ScummVM a reimplementation of a few engines. ScummVM is smaller in scope, and it's worth listing which game engine versions (i.e. which games) it does support and doesn't support. (And it wouldn't hurt if the MAME article mentioned which systems it can emulate.) People don't generally know if, say, Grim Fandango used Scumm or not, and just referring to "LucasArts adventure games" would be confusing.--Wormsie 14:19, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. A full list of games is just a huge wad of data for most people. If you look at the articles of prolific authors, they don't always include complete lists of works for precisely this reason. I'm happy for the article to document the different systems it supports, but I believe this can be done in a much better way than a chronological list of games. For now, at least the intro is okay, and we're down to three large lists rather than five. Chris Cunningham 11:50, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Well, I am the one, standing behind that "gibberish" that ScummVM in not an emulator. And now you removed that sentence and wrote a paragraph with misleading explanation. That was my intention to avoid such things when I added my clause. Let me explain. ScummVM does not emulate any part of the software (in fact, there are several hardware-related emulators in it, particularly for sound chips), but it is a [i]rewrite[/i] or [i]reimplementation[/i] of original engines. That is, we obtains source code of some engine, either directly from the company, or by means of reverse engineering and then make it portable, leaving all original logic intact. What you wrote is completely wrong. So, please, express these thoughts in better words as you seem to feel more qualified for this.-- Sevua 12:49, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
Call it what you will ("recreation", "simulation", "high-level emulation" to name three common ones), this practice is widely referred to as emulation in the general sense, so flat-out saying "it is not an emulator" presupposes that the reader takes a particular idea of what an emulator is. In this case, the article which is wikilinked makes clear that there is nuance here, and that "virtual machines", "simulators" and "compatibility layers" all emulate other systems in this sense. There's already a distinction in the new intro between what ScummVM does and full hardware emulation, and I've specifically used game engine recreation as the primary term used to refer to the app. Chris Cunningham 13:25, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
(That is the reason why I reverted the rest of the edits, as I saw them as inaccurate.)--Wormsie 14:01, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, Sevua, knowing you are a ScummVM developer I would see you more qualified in writing about this. :)--Wormsie 14:01, 7 August 2007 (UTC)